We Will Remember Them:
War Memorials in New Brunswick
War Memorials by Genre
There are three major genres of war memorials across the province: religious, military, and civic. These are not official definitions, but ones that I have made in order to better analyse the memorials in the province.
Religious
Memorials classified as "religious" are religious because of their form (e.g. in the shape of a cross, or a stained glass window), or because the body that erected them is a religious one.
Military
Military memorials are generally put up either by the Canadian Military itself or by a regimental association. They also may have weaponry as a part of the monument.
Civic
Memorials that do not fall into either of the above categories, I have classified as "civic." Some of these memorials were erected by town councils, others by the Imperial Order of the Daughters of the Empire, and others still by the families and friends of the fallen. This is interesting because it shows that people are willing to spend civic money on memorializing those who have fallen in battle.
It is clear from the map above that the vast majority of war memorials in New Brunswick were built by a civic community of some kind. The most common form of "civic" memorial is a cairn. Of interest is the fact that all of the memorials on the Acadian Peninnsula are "civic" memorials. This seems counter intuitive because of the highly concentrated francophone population in that area. Acadians are known for their connection not only to their language, but also to Roman Catholicism. I anticipated that this would be reflected in the genre of memorials that were constructed in that area, but that was not the case.
Military memorials are concentrated in the Oromocto and Miramichi areas. This is difficult to represent spacially because of the density of memorials in those areas. It is, however, not surprising that military memorials would be strongly represented in these areas. CFB Gagetown (near Oromocto) is one of the largest military bases in Canada. There also used to be a base (CFB Chatham) in what is now Miramichi. Many of these memorials were put up by regimental associations and many have weaponry-- usually an aircraft or a tank-- as part of the iconography.
Religious memorials are scattered across the province and are somewhat difficult to classify. I have chosen to classify anything with a cross as inherently religious. Also, many religious memorials have been left out of the mapping because they were either not on the database or because their overt simplicity-- such as an Honour Roll-- makes them difficult to analyse. In some cases, religious communities chose to do more than just build a cross somewhere; in the case of Rothesay Collegiate School (now Rothesay Netherwood School), a whole chapel was built to the memory of the Old Boys who died in the Great War.
Other religious memorials are on church property, erected by church communities, or are a simple cross in a community square.
For some Christian communities, war memorials have a more significant meaning than just the commemoration of war dead. War memorials, by and large, are empty tombs (or cenotaphs) in that they do not have any body buried there. This reminds many Christian communties about Christ's resurrection, which infers that the soldiers did not die because they sacrified their lives for someone else, as Christ did.