Malvern Collegiate Institute Cenotaph

Beginning in 1914 and lasting until the fall of 1918, Malvern Collegiate students volunteered to enter the carnage of what would be the greatest and most catastrophic war in this country's history. Malvern students fought in all engagements of the Canadian Corps. A total of 25 Malvern students made the supreme sacrifice.

On May 19, 1922, after much effort and fundraising, a monument was raised by the local community in memory of the Malvern students who died in the First World War. The statue was sculpted by Emanuel Hahn for the Thomson Monument Company of Toronto. Toronto’s own Ned Hanlon modelled for the statue, which depicts a soldier draped in cloth, holding a down turned sword in one hand symbolic of the end of conflict and broken chains in the other, symbolic of freedom. 

When the school’s west-facing, front entrance was renovated in 1987, the cenotaph was moved from its original location on the front lawn and placed on a raised platform as a design feature in front of the library window on the second floor.

At some point after it was moved, vandals broke off the statue's right hand and the sword went missing. The hand was found on the ground and deposited for safekeeping in the school vault. Lengthy exposure to weather caused some deterioration to the monument: hand-carved lead letters were falling off and the support below the base was crumbling. The surface was stained with rust from an exposed iron pin, paint and egg splatter.

A successful fund-raising effort led by the Malvern Red and Black Society enabled the statue to be renovated in October 2011. The Toronto District School Board committed to cover the cost of repairs to the support below the base, while donations from the community and a grant from Veterans Affairs Canada allowed the hiring of a professional conservator to ensure a careful and historically accurate restoration.

Conservator Susan L. Maltby of Maltby & Associates was brought in to begin the work. The statue had a twin in Alvinston, Ontario, which was used as a reference to create a copy of the missing sword. Brett Davis and sculptor Frank Anjo were brought in to replicate it and Neil Sanderson of Sanderson Monument Company assisted with the refitting. The iron pin that originally held the hand was removed – it had been staining the stone for a number of years – and a new one in stainless steel was inserted.

Originally adorned with hand-carved lead letters, the memorial had been restored at some point using cast white metal letters attached with a variety of silicone sealants which smeared onto the stone. Some letters were put on upside down and the original spacing was not respected. A number were now missing or bent. The decision was made to retain all of the cast letters that were securely fastened to the stone. Those in danger of falling off were removed and retained for the archive. Carver Eric Schop drilled holes to receive the new lead replacements, which were carved in place by hand.

The cenotaph was re-dedicated at a ceremony on November 4, 2011. Within 36 hours of the ceremony, vandals climbed the cenotaph, scraping off some of the letters from Cecil Annis' name, and wrapped it in blue tape. On August 23, 2014, more vandals stole the newly replaced sword. 

Additional restoration work and improved security measures were made in 2022, the 100^th anniversary of the memorial’s dedication.

Emanuel Hahn moved to Toronto at the age of seven with his family of artists and musicians from Germany, in 1888. He studied commercial design and model-making at Toronto Technical School and Ontario College of Art and Industrial Design. At 25 years old Hahn began a nearly lifelong contract with Thomson Monument Company of Toronto. Two years later, he also started work as a studio assistant to sculptor Walter Seymour Allward. Part of his duties included assisting on Allward’s significant works such as the South African War Memorial in Toronto.

In 1912 Hahn began an association with the Thomson Monument Company of Toronto. It was there, along with several assistants, he made the many war memorials that are found across Canada: Fernie, British Columbia; Killarney and Russell, Manitoba; Alvinston, Bolton, Cornwall, Hanover, Lindsay,  Malvern, Milton, Petrolia and Port Dalhousie, Ontario; Gaspe, Quebec; Moncton, New Brunswick; Springhill and Westville Nova Scotia; Summerside, Prince Edward Island.

Hahn is probably most famous as the designer of the Bluenose on the back of the Canadian dime and the Caribou on the back of the Canadian quarter. He was a victim of anti-German sentiment in the years following the Great War, when his design for the Winnipeg Cenotaph was rejected in 1925. 

[front/devant]
TO THE MEMORY OF
THOSE FROM THIS SCHOOL
WHO LAID DOWN THEIR LIVES
IN THE GREAT WAR
1914-1918

MALVERN AVENUE
COLLEGIATE INISTITUTE

[right side/côté droit]
CHARLES SIMPSON LENNOX
CHARLES WILLIAM MABBOTT
HARVEY GEORGE MANSFIELD
CHARLES PERCY MAY
ROBERT FOUNTAIN MACLUCKIE
DONOVAN LAURIER SISLEY
ARTHUR JACKSON SMITH SISLEY
HAROLD WILSON SPENCE M.M.
JOSEPH ROLLIT TAYLOR
JOHN ARCHIBALD TREBILCOCK M.C.
ASLEY JOSEPH TREBILCOCK
MURRAY WATSON

[back/arrière]
These at the call of King and Country lost all that was dear to them, endured hardness, faced danger and finally passed out of the sight of men by the path of duty.

[left side/côté gauche]
CECIL PUGH ANNIS
WILLIAM KENNEDY COMMINS M.C. D.S.O.
GORDON PARSONS DAVIDSON
JOHN PATRICK DAVIDSON
GORDON EZRA DUKE
MARTIN JAMES FLOOD
CECIL JOHN FRENCH M.C.
ARTHUR PATRICK GORMAN
WILLIAM ALBERT HEAL
WILLIAM JOHN HIRD
WALTER JAMES HUTCHINSON
WILFRED JOHN JONES
ROY WESLEY KERR