The WWII Memorial Window includes Fragments collected by DR. R.F. Sneyd from churches damaged during the 2nd World War. Ernst Taylor, the artist 1950, has placed most of the historic fragments around the edges of the window to be a realistic part of the pictures in these windows. He has pained six large and bright sunflowers here to give brightness and color and depth, but also to suggest that they are looking up toward the light. The butterflies suggest the matter of air and flight created by these insects. The seven doves suggest the motion of flight and, of course, symbolize peace. The uniformed figures represent “the flight to Glory” of those who have died sacrificially.
Your vantage as you look through this window is presumed to be in a church where the windows have been destroyed. In the five lower section on each side you will observe fragments of glass which come to a point in a Gothic frame. Through the left panel you observe Chichester Cathedral in southern England near which the Canadian Army was stationed between 1939 and 1945. Through the right window there is the outline of the Martinikirk in Groningan Holland where I conducted a Thanksgiving Service for 5th Canadian Armoured Division the Sunday following VE Day. The top two sections of these windows have figure wearing uniforms and surmounting them is the figure of Christ. In the mullion at the top there is a beautiful swirl of glass with a modernistic touch and this centres on a circle representing the source of light.
The children in the bottom two sections are picking up fragments from the floor of the church and are looking up in wonder, trying to realize what it is all about. They represent those who are looking for an explanation and toward the light. At the bottom of the window we have life in the children and then, as we progress upward, destruction, then peace in the doves, triumph in the warriors, and the victorious figure of Christ surmounting the whole. From the material and finite things in the fragments of glass we progress toward the infinite and spiritual. The theme is that all movement is upward to The Great Source of Light.
