The Memorial
"Memorial Unveiled at Osgoode Hall"
By mid-October 1928 the memorial had been completed and
erected in the Great
Library. The unveiling was scheduled for Saturday 10th November at 11 a.m. In addition to judges and members of the legal profession,
the families of those whose names were commemorated on the memorial were
invited.
Plans for the unveiling began rather late. The Secretary tried to engage the Governor General to perform the ceremony but he was asked less than a month before the unveiling was to take place and was otherwise engaged. On October 22nd, Ardagh invited the Lieutenant Governor to perform the ceremony and two days later, he received the good news that he would. Ardagh then telegraphed Treasurer Wallace Nesbitt, who had succeeded Harcourt in 1927, in London England, "War Memorial unveiled tenth November. Do you expect here that date." The next day, Ardagh received the reply, "Sorry not sailing until fourteenth."
Preparations for the unveiling carried on. Ardagh engaged
the services of Trumpeter W.C. Hutchings of the Royal Canadian Dragoons
to blow the Last Post and Long Reveille. The blueprints and seating plan
were examined, chaplains were invited, invitations sent, 
photographs
reproduced and framed, the program printed and a press release drafted.
The press release began "A very handsome and beautiful Memorial, the work
of Miss Frances Loring of Toronto, the well-known sculptress, was Unveiled
on Saturday morning November 10th, 1928. The Memorial is a
large statue representing…" The description of the statue is left blank,
suggesting that whoever drafted the press release had no idea what the
statue was meant to represent. Loring biographers describe the statue
as "a symbolic figure of a youth who had shed the robes of everyday life
to offer himself to the cause of humanity."2 At the base of the memorial is carved part of a line from Rupert Brooke's "War Sonnets":
"These laid the world away."
The unveiling took place as scheduled on November 10th with a large group that included several
dignitaries in attendance. Frances Loring was not among them.3 Several chaplains and the organist and choir of St. James Cathedral led
those present in the prayers and hymns. Lawyer and politician G.R. Geary
read the Honour Roll, the first occasion of what has become an annual
tradition at the Law
Society. Ontario Chief Justice William Mulock delivered an address.
Family members of the deceased took away copies of a photograph of the
memorial. After the service all the flowers were sent to a hospital on
Christie Street.
After the unveiling, Ardagh sent a framed copy of the photograph of the memorial to each County Law Association. That the First World War touched every Ontario community is shown by the letter from lawyer R.I. Moore, who wrote to say that he was pleased to place the photo in the Lindsay Law Association's library: "The Swayze boys were sons of the local Judge. Captain Edward Kylie was also one of Lindsay's brilliant sons. In looking over it I also see the name of Colonel Fred H. Hopkins, whose father, Judge Hopkins, of Cayuga, practised in Lindsay for many years. I also see the name of Walter G. Lumsden, who was killed on the Somme. I did not know he had been at Osgoode Hall... I was with him when he was killed."
2 Sisler, The Girls, 36; Boyanoski, Loring and
Wyle, 35.
3 Boyanoski, Loring and Wyle, 35.
