The Oak Bay Cenotaph was constructed in 1948 on behalf of 97 young men and one woman from Oak Bay, who died in WWII. On Armistice Day, November 11th, 1948, the Cenotaph was unveiled by the Lieutenant Governor, the Honourable Charles H. Banks, C.M.G., and dedicated by the Venerable Archdeacon A deL. Nunns and the Reverend Dr. W.W. McPherson. A wall of concrete with granite finish frames a nine-foot tall statue of a woman, her eyes downcast upon the 97 names of Oak Bay's war dead. The inscription reads: "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." Early in 1948, the Oak Bay Town Council decided that a suitable memorial be erected. A young former airman from Ontario, James Saull, had made his home in Victoria after the war. He had been a pupil of the well-known Toronto sculptor Emmanuel Hahn (Hahn sculpted the Bluenose schooner on our dime, the caribou on the quarter and the Indians in their canoe on the silver dollar), and the young man's talent had become known locally. It took Saull about seven months to complete the nine-foot monument, for which his wife was the model. The monument is located in Uplands Park on a rock out-cropping, facing Beach Drive. Since the concrete monument had been built on a rock out-cropping, there wasn't any problem with settlement but, over three and a half decade, it had been exposed to the extremes of weather. It was then that Mr. Saull was called upon by the Town Council to rebuild and repair the entire structure.
The work completed in time for the 2019 Remembrance Day service, which includes refurbishing the path and steps up to the cenotaph and also the stair railing, is the latest phase of work that was laid out in the 2016 strategic plan headed by Coun. Tara Ney and a small task force.
