Winnipeg's WW I monuments featured in new book

Winnipeg has some of the finest statues and monuments honouring Canada's fallen soldiers, says an author of a new book on war memorials from the First World War.

Memorials on Portage Avenue and Main Street, on Provencher Boulevard and at Deer Lodge Hospital are among the most striking statues in the country, according to Robert Kondorus, the co-author of World War I: A Monumental History.

"Some of them [are] really the most beautiful in the country, and Winnipeg's blessed that way," he told CBC News on Tuesday from Ontario.

"Of course, Manitoba had the highest enlistment of any province in proportion to its population."

Many memorials were built with donations, as citizens sought ways to honour the sacrifice of their soldiers, said Kondorus.

"People had no burials, they had no funerals. The government said it couldn't afford to bring the bodies home — there was no Highway of Heroes," he said, referring to the portion of Ontario's Hwy. 401 between Trenton and Toronto, travelled by funeral convoys for fallen Canadian Forces personnel from CFB Trenton.

"You know, their sons and daughters left for the war, they were supposed to be home in two or three months. They never came back again."