# FIRST WORLD WAR MEMORIAL IN NEED OF REPAIR, AND NOBODY INTERESTED IN DEALING WITH IT



## Danjanou (23 Dec 2003)

This article in today‘s Toronto Star really puts me off of my Christmas cheer.

 http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_PrintFriendly&c=Article 

*Harbord WWI statue is losing the battle
But alumni group hopes to win war

Wants to raise restoration funds
JOHN DEVERELL
STAFF REPORTER*

_The bareheaded World War I soldier in front of Harbord Collegiate Institute is still advancing against the enemy, rifle in hand, but he‘s lost his bayonet. 

The monument by George William Hill, raised 82 years ago at the Toronto high school near Harbord and Bathurst Sts. to honour its Great War fighters, is falling apart. It‘s not clear whether anyone will restore it. 

In Ottawa, the Canadian heritage department says it isn‘t into war monuments, while Veterans Affairs is focused on the large installations at Dieppe, Vimy and 11 other battlefields in Europe. It has no funds to maintain hundreds of small monuments of varying allure across Canada. 

The deficit-ridden Toronto District School Board has told Harbord principal Fran Parkin it won‘t spring for the refit, and she refuses to dip into the teaching or library budget to refurbish the fine old brass casting. 

Instead, Parkin has asked the Harbord Club, an alumni organization, and the Harbord Foundation, a registered charity, to burnish the collegiate‘s military memento, and the alumni just might pull it off. 

The campaign, led by retired pharmacist Murray Rubin (class of 1950 and former owner of Vanguard Drugs), has decided its best hope lies in a $200,000 update to provide for a faithful restoration of the original figure and granite pedestal, and for a protective new honour wall bearing the names of Harbord‘s World War II dead. 

A new wall would help keep skateboarders off the old installation, Rubin reasons, and at the same time offer fresher memories to help him pitch the living: all the post-WWII Harbord grads. 

The original monument of 1921 names 75 fallen heroes, from Fred Adams to Harold Worthington, almost every one a Canadian of Anglo, Scots or Irish heritage. It captured the early character of Harbord and its Annex neighbourhood. 

`We‘ve stayed very proud of that school and of Canada for the opportunities it gave us.‘ 
Former student Murray Rubin 

During World War II, the public high school became predominantly Jewish and turned out a raft of high achievers, who in turn became leaders in many aspects of Canadian life. 

They include lawyers Eddie Goodman and Alan Borovoy to developer Max Goldhar, generic drug king Leslie Dan, central banker Louis Rasminsky, Dr. David Bohnen, entertainers Johnny Wayne and Frank Shuster, newspaper executive Burnett Thall, broadcaster Morley Safer, and politicians Phil Givens, Mel Lastman and Stephen Lewis. 

"We‘ve stayed very proud of that school and of Canada for the opportunities it gave us," said Rubin, 73, as he turns back to the old networks to keep the legend alive. 

It‘s not just a Jewish legend, he said. Early in the campaign, an unsolicited donation of $5,000 arrived from Loblaws. It turns out the founder, Garfield Weston, went to Harbord C.I. 

Hal Jackman, a former Ontario lieutenant-governor, Conservative, monarchist and pal of Eddie Goodman, did not attend Harbord but kicked in $2,000 anyway. 

Rubin‘s partial mailing lists of Harbord alumni and friends have been producing a steady stream of cheques for $50, $100 and more for the Harbord Remembers campaign, all flowing to the Harbord Foundation. To date, $23,000 has been raised. 

The foundation firmly refuses to touch its capital of $200,000 to save the old monument. 
"Legally we could, but it‘s out of the question," Rubin said. The foundation pays out $8,000 every year ($16,000 in the year of the double cohort) in bursaries and scholarships to current students. 

The heritage of academic excellence and ethnic tolerance pioneered at Harbord Collegiate is the most important tradition of all, Rubin said. 
"The bursaries are for the living, the students of today," he said. "If we have to choose, then the students are more sacred than the monument."_

I don‘t know what ticks me off more the fact some punks are using it as a skateboard obstacle or the political buck passing. While it does not surprise me that the politically correct professional granola munchers of the Toronto School Board won‘t touch this issue, I‘m really ticked off by the statement from the person at Heritage Canada who says "it isn‘t into war monuments." As a taxpayer I‘m more than a little curious as to what they are "into" with my tax dollars?


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## Michael Dorosh (23 Dec 2003)

It‘s the alumni‘s monument, only fair that they pay for the upkeep.


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## jrhume (23 Dec 2003)

I agree with Michael.

Here in Fort Collins, a street renovation project required the removal of a veterans‘ memorial honoring the dead of both World Wars and Korea.  The local community raised the needed funds to build a new memorial in a local park.

The old memorial tablets were buried at the new site and new stone monuments erected with inscriptions of all those lost in wars through Desert Storm -- with room for more.  It is a fine monument and the site of Memorial Day and Veterans Day gatherings.

Mobilizing local people to build and maintain such monuments is the only way to go.  If locals can‘t summon the will to honor their veterans then they won‘t support the upkeep for a monument bought by some faceless government entity.  Such people don‘t deserve veterans‘ memorials.

Just one veteran‘s opinion.

Jim

PS: I almost forgot.  My high school alumni raised $25,000 two years ago to pay for a Vietnam War memorial at our school.  We had enough money left over to complete a nice memorial plaque for the local VFW hall.

It can be done.  If no one else takes responsibility, then the veterans themselves will have to do it -- as usual.


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## Danjanou (23 Dec 2003)

Jim 

I‘ll be interested in seeing if the Alumni do anything about it. From the initial info in the post I doubt it though.

As for local civic pride in politically correct downtown Toronto, don‘t count on it. I bet if the Principal and/or school board had their way they‘d tear it down to allow a new skateboard park.


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## dpullen17 (10 Feb 2006)

I do not know if people look back on these articles, but I thought I'd mention that the Harbord Club alumnus did raies the needed $53,000 to restore the WWI memorial mentioned and the unveiling of the restored memorial ocurred on Remebrance Day 2005. See the article in the Globe and Mail dated November 12, 2005.


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## geo (10 Feb 2006)

Good for them & thank you for the servicemen who'se names are engraved on the monument.

Isn't it interesting that it's always an easy out to ask for the government to look after everything - even if it really doesn't have anything to do with them.

The Alumni & the school have a fine monument and it's theirs.

Good going to all

Chimo!


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## Danjanou (11 Feb 2006)

Nice to hear, I'm sorry I never took the time to follow up on this. Funny though it never seemed to make the papers.


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