See the stories behind N.L.'s WW I monuments at The Rooms

As Remembrance Day marks a time to remember Canada's fallen soldiers, archivists at Newfoundland and Labrador's provincial museum and archives continue to unearth stories about the monuments erected to do just that in town after town.

The Rooms showcases historical documents about the province's war memorials: letters, sketches of the sculptors, correspondence between the designers and builders, and photographs of unveilings of monuments in towns scattered around the province.

Archivist Beverly Bennett says there were drives in just about every community in the province to commemorate people who were lost in the First World War.

"I don't think there was a community in Newfoundland left untouched after World War One. There was such a huge sacrifice of Newfoundlanders to the war."

The Rooms' collection includes photographs of the unveiling of the National War Memorial in downtown St. John's, with as many as 20,000 people attending. Some were watching from the windows and rooftops just to catch a glimpse.

One album of photographs is from Gerald Whitty, the treasurer and secretary for the Great War Veterans' Association, Bennett says, who took photographs of every unveiling he went to across the province in those days. Some communities, including North Point, erected monuments dedicated to a single person.

"I thought that's really, you know, that's really something," she said. "They didn't just join with another community down the road, they put something in their own community."

The archive also has a stack of people's letters with donations, often of a single dollar, or anything they could afford, to give to the monuments.

"You see the drive in the determination of everybody involved to build the best monument they possibly could, something actually worthy of what we've lost."

The donors include a young boy, Harry White of Twillingate, who was about seven years old. He gave one dollar to the memorial for the father he never knew, because his father was killed at Beaumont Hamel on July 1, 1916.

Putting together the exhibit has made her see the memorials with fresh eyes, says Bennett, and she hopes visitors will gain a new appreciation for the monuments.

"I think that we all look at things a little bit differently after we sort of hear the story behind it."

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