Montreal Cenotaph

This memorial is dedicated to the brave men and women from Montreal. This is the best known cenotaph in Montreal, there is a duplicate in London's Whitehall. The monument was unveiled on November 11, 1924, by the governor-general, Julian Hedworth George, Viscount Byng of Vimy. Until the monument was dedicated, Montreal used a portable war memorial made of plaster that was wheeled out whenever and wherever it was needed. After the Armistice on November 11, 1918, there was a proposal to turn Atwater Avenue between Sherbrooke Street and the Lachine Canal into a War Memorial Boulevard, lined with trees and bronze shields to the memory of Montreal regiments, battalions and batteries. The idea proved too costly, so in 1920 the Montreal Women's Club planted 840 trees along Sherbrooke Street as living memorials to Montreal's war dead. Each elm bore a name plate, but by 1934 most of the original trees had died.