Following the First World War, the Union Jack Chapter of the Imperial Order of the Daughters of the Empire planned a Memorial Park in Mimico to honour those who had served and those who had lost their lives in the war. In 1921, the voters of Mimico approved expenditures to add to the funds raised by the Union Jack Chapter to purchase land for the park and around the same time, plaques listing the names of those who had served and those that had died were placed in the park.
The war memorial construction began in 1930 at a park on Lake Shore Road. On October 12, 1930, more than 5,000 people attended the memorial's unveiling by Mrs. W.H. Riddleworth, mother of the first Mimico soldier to fall in the Great War. Reverend William Fingland, himself a Veteran, stepped forward and slowly read the names of those who had left Mimico to serve their country, and who never returned.
Discussions to move the plaques to the memorial site created controversy and the plaques remained in Mimico Memorial Park. After 1967, when the Town of Mimico amalgamated with the Borough of Etobicoke, the plaques were moved to the cenotaph in the present day Vimy Ridge Parkette.
