The Caribou Monument

The Caribou Monument, a gift from Major Howe Green, was unveiled on 1 July 1928 by His Worship the Mayor, Honourable Tasker Cook, in the presence of a large crowd. The ceremony was organized by the Bowring Park Committee.

Major Green served in the First World War with the Royal Newfoundland Regiment. The caribou is not a memorial to their glorious dead, as the monument on King's Beach in St. John’s pays tribute to those who died. The Caribou Monument is an everlasting tribute to the regiment’s esprit de corps and loyal comradeship when its members so gallantly and honorably wore the regimental badge. It is also an expression of the hope of that spirit of comradeship then formed shall remain unto the last.

The caribou (the emblem of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment) is a replica of the original erected at Beaumont-Hamel Newfoundland Memorial and is situated on a ledge. The statue is estimated to weigh approximately 1,700 pounds. It is surrounded by trees, with a brook to the left. The site was selected by landscape architect RBK Cochius, who supervised the monument's installation, and is almost identical to the one at Beaumont-Hamel. The caribou statue was created by Captain Basil Gotto, a famous sculptor who was commissioned during the war to create a piece of a ‘fighting soldier’.

Thomas Nangle, the Regimental Padre, recommended memorials to mark each of the Regiment's main battles: Gallipoli, Beaumont-Hamel, Gueudecourt, Monchy-le-Preux, Masnières and Courtrai. Six caribous stand watch over the battlefields in Europe where so many of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment fell. This was the sixth caribou, first in Canada, installed and stands watch with its defiant gaze forever fixed towards its former foe.

Directly across from The Caribou Monument are the Beaumont Hamel Memorial Plaque Replicas.

[lamp post banner/bannière de lampadaire]
Caribou
Monument

- 1928 -
DONATED BY
MAJOR WILLIAM HOWE GREEN OF
THE ROYAL NEWFOUNDLAND REGIMENT
IN MEMORY OF HIS FALLEN COMRADES

BOWRING
PARK
FOUNDATION