Vimy Ridge Centennial Park
Water Feature

This design for the water feature at Vimy Centennial Memorial Park is intended to support and reflect the story of the oaks and of this place, while giving visitors an opportunity to reflect on the history and weight of this place and its importance. Every element of the design should help tell the story of Vimy Ridge, and so the basin of the water feature is rough, carved in dark limestone, and echoes the pitted and blasted landscape of the battlefield, the freshly torn ground before the grass grew back and smoothed over it. From this base, we imagined reaching in and lifting a piece of the ground, as soil might be dug up by the hands of a gardener, preparing the earth to plant anew. It echoes the action of the soldier who first planted the Vimy acorns on his family’s farm in Canada, and everyone who worked to bring those acorns back to their native soil. To pull up what was torn and destroyed, and plant again, is an act of hope, and of faith in the future. What is planted in the Vimy Centennial Park is not just the oak trees, but faith in a continued peace and friendship between our two nations.

The skyward surface of the water feature is smoothed, and finished with a polished dark Caledonian granite. The water slowly rises from a single spout in the centre of the table-like surface, filling the slight concavity with water, and with barely a ripple pours over the edges and onto the rough basin below. The nearly still water over the dark stone acts as a mirror to the sky, the trees, and the Vimy Memorial. The smoothness of the water and granite surface contrasts with the roughness in the basin from which they appear to have been pulled, as peace was pulled from the strife of battle and the losses of the war. Over time the falling water will smooth the rough-surfaced limestone (a softer stone, chosen to wear) at the base, and so the memorial is intended to age with the decades, much as the real landscape has been somewhat smoothed by its cover of grass.

TEAM MEMBERS

Matthew Peters
Kathryn McCudden
Carl Valdez