Air Force helps Canada enjoy stunning Battle of Britain sculpture

By Major Mike Minnich

Seen at the official unveiling of the Battle of Britain terracottas at the Gardiner Museum are (from left) Anne McPherson (museum curator for this display), Paul Day (sculptor), Don Pearsons (Office of Air Force Heritage & History), and Nicholas Armour (Consul-General of Great Britain in Toronto).  Photo: Major Mike Minnich

Currently on display at Toronto’s Gardiner Museum, a massive two-section high-relief clay sculpture forcefully depicts the saga of the 1940 Battle of Britain. The journey of these friezes from France to Canada was accomplished – appropriately enough – aboard a Canadian Forces CC-130 Hercules.

It all started back in February with a phone call from the executive director at the Gardiner Museum in Toronto to Col (Ret’d) Dave Peart, special assistant to Lieutenant-General Steve Lucas, Chief of the Air Staff.

“It turned-out that the original handmade terracotta full-size model -- from which British sculptor Paul Day’s bronze Battle of Britain commemorative sculpture, recently unveiled along the Thames River in London, was cast -- was available for a three-month public display here in Canada,” Don Pearsons, head of the Office of Air Force Heritage and History, explains. “The problem was…how to get it here?”

While the Air Force rarely is able to accommodate such requests, the special nature of this magnificent piece of art – and recalling the significant contribution of more than 100 Canadian fighter pilots to that pivotal 1940 air campaign, in which 20 of them gave their lives – resulted in tasking a CC-130 Hercules that was heading back to Canada with available empty cargo space to carry the unique artistic treasure from Day’s studio near Dijon, France, to 8 Wing Trenton.

A panel from the sculpture shows Battle of Britain crews scrambling to their aircraft. Photo: Major Mike Minnich

“This was a hefty yet delicate project,” Pearsons notes, “since the artwork had to be packaged in 18 separate crates for shipping – one for each panel. When reassembled, the sculpture as displayed consists of two eight-metre-long ‘friezes’, or bands of high-relief figures.”

The clay (terracotta) sculpture was the ‘original’ from which a silicon mould was prepared, and from that the ultimate bronze final artwork was produced. The Battle of Britain monument, set along London’s Victoria Embankment, was unveiled by His Royal Highness Prince Charles in September 2005. In addition to Paul Day’s massive bronze sculpture, mounted chest-high atop a granite base, the two-part wedge-shaped memorial also contains bronze panels listing the names of all Allied airmen who flew in the battle, which officially lasted from July 10 to October 31, 1940.

“Such terracottas have become collectable pieces of art in their own right,” Paul Day, who worked on the model for two years straight, explains, “because they are the pieces that I actually sculpted by hand, and they also inevitably contain more detail than can be transmitted in the casting process to the bronze final product.”

The exhibition at the Gardiner Museum finishes on 15 January 2007, and the Air Force has committed to returning the Battle of Britain terracottas to Day’s studio as soon as feasible thereafter.

For more information on how to visit the display, check the museum’s website at www.gardinermuseum.com, or phone 416-586-8080.

Serving and retired members of the Canadian Forces are entitled to free admission to the Gardiner Museum during the run of the Paul Day exhibition, upon presentation of appropriate ID cards at the front desk.

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