The Fighting Newfoundlander was unveiled on September 13, 1922. The statue depicts a life-like scene of a soldier during battle, with one hand holding a rifle and the other cocked and ready to throw a grenade. The statue is a meticulous and detailed piece of work conceived and created by Captain Basil Gotto, a famous sculptor who was commissioned during the war to create a piece of a ‘fighting soldier’.
The statue was posed for by Corporal Thomas Pittman of Fortune Bay, Newfoundland. In 1918, while stationed in Hazley Down Camp, England, Corporal Pittman was asked to pose for Captain Gotto in full military combat gear. He would pose for an hour each day for roughly two months until Gotto was finished. The statue was completed in early 1919 and donated to the Park in September 1922, by Sir Edgar Bowring, expressing both his commitment to the park as well as his love and affection to the citizens of Newfoundland who had suffered tremendous losses during the war. The statue was refurbished in 2007 by local sculptor Luben Boykov.
A second of Gotto's statues, The Caribou Monument, was installed in the park on July 1, 1928.
