The Fighting Newfoundlander, St. John’s, NL - Philatelic Photographs on Waymarking.com

In 1918, sculptor Basil Gotto was serving as a staff-officer for the British military in Winchester, Hampshire, England. While he was there he got the idea of creating an image of a soldier in action “defending rights and heritage” during the First World War. Corporal Thomas Pittman of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment, which was stationed nearby, was chosen to be his model for this endeavor. The resulting statue shows an infantryman in full battle gear about to toss a grenade.

It is said that during the modeling sessions, members of Corporal Pittman’s regiment would stop by the art studio to check on the progress of the statue which they began calling “The Fighting Newfoundlander.” Although it may not have been Gotto’s intention to single out the Newfoundland regiment, the name caught on and the statue has been called “The Fighting Newfoundlander” ever since.

A bronze copy of this statue was purchased by Sir Edgar R. Bowring of the influential Bowring family to be placed in Bowring Park. (No coincidence here as Edgar R. Bowring was instrumental in establishing Bowring Park on land donated to the City of St. John’s by Bowring Brothers Ltd. a few years earlier.) The unveiling ceremony took place on 13-September, 1922 when the statue was officially accepted on behalf of the city of St. John’s by Mayor Tasker Cook.

Basil Gotto also designed and sculpted the Newfoundland Memorial located in Beaumont Hamel, France. The central element of this memorial is a statue of a woodland caribou perched atop a rock. Four additional caribou memorials were set up at locations in northern France and Belgium where the Royal Newfoundland Regiment played a significant role during the Great War. A sixth caribou statue was erected in Bowring Park, just a few hundred feet from The Fighting Newfoundlander statue. And like The Fighting Newfoundlander, this caribou statue also made it onto a Newfoundland postage stamp.

Corporal Pittman also achieved some notoriety during his lifetime for having posed for the statue. Most recently, the village of Little Bay East put up a sign noting that it’s “the birthplace of Cpl. Thomas Pittman, The Fighting Newfoundlander.”

Stamp Issuing Country: Newfoundland Date of Issue: 09-Jul-1923 Denomination: 3 cents Color: brown Stamp Type: Single Stamp Relevant Web Site: Not listed

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