A Monument’s Work is Never Done: The Watson Monument, Memory, and Forgetting in a Small Canadian City

Abstract

Private Alexander Watson died a few days after being wounded during a decisive battle in the Northwest Rebellions of Canada in 1885. A year later, a monument to his memory was erected in front of city hall in his hometown of St. Catharines in the municipal region of Niagara. Our interest in Watson’s monument is in understanding the role of material culture in the fostering of popular memory. On one hand, the production side of this equation has been well considered. The mnemonic and didactic potential of monuments is used by elites in order to build a consensual understanding of the past and to legitimate claims to authority and privilege. On the other hand, the consumption side of public memory is less well understood. This paper seeks to identify how the people of St. Catharines have engaged the monument commemorating Watson’s service and his death. We use archival research and surveys in order to understand the monument’s relationship to residents of the city.