Ontario

The Sons of England War Memorial is comprised of a bronze statue of a lone soldier atop a granite pedestal which is flanked by three lions. It was erected by members of the Toronto Districts Sons of England Benefit Society in memory of those who fell in the First World War. The memorial was created by sculptor Charles Adamson and dedicated in December 1923 at University and College Avenues and moved to University Avenue at Elm Street some time later.

The South African War Memorial was unveiled on May 24, 1910, at 360 University Avenue, in memory of those who lost their lives in the Boer War. It was designed by Walter Seymour Allward who was assisted by sculptor Emanuel Hahn. The monument featured a granite base with three sculptures in bronze. The central figure represents Canada, pointing out the path of duty to two Canadian soldiers, and was inspired by and modelled after Allward’s mother, who had seen four of her children die before adulthood. The two other statues represent the Canadian contingents: one an infantryman, the other a dismounted cavalryman.

The obelisk, which rises 70 feet high behind the three statues, and the Peace figure were added in 1911. Funds for the statue were not secured until shortly before the 1910 unveiling. At nine feet in height, the Peace figure stands on a globe atop the obelisk with wings outstretched, as if in flight, and the crown of peace held in her hands overhead. The statue was delayed at the border for nearly a month because of American Customs. 

The last piece of the sculpture, a bronze tablet listing Canadians killed in the South African War, was delayed due to a disagreement regarding the positioning of names. Ultimately, Allward’s suggestion that the names appear alphabetically in a single paragraph rather than in vertical rows was adopted and the tablet was finished in 1914. It is not known what happened to the tablet.

In 1947, the widening of University Avenue required that the monument be moved 20' 8". Russell Construction Company of Toronto moved the monument, on wooden rollers, in one piece because it was felt that if the monument was dismantled it would never look the same again. It was set onto a new poured concrete foundation. In 1960, when the Spadina subway was built, the monument was disassembled and moved off site while the subway tunnel was dug. The stones were labelled so that the monument could be reassembled. It is not known where the monument was stored during the subway construction.

In the fall of 2023, the memorial was moved because of construction at this location by Metrolinx. This is related to the Ontario Line station and underground digging which will be on the site for the next five to six years. The memorial will be undergoing conservation and storage while the Ontario Line is completed.

Lime Ridge Monument honours the Toronto militia volunteers killed in the Battle of Ridgeway on 2 June 1866. The Toronto militia volunteers were fighting Irish-American Fenian insurgents who had invaded Canada near Fort Erie in the hopes of holding Canada ransom for Irish independence. Between 1866 and 1871, this group raided Canadian territory from New Brunswick to Manitoba. Nine riflemen from Toronto’s The Queen’s Own Rifles of Canada were killed, including three University of Toronto students. The entire city shut down for the funeral procession to the Necropolis.

The monument was erected by the Canadian Volunteer Monument Campaign of 1866 Committee comprised of Toronto citizens and chairman, Dr. McCaul, President of the University. The Italian Renaissance style monument of sandstone and marble was sculpted by Robert Reid of Mayor & Co. of Montreal. It was unveiled on Dominion Day 1870.

Conservation work began in October of 2006. The center beehive-shaped core was rebuilt. The masonry was cleaned, marble statuary treated, stone delamination was repaired and the most deteriorated stone blocks were treated with a moisture-permeable consolidant. Work was completed in December of 2007.

Although located on the University of Toronto campus, the monument belongs to the City of Toronto.

Three of the men named on this memorial - Private Malcolm Mackenzie, Private William F. Tempest and Private John H Mewburn, all of No. 9 Company, are also commemorated on a stained glass window in University College.

The Little Trinity First World War Memorial was unveiled by Sir Edward Kemp on March 20, 1921. There were 327 men from the church who enlisted in the First World War.

William Moncrieff Ferguson served with the 14th and 35th Battalions during WWI, then returned to Toronto in 1919. In 1924 both Ferguson and Pomphrey submitted an entry in the competition for the War Memorial Cenotaph in Toronto. From the fifty designs submitted, their scheme was awarded First Premium, accompanied by a generous fee and award of $2,500 for architectural services. A watercolour perspective of their design appeared in the R.A.I.C. Journal, ii, Jan.-Feb. 1925, 4. The WW I War Memorial Cenotaph was erected on Queen Street West at Bay Street, 1925-26. This is the main memorial in Toronto for Remembrance Day ceremonies.

In 1894, at age nineteen and having only minimal training as a sculptor, Walter S. Allward won a competition to design a bronze statue of Peace for the Northwest Rebellion Monument in Toronto. The monument had been proposed by a group of Toronto women who began raising funds in the early 1890s. In 1894, the committee hired Toronto based D. McIntosh & Sons to provide a pedestal and to supervise Allward’s progress. The pedestal, designed by McIntosh employee James Wilson Gray, is made of grey granite, twenty feet high, and ornamented with the insignia of the various regiments that took part in the Northwest Resistance. 

Allward’s lack of experience meant that he worked slowly, which resulted in complaints from his employer, who had provided money in advance for his studio and tools. Confident in his artistic abilities, Allward threatened to destroy the sculpture if the company continued to exert pressure. The McIntosh representative relented, but when Allward arrived at the site the next morning a guard was stationed beside the figure, an arrangement that continued until he completed the sculpture.

Allward worked on the sculpture throughout 1895 in his studio at the Imperial Chambers Building on Adelaide Street in Toronto, completing a clay model in time for a public showing in January 1896. The bronze casting of the final model was done at the foundry of Bureau Brothers in Philadelphia.

Designed according to the then popular Beaux-Arts style, the monument has a single figure on a pedestal within a pyramidal composition. The statue portrays Peace as an idealized female figure in a static pose, with a full-length robe falling loosely from her shoulders. Her right hand holds an olive branch and her left hand is raised in a gesture commanding silence. The sword at her side represents the power of Canada at rest. The sculpture, Allward’s earliest professional commission, was his first to focus on peace, a theme he would return to throughout his career.

The unveiling on June 27, 1896, featured a military parade and speeches by officials from various levels of government, including the Honourable Sir George Airey Kirkpatrick, Lieutenant Governor of Ontario, and Mayor Robert John Fleming. The monument honours soldiers and volunteers who died during the Northwest Rebellion of 1885, when the Canadian government sent troops to suppress an uprising led by the Métis leader Louis Riel. Allward attended the unveiling and when the crowd called out for him to speak, he responded with a modesty that became one of his hallmarks: “I thank you for your appreciation of my work. It is not what it might have been, but it was the best I could do. Probably I will do better next time.”

A plaque, commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the rebellion, was added in 1935.

The Northwest Rebellion Monument deals with a battle that took place at the height of the government’s attempts to control Indigenous communities and does not acknowledge the Indigenous lives lost or the trial and subsequent death of Riel. The monument has become re-appropriated and given different meaning by Métis and Indigenous groups. It has served as a meeting place and the anniversary of Riel’s death has been commemorated here with Indigenous ceremonies and events.

The Cross of Sacrifice was unveiled on October 18, 1931, by the Right Honorable Sir William Mulock, KCMG, Chief Justice of Ontario and Honorary President of the Queen's Own Memorial Association. It was dedicated by Lieutenant-Colonel the Reverend Canon Cody, Senior Chaplain of The Queen's Own Rifles of Canada.

Designed by Sir Reginald Blomfield in 1918, the Cross of Sacrifice is one of two iconic features designed by Commonwealth War Graves Commission architects. Crosses of Sacrifice are found around the world in Commission cemeteries and in public cemeteries where there is a concentration of War Dead. The Cross of Sacrifice is an imposing bronze medieval longsword, blade down, on a stark white cross. It is one of the most enduring symbols of the bravery and sacrifice made by the men and women of the Commonwealth during the World Wars. 

On June 22, 1924, a Memorial Cross was unveiled at the west side of St. James Cathedral to commemorate the memory of the 46 members of the congregation who had fallen in the First World War. One hundred members of the 10^th Regiment Royal Grenadiers attended the unveiling ceremony, which was conducted by Colonel A.H. Borden. The memorial was unveiled by H.C. Scholfield and dedicated by Right Reverend Bishop William Day Reeve.

Designed by architects Sproatt & Rolph, it is imitative of the Eleanor Cross which King Edward I dedicated to his wife Eleanor of Castile in the 13^th century. Made from Indiana limestone, the Cross is Gothic in style, consisting of four piers that are square in plan and within the arches is a fan-vaulted ceiling carried out with intricate and delicately detailed tracery. The spire rises above this, embellished with flying buttresses, pinnacles and an open terrace design.

In 1924, Sproatt & Rolph also designed La Malbaie Memorial Cross  Simcoe Carillon Tower and Soldiers' Tower. 

Between two of St. Michael’s College's residences — More and Fisher houses — is a passageway that connects Queen’s Park Crescent East and the college quad. The memorials for former students and graduates of St. Michael’s College School, as well as the University of St. Michael’s College in the University of Toronto, who died in the two World Wars and the Korean War are inscribed along the wall.

There are 12 arched sandstone panels:

Panel 1 - St. Michael’s College crest with Motto in Greek.

Panel 2 - Greek lyric fragment by Simonides about those who died in the battle of Thermopylae.

Panel 3 - English translation of panel 2.

Panels 4 and 5 - Names from the First World War in alphabetical order; a cross at the top of each arch.

Panels 6 to 11 - Names from the Second World War in alphabetical order; a cross at the top of each arch.

Panel 12 – One name from the Korean War; a cross at the top of the arch.

Many American students attended St. Michael’s College and some of those shown on the memorial served in the American Forces.

In 1891, a group of men gathered in Toronto intent on forming the city's first Highland regiment. The regiment was designated by the Militia Department with the number "48" and the word "Highlanders" and shortly thereafter Lieutenant-Colonel John Irvine Davidson assumed command of the newly constituted 48th Highlanders of Canada.

The Regiment was gazetted on October 16, 1891, and began to drill at Upper Canada College. It first marched out on the 21 April, 1892, to be greeted by crowds of cheering Torontonians. On the Queen's Birthday that year, the Regiment was presented with its first set of colours by His Excellency Lord Stanley of Preston, the Governor General of Canada.

With Captain John Irvine Davidson as the first commanding officer, the 48th Highlanders of Canada first saw active service in the South African War when 17 Highlanders accompanied the First Canadian contingent overseas. Following the death of Lieutenant-Colonel Davidson in April of 1910, the regiment purchased a large burial lot in Mount Pleasant Cemetery.

Late in the afternoon of Thanksgiving Monday, October 28, 1912, the train bringing 700 troops back to the city from a sham battle that had been held that day near Milton, Ontario, crashed into the Detroit Flyer, a passenger train bound for that American city. The impact at Streetsville Junction was minimal, but one of the cars in which many of the 48th Highlanders were travelling was very old and completely demolished. Two highlanders were killed and 30 were injured. In tribute to the deceased soldiers, Privates Mac Murdock and John Bannatyne, a special monument was prepared for the regiment’s lot. Later, inscriptions were added for the regiment’s battle honours, South African War and the First and Second World Wars.

This monument was moved in 1969 to a more prominent location on the main road into the cemetery, a few yards east of Mount Pleasant Road.