Baldwin / Lafontaine Monument - Parliament Hill - Ottawa, Ontario
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Weathervane
N 45° 25.558 W 075° 41.946
18T E 445310 N 5030509
Two female allegorical figures, known as Upper and Lower Canada, are shown as bas-reliefs on opposite side of the Baldwin / Lafontaine monument located on Parliament Hill, in Ottawa, Ontario
Waymark Code: WMYHM0
Location: Ontario, Canada
Date Posted: 06/17/2018
Views: 10
"Female allegorical figures also feature prominently in the monument to Robert Baldwin and Sir Louis Hippolyte Lafontaine on Parliament Hill. The monument, designed by Walter Allward (a renowned sculptor who also designed Canada’s Vimy Ridge memorial in France), takes the form of an arched wall-pedestal, with figures of Baldwin and Lafontaine standing together on its top. On the wall, 1848-1851 the dates of their second “Great Ministry” are carved and a fleur de lis and a British crown are etched.
Two, lounging female nudes are also etched in to the wall, one at Upper and one at Lower Canada. Art historian C. M. Armstrong suggests, “The female nude, when free of narrative situations, is most often constituted frontally and horizontally — as a kind of landscape.” In this moment, Baldwin and Lafontaine, in all of their figurative glory literally stand on the landscape they are presumed to have created— a united Upper and Lower Canada; integrated into this landscape, visible, desirable, and indistinguishable from the landscape itself are Women.
Attending to the nameless in the city and the many women that serve as decoration is integral to understanding how marginalizing the taken-for-granted built environment can be. The Victorian woman was exulted and presumed to be the ‘angel in the house’. It seems that women are also presumed to be the angels in the capital. They are out-of-reach, or in their womanly charms representative of the Nation, Upper and Lower Canada, or any abstract virtue."
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