In 1919, the Town Council of Gravenhurst determined there should be a memorial to fallen soldiers of the Great War. The Women’s Institute approached Council in 1923, raised money, hired a Veteran to plan the memorial and a stone mason to build it.
Bert Hawker, a Veteran, designed the two pillars which stood at the entrance sidewalk to the Opera House/Town Hall/Municipal Council Chambers. They were nine feet tall, made of Muskoka pink granite, and fixed with a light atop each so that the names would never be in darkness. Each pillar carried a carved stone plaque with the names of the known fallen, at that time - 16 men. Neil Christenson, a stone mason whose two sons had fought in the Great War and returned, built the two stone pillars. The project was completed in 1923.
In 1970, the pillars were de-constructed, and the stone and plaques were used to create a new memorial wall back from the main sidewalk and stretching between the Opera House and the Carnegie Library with an additional bronze plaque listing the fallen from the Second World War.
In 2000, the Memorial Wall was de-constructed, the plaques were placed in the furnace room at the Legion and a new memorial was created. Additional names were added to the fallen of the Great War. The names added were not men from Gravenhurst, but rather men who had died during treatment for tuberculosis at one of three Sanatoriums in operation during and following the Great War. These men had been buried here - usually because their families were not in Canada, their families could not be found, or their families did not have the money to bring their loved one home. There are now 26 names from the First World War on the memorial.
