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Walking around Ottawa, with eyes directed only towards the city\u2019s 70-plus statues and monuments the heroism of Canada, can seem overwhelming. A knight, Sir Galahad, welcomes visitors at the gates of Parliament Hill while countless Fathers of Confederation populate the lawn. Twenty-two figures of gallant bravery charge through the arch of the National War Memorial, while just down Sussex Drive, three more contemporary soldiers stand (and kneel) on the Peacekeepers\u2019 Memorial.<\/p>\n
What is striking about this parade of heroes is its unquestionable masculinity. Sure, there is a woman in the Peacekeepers\u2019 Memorial despite the protests of the Department of National Defense who argued, at the time of its designing, that no woman had performed that role making the design not historically accurate. There are also two female nurses at the end of the charge of soldiers through the National War Memorial. \u00a0However, what is celebrated in Ottawa are male leaders and heroes, though there are a few women celebrated in Ottawa: the Famous Five, Queen Elizabeth, Queen Victoria, and Laura Secord. However, women more commonly are featured as allegorical figures representing a virtue or the nation.<\/p>\n
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On Parliament Hill, Queen Victoria, John A. MacDonald, D\u2019arcy McGee, and Alexander McKenzie are all accompanied by young, toga-adorning female figures at the base of their statues.\u00a0 There are some key characteristics of allegorical figures that differentiate them from Ottawa\u2019s other statuary. \u00a0Allegorical figures are nameless; they are complementary, and they are decidedly on a different plane of engagement than the principle figure being commemorated \u2014 either elevated into the clouds, or decidedly accessible at the base of monuments, the crawl-upon figures for visiting children.<\/p>\n
The statue of John A. MacDonald has been described as emphasizing MacDonald\u2019s quickness of mind and personal warmth. At the base of this monument is an allegorical female figure, intended to emphasize with her firm, young body, the youth of the nation. She is also wearing a wreath of maple leaves, and holds a shield of arms and a flag. Feminist geographer Gillian Rose suggests that using women to represent the \u2018nation\u2019 is common in the Western imagination, as women are similarly understood to represent \u2018the land\u2019 and Nature. Rose writes,<\/p>\n
\u201cThe female figure represents landscape, and landscape a female torso, visually in part through their pose: paintings of Woman and Nature often share the same topography of passivity and stillness. The comparison is also made through the association of both land and Woman with reproduction, fertility, and sexuality, free from the constraints of Culture\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Continuing, Rose argues, \u201cIncorporating all of these associations, both Woman and Nature are vulnerable to the desires of men.”\u00a0 The female angels and allegories in Ottawa have been accused of arousing too much <\/em>desire.\u00a0 In 1911, a Senator complained that MacDonald\u2019s allegorical female figure was distracting the younger male MPs from their work with her \u2018charms.\u2019<\/p>\n
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\u2019s Vimy Ridge memorial in France), takes the form of an arched wall-pedestal, with figures of Baldwin and Lafontaine standing together on its top. \u00a0On the wall, 1848-1851 the dates of their second \u201cGreat Ministry\u201d are carved and a fleur de lis and a British crown are etched.<\/p>\n
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, \u201cThe female nude, when free of narrative situations, is most often constituted frontally and horizontally \u2014 as a kind of landscape.\u201d In this moment, Baldwin and Lafontaine, in all of their figurative glory literally stand on the landscape they are presumed to have created\u2014 a united Upper and Lower Canada; integrated into this landscape, visible, desirable, and indistinguishable from the landscape itself are Women.<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0 The Victorian woman was exulted and presumed to be the \u2018angel in the house\u2019. 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.<\/p>\n