Tony Trigiani has a grand vision, and he wants to see it realized for Canada’s 150th anniversary on July 1st, 2017. He wants to remind Canadians, and other visitors to Nova Scotia’s fabled Cabot Trail, of the 114,000 war dead buried overseas.
By day, Tony Trigiani runs a packaging company in Toronto. Much of the rest of the time he is active honouring the past. His father left Italy just four years after the Second World War ended, and he is grateful to his father for making the move. Trigiani’s current life in Canada is a blessing he doesn’t take for granted. In 2009, an encounter in a cemetary in Italy with the headstone of a 17 year-old Canadian soldier who died there, moved Trigiani to begin the process of creating a connecting monument at home.
The project is not without controversy. Some of the people in nearby communities in Cape Breton don’t share the vision. They’re opposed to the site and the scope of the memorial. Tony Trigiani is undeterred. Consultation sessions are scheduled for this spring and he plans to attend.
A unique aspect of this monument will be the Recognition and Gratitude Pavillion. It will be built to honour the women; sisters, wives, aunts and mothers, who carried on, taking care of the farms, the businesses and the supply lines on the homefront in Canada. This is how Tony Trigiani described it:
The particular situation being proposed is a layered and complex messaging and meaning. It is not simply a statue, it’s not simply a building, it is a whole, I think another direction to commemoration. I like to think that under our Legacy and Continuance Advisory Council that we are preparing for the next hundred years…
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