Mike Barker. Ring of Honour, Quinte West, near CFB Trenton, Ontario

Ring of Honour was a design created in response to a proposal call from the community of Quinte West. The desire of the community was to solicit designs for a memorial wall to recognize Canadians killed during service in Afghanistan. With this design we chose to challenge the notion of a wall being an appropriate element to honour and remember those killed while in war. It seemed to us that a wall memorializes an event and not individuals.

Ring of Honour proposes ‘lanterns’ to pay homage to each person who gave their life. The concept is based on these lanterns formed in a ring set within a clearing of a constructed forest. Within the ring is a mound, which is bisected by two walls. These walls named ‘family walls’ are used to record the memories and thoughts of the family members of the fallen. The resulting slopes on either side of the walls provide a place for visitors to view and reflect on the Ring of Honour and the spirits of those who have been lost. This clearing also allows visitors to view the planes that fly overhead as they leave neighbouring CFB Trenton and perhaps allow those in the planes to look down and see the lanterns. The sound of the planes is a reminder that although we are honouring the dead in this location there is still conflict throughout the world. The lanterns will be lit at night and the design suggests that each year on the anniversary of a soldier’s death, their lantern will be turned off for that day and the week that follows.

Mike Barker. Ring of Honour, Quinte West, near CFB Trenton, Ontario

The addition of a forest pathway and floating loggia provide spaces of reflection and introspection for visitors. As CFB Trenton is the first place that families are reunited with the deceased during repatriation it is hoped these elements will provide a place of comfort on the day they come to welcome home the fallen.

The overall project creates a ‘memorial landscape’ that creates a powerful image of unity through the form of the ring while honouring those who passed as individuals.

www.shiftland.com

twitter.com/shiftland

Fionn Byrne. A Monument to the Extinction of a Species

the war:
The alarming rate of species extinction would not normally be classified as a war, but perhaps this ongoing extreme loss of life should be reconsidered in the context of an organized conflict. We the human species fit the role of aggressor, directly and indirectly engaged in the destruction of habitat and extermination of a significant amount of the world’s biodiversity. Extinction means the death of every individual of an
entire species. A monument is proposed to mark this permanent loss of life. Constructed of units storing DNA samples, the 3.85 metre high object holds 3141 cells, one for each critically endangered species on the planet today. The standardized unit allows the monument to be expanded as our destruction of the biosphere continues. The monument is first assembled in Ecuador where it increases awareness of their specific plight, but can be transported to other nations, arguing the global consequences of the loss of species.

Fionn Byrne. A Monument to the Extinction of a Species 2

Fionn Byrne is a graduate of the Master of Landscape Architecture Program at the University of Toronto (2010), where he also completed his Bachelor of Physical Education and Health in 2006. Born in Lesotho and based in Toronto, Mr.Byrne’s work has been published in Spacing magazine's 5th anniversary issues entitled The Next Generation of City Builders. He is interested in the convergence of technology and ecology; how velocity and information can contribute to biological productivity and success. His graduate thesis work entitled “preemptive ecology: Operation Hello Eden” proposed the use of military armaments (ordnances) to accomplish topographic manipulation and the delivery of biological materials to a remote, future hydroelectric reservoir that would otherwise go unaddressed and have marked reductions in biodiversity and productivity.

Keith Harder. Gravitas

Anson twin-engine airplanes were used to train pilots in the Commonwealth Air Training Program of WWII.  After the war, many of these planes were sold as scrap or parts to local farmers.  Bob Evans of the Nanton Lancaster Society Air Museum has collected twelve skeletons of these abandoned planes for an Anson reconstruction project.  The remains have been assembled by Keith Harder in a land art installation, Gravitas, located along the 2A highway 3km north of Cayley, Alberta. It is on private land and is not open to the public although it is visible from the air.

These artifacts are some of the only palpable remainders of a galvanising moment in the history of western Canada; a time that was fraught with desperation and hope as well as romance and grievous tragedy. This moment produced stories which condense much of the mystery that comprises the human condition. Those stories accrete to these artifacts in complex, if partial, ways.

For the photographic narrative of the making of this work, click here.

Keith Harder is chair of the Department of Fine Arts, Augustana Faculty, University of Alberta in Camrose, Alberta.   http://www.augustana.ca/~hardk/

Paul Kariouk. Cenotaph Forest, Ottawa 1

the war: World War I
the site: Ottawa’s Cenotaph
This proposal takes the position that any and all war memorials since Maya Lin’s “Wall” are inadequate to represent the “facts, acts, and consequences of war”, either in the era that originates them or after the briefest passage of time after the memorial’s completion. Once upon a time… memorials were erected by a homogenous community that collectively was able to grieve for losses that were understood to be communal and to valorize ideals that were believed to be shared values; in our now pluralistic world there is no common “we” and hence no possibility to create enduring and meaningful symbols with which “we” can collectively identify. The Vietnam Memorial was/is a monument to a collective consciousness (regardless of whether one speaks in favour or against that war), but that memorial is also a marker, at least in North America, identifying the end of the possibility of a national consciousness; the “Wall” is a tombstone marking the end of North American nationhood as a single entity (one that was white, Christian, democratic, economically privileged by global standards, etc.) and the marker signifying the rise of multivalent culture national culture.
If a meaningful war memorial is no longer possible, what then to do with all of the prime urban sites already dedicated to such constructions? The answer is to re-signify those spaces: if these spaces once gained meaning via their deep symbolism, they can now be allowed to again play meaningful urban roles by increasing their functional and public capacities. These sites are intended to be, keeping with the original intentions of the memorials that will remain within them, places of quiet contemplation, standing in sharp distinction to the surrounding city.

Paul Kariouk. Cenotaph Forest, Ottawa 2

The case study that is here examined is that of the Cenotaph in Ottawa, which forms the end of the Parliamentary district at the intersection of Wellington Street and Elgin Street. The Cenotaph exists on a hard and open plane of stone, which forms a traffic circle for fast-moving drivers more attentive to jockeying for positions at street lights than to the meaning the Cenotaph was intended to carry (an irony given the tomb of the unknown soldier within).
In this proposal, the site is planted with mature Pines to the greatest possible density. Pines are selected for symbolic reasons in that they signify life, longevity, and immortality, but moreover for practical reasons. The dense covering of these trees provides year-round protection from wind and sun, and the lower portions of the trees are pruned to allow for strolling visitors. Paradoxically, if there is any hope of invigorating the Cenotaph it is by concealing it. Upon approaching the new forest grove that due to the pines’ extreme height can be seen from afar, visitors catch glimpses of the memorial within. In this way for the curious it becomes again a source of contemplation, but for most others, its stone base ultimately provides a welcome node within the city for a chat, a picnic, personal introspection.

Paul deBellet Kariouk received his architectural degree from Columbia University.  He began his own practice in 1998 and in 2001 he moved his office, PdK:A/Kariouk Architecture, from New York City to Ottawa.  Alongside his practice he is a tenured faculty at Carleton University.  The project is a collaboration with Frédéric Carrier, OAQ, FRAIC, National Architect, Public Works and government Services Canada

www.karioukarchitecture.com

Nick Sowers. Sonic Cyclorama at Omaha Beach

A war memorial is a reflection of our current society upon a trauma from which we have emerged.

The memorial is relevant inasmuch as we can live with it even while it jars us, momentarily interrupting our daily lives. The memorial must be vivid without being overbearing, insinuating itself into our everyday experience and leaving its mark there. What we take from this encounter should be manifold and not pre-determined.

The task of every new memorial, then, is to operate not on what it means to reflect, but on how we reflect.

One of the most vivid reflections of war in the 19th century is the Gettysburg Cyclorama, painted by Philippe Philippoteaux in 1883. The painting is an immersive first-person experience achieved through the rendering of infinite detail into a 360 degree canvas. The painting extended into a diorama on the floor, and into lighting effects simulating the sky above. The stillness of the painting was made dynamic by theatrical sound effects. The battle scene comes alive and gives the viewer a tactile simulation of the war experience. This is a memorial as entertainment (and profit).


Nick Sowers. Sonic Cyclorama at Omaha Beach 2

I propose to bring the cyclorama to the 21st century. The scene is not produced through theatrical effects but rather through real-time, everyday sounds. No painted canvas or building is necessary. Via an array of sound collectors, the ambience of ocean surf, jet planes, tour buses arriving, visitors milling about, and the sound of the collectors themselves (mounted on treads in constant advance and retreat from the tides) will be filtered and re-projected as the sounds of D-Day to a centralized position on Omaha beach.

Through a set of filters, which will multiply sounds, overlap sounds, stretch and shorten time, raise and lower pitches, the recorded sounds are re-projected as the sounds of a perpetual D-day invasion that will constantly shift depending on the character of the ocean, the number of people visiting, and the busyness of the skies above.
This projection is not done by loudspeakers, however, but by the precision of LRAD or 'sound cannons' (a technology commercially available and currently in use by the US military) which can pinpoint sound through a narrow arc, thus the sounds will not mix cacophonously. The cyclorama will be well-defined when a crowd of people are listening, but for the first visitor, the sudden burst of gunfire or an explosion on a peaceful beach will be startling.
The first installation would occur at Omaha Beach, Normandy, France. The famous D-Day landing site remains a powerful memorial in itself by the austerity of the windswept beach. However, in the tradition of cycloramas which would travel and be displayed in cities around the world, this sonic cyclorama can be installed on a beach
in Southern California, the Netherlands, Virginia, or India.

The Sonic Cyclorama merges the spectacle and the spectator. The memorial will make us listen more acutely to the world around us and the echoes of war reverberating within.

Nick Sowers is a graduate student in architecture at University of California, Berkeley, currently travelling on a John K Branner Fellowship studying military space around the world.

Stephanie White. 100 Years of the Canadian Navy

On the HMCS Prince Robert:
We were off the coast of Africa. It was a still and calm evening. I was on watch and I heard the sound of bagpipes. I mentioned it to the Jimmy who told the Captain, ‘Garney has heard bagpipes’. The engines were ordered stopped and there was total silence. We waited, sitting silently in the water. Shortly after we heard the U-boat passing beneath us. We waited until it was safe to start up again.
— Garnet Fay

100 years of the Canadian navy:
one pinned into the granite of the Atlantic coast at York Redoubt, one on the Pacific at Beacon Hill. Rocky shoreline interrupted.
1” steel plate sheet 49’ x 20’ bent to a flat arc, 3/4” stainless steel flanges on rocker cradles at the top edge, weighted with Grade 30 chain. The flanges are hit by the wind, the chains clank. But being so heavy, they only work in heavy weather.
What are ships but wind, water, steel, silent seas and a vessel of skilled hands?
What is a memorial but wind, rain, sun, steel, a view and memories? Mustn’t get in the way of the memories, just allow them to return, triggered by the horizon, the cliff of a hull, metal on metal.

Stephanie White is the editor of On Site review.

Karen Keddy. Target. women in war Memorial

Before World War I, war memorials were erected to commemorate great victories while forgetting about those who had died in battle. Since World War I, communities have erected war memorials listing the names of those who sacrificed their lives. We have paid tribute to women who have made heroic and brave sacrifices in wartime, but we have not yet constructed memorials to women who were sexually violated, raped, tortured, and murdered. This is a political strategy 1 utilized in wartime with the intent of destroying the fabric of a culture by violating the women in its community.
I propose a series of decentralized memorials for ALL women who have been victims of violence in ALL wars as this widespread act of misogyny and genocide has occurred for centuries throughout time and space. In wartime, no woman is free from the possibility of being violated in either public or private space.
The memorials that I propose are places for healing and communication to help counter the stigma, the silence, and the shame. They have been loosely designed to maintain both the characteristics of a formal and an informal memorial – affording opportunities for spontaneous memorials to occur. The design is a set of vertical posts that hold messenger drums which are otherwise known as slit gongs. Messenger drums have been used since 6000 BC in Asia, the Americas, Africa, and Oceania for communication but also for rituals and healing. With the capability of being heard up to 5 miles away, the messenger drums have been used to communicate through the forest from one village to another. A complex series of gong languages have been used to send specific messages quickly to distant locations.
The drum is made from a hollowed log and it has a narrow vertical slit cut into it. I have designed a spiral organization for the vertical posts and the individual stools. It can be constructed in both hardscapes in urban spaces and softscapes in public parks. The drum can be left plain or it can be particular to a culture by having stylized indigenous carvings. Connections between the memorials are made by the sounds of the drums made by the visitors to the memorials. Instead of an oculocentric connection between memorials, there is an auditory connection that speaks of connection and strength in community. The horrific nature of the violence that women experience in wartime can render us without words, without voice. The sounds of the slit gong messenger drums can be the voices, haunted voices that call out to one another.
1 Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape (1975) by Susan Brown Miller was the first documentation of the use of rape in war as an element of warfare to subjugate the enemy along with other techniques such as ethnic cleansing.


Karen Keddy. Target. women in war Memorial 2

Karen Keddy currently teaches cultural and social issues courses in both the undergraduate degree program and the graduate Master of Architecture program at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana.  Karen has been the co-ordinator of the College of Architecture and Planning summer high school workshop which serves as an intense two-week workshop for 65 students and is an advisor on several thesis committees including one on the design of a memorial for leukaemia survivors.
Karen Keddy has taught women's studies courses at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a course on Women and the Built Environment at Dalhousie University's Faculty of Architecture.  Among these courses were Feminist Social and Political Theory, Women and War, Women in the Arts, Introduction to Women's Studies from a Humanities perspective.  
In the 1990s, Karen received special mention for her design proposal for the Women's Monument competition in Vancouver BC.  It travelled in an exhibit, Giving Voice: A Monument in Progress, to several galleries in Canada.

PLANT Architect. Dublin Grounds of Remembrance

The Dublin Grounds of Remembrance is the winning scheme in a two-stage competition for a veterans project in Dublin, Ohio, that opened Memorial Day 2009. The one-acre grassy site forms a doughnut around an 1840s cemetery, and leads into a steeply sloped forest ravine. The committee requested a project to recognize veterans and their families that was “not a memorial, but a place for reflection, contemplation, remembrance, honour, introspection and community gathering.” The site has no military significance, and the project was to commemorate veterans in general, not any particular war.
The Grounds of Remembrance demarcate a place of significance circumscribed by the Guide Rail (which registers touch), contains Indian Run Cemetery and is organized into a Walk, Loggia, and Sycamore Grove, together defining the limits of the grounds and choreographing movement through the site on ceremonial days and for everyday visits. The ritual Walk runs from the ceremonial area framed by the Loggia, through the Grove to the Memory Wall in the ravine. An excerpt from Emerson’s Concord Hymn, die-cut through the bronze end wall of the Loggia were originally written for Concord’s centennial celebration of the start of the Revolutionary War: making an ancestral connection between the original fight for independence as a necessity for freedom, and all veterans that have followed. 

PLANT Architect. Dublin Grounds of Remembrance 2

The Memory Wall marks the end of the walk: a bronze tube perforated stone wall designed to receive personal and private messages. The Walk, calibrated to pace movement, focuses on the individual journey of remembrance, the Grove provides for both wandering and large gathering functions, and the Loggia is the place of collective pause which acts as a ceremonial backdrop, panoramic window, and shelter. Each reinforces the physical and mental remembrance that generates personal meaning for the site while physically and metaphorically providing support, shelter, and guidance.

PLANT Architect’s Toronto studio was founded in 1995 by Chris Pommer, Lisa Rapoport and Mary Tremain. Graduates of the University of Waterloo School of Architecture, and having worked together in various architecture firms, the partners came together out of their shared desire to explore the convergence of architecture and landscape architecture.

www.branchplant.com

Jowenne Poon. A Wall in the Head

The Cold War (1945 - 1991) was one that thrived on fear and paranoia and placed
strong political barriers between many nations. The Berlin Wall was a physical manifestation of this circumstance. This is a proposition for a memorial that acknowledges the division of the people in the city and their dying stories where their identities and sense of belonging are rooted.

FRAGMENTED BY POLITICS
The erection of the Wall was an impromptu moment that divided Berlin and its neighbourhoods within a day but made lasting marks on the identities and minds of its citizens. Although the Wall had divorced social groups and regions, its architecture provided orientation and identity; Berliners soon identified their physical and social positions relative to the Wall. When the divide fell on November 9th, 1989, these positions also crumbled: What remained engrained in the city was the psychogeographical sense of belonging that was formed by the existence of the Wall.

FRAGMENTED BY ETHNICITY
Another fragmentation of Berlin can be found in its ethnic population. The emergence of Berlin’s “ethnic-ness” began during the Cold War. This period marked the beginning of a constant in-migration of workers into the city; the Wall caused labour shortages as it acted as a blockade preventing skilled workers from the GDR to infiltrate into the Federal Republic. When the Wall went up in 1961, West Berlin lost 60 000 workers to the GDR.
To address this shortage, the German Bundestag established the Berlin Aid Law that outlined special incentives and tax breaks for foreign workers who moved to West Berlin to work. By 1987, the foreigners made up 12.7 per cent of the city’s population.
Berlin was beginning to grow collective histories from these migrants while the German population became even more fragmented by their infiltration. Animosity from blood-tied local Germans towards the foreigners created social peripheries within the city. Out of these ethnic communities another type of belonging formed in the city. The idea of homeland evolved from the migrants’ common stories. How does one have a sense of place when their sense of belonging is only based on shared stories? This proposal is for a memorial for the divided Berlin and its fragmented population that grew along with it.

Jowenne Poon. A Wall in the Head 2

THE MEMORIAL: THE LIVING ARCHIVE
In the district of Wedding at Bernauerstrasse and Gartenstrasse, the largest exposed, unmoved, and unframed piece of the Berlin Wall exists today. This memorial will be a simple carving of a void along the former border between East and West. It will negotiate and invigorate the former edge condition as a place of opportunity where identities and personal histories can be threaded into a collective memory. The visitors will imbue meaning into the carved void by treating it as a “living archive” that will grow over time and thread together a collective history.
Programmatically, the void organizes identities by holding personal objects brought by its visitors; the walls of the void holds shelves that will collects the past and reveal the present state of memory of the people. By accumulating objects that are purged, donated, and memorialized, the archive will grow and become collectively owned. Its owners, the denizens of the city, choose its objects to either disintegrate, to be displaced, or locked.
* * * * * *
The proposed archive establishes new personal borders that are conditioned by the multiple owners of the objects. As personal objects are accumulated onto its shelves, compartments give them ownership. By the act of creating a public history, The Wall and the former borderline will no longer symbolize the hermetic.
This proposal considers globalization’s effect of dissolving borders, Berlin’s recently established immigration policy, and a neighbourhood’s wish for biographical moments to be evident in its landscape to reveal its loaded history. The permutations of this living archive empower a former traumatic borderline where identities can be collected, reconstructed, and treasured from a War that had them fragmented.

Jowenne (M.Arch Toronto, LEED AP, OAA Intern) is an architectural designer born and raised in Toronto. She studied the memorialized state of Berlin for her Master’s thesis and is interested in related circumstances. She is currently based in Toronto and has previously worked and studied in Berlin, Copenhagen and New York City. She also enjoys exploring as an avid photographer. David Lieberman was the advisor for this project.

contact@jowennepoon.com

Wei Yew. Sir Winston Churchill Memorial Park, CFB Edmonton 2

What: Sir Winston Churchill Memorial Park
Where: Canadian Forces Base at The Garrison – 15km north of Edmonton
About: All wars in which Canadian soldiers lost their lives
Intro: Since 1884 more than 118,000 Canadian soldiers have died in combat. Their
names are inscribed in the Seven Books of Remembrance located in the Memorial
Chamber of Ottawa’s Peace Tower. It is these books which serve as the theme for
the Sir Winston Churchill Memorial in the Park. The volumes include:
• South Africa – Nile Expedition (283 died)
• First World War (66,655)
• Newfoundland (2,363)
• Second World War (44,893)
• Merchant Navy (2,199)
• Korea (516 )
• In the Service of Canada (more than 1600 who have died in military service to
Canada, either at home or abroad, since October 1947, Korean War excluded)

Wei Yew. Sir Winston Churchill Memorial Park, CFB Edmonton 3

Background
The original memorial on the Garrison site was created in honour of aircrew killed in the 1982 crash of Hercules 329. It was inaugurated in April 1985 as the Canadian Forces Base Edmonton Memorial Park. After redevelopment, the park re-opened in September 1993 as Sir Winston Churchill Park, featuring five aircraft displays. The eventual transition of the Base from Air Force to Army resulted in relocation of the aircrafts to the Alberta Aviation Museum in 1997.
Recent expansion of the City of Edmonton towards the Base and improved accessibility to the site present an opportunity to open up the park to visitors from the entire Edmonton region. An integrated view of the Armed Forces requires a park incorporating elements from Army, Navy and Air Force branches, as well as a common central memorial.

Concept
The Park consists of an open-air museum with the Memorial in a quiet setting at its heart. The museum features vehicles and artifacts from the army, navy and air force, set in historical dioramas. A former runway bisecting the site diagonally leads to a C130 Hercules.
The centre of the park is the intersection of two axes, one providing direct access to the headquarters entrance, and the other a new central walkway linking the officers’ mess to a new parking area. It is at this nexus that the Memorial Chamber, open to the elements, guards replicas of the Seven Books of Remembrance. High flanking hedges on one side and interpretive walls on the other create a serene conclave. Seven Arches of Remembrance, to be commissioned to seven Canadian artists, lead to the Chamber. Adjacent stand a field of
poppies and a cenotaph, whose eternal flame is visible from either end of a long avenue of trees. Viewing of the park is facilitated by an ingles bridge and a viewing platform near the fountain, which looks directly into the Chamber.

Credits
Design Concept: Wei Yew, Wei Yew & Co., Edmonton
Architects: Leif-Peter Fuchs, JDA Architects, Halifax • Aaron Bourgoin, Edmonton
Landscape: Doug Carlyle, Carlyle & Associates, Edmonton

www.weiyew.ca

Paul Kariouk. Disappearing Peace, Ottawa

the war: Afghanistan et al.
the site: Ottawa’s Parliament Hill and Peace Tower
Reconsiderations of what constitutes a memorial, or in more general terms a “proper” monument, appear at critical cultural junctures; our era is one such period. The past two decades have seen an unprecedented pace of memorial/monument building. In an era where our memory of world events lasts about as long as the television broadcast that delivers news of these events, paradoxically we are culturally preoccupied with erecting “permanent” keepers and various markers of memory. And though these markers are quickly forgotten after their initial fanfare, at least we feel just a bit less guilty about permitting ourselves to forget the marked catastrophes so quickly knowing that the memorials we build are there doing the memory work for us.

The Latin word for monument, “monere”, means to remember, to warn, to admonish, or to instruct. It is the voice of experience. The problem is that we have come to associate memorials merely with past events and not as warnings or instructions for an improved future. In this sense any memorial or monument must operate alongside an ongoing narrative rather than a myth or tale that exists only in the past. Hence, the state or avoidance of a memorial’s muteness rests with the public and not the monument per se; it is the ability of a memorial to ignite an ongoing debate that builds an environment for genuine freedoms and that makes the memorial a public artefact. It is only political consciousness and not a dormant memorial, regardless how beautiful or how provocative that memorial may be, that has the capacity to counter social crisis; as a corollary then, if awareness of political dynamics is made the rule and not the exception, there will finally be no need for memorials. 

Paul Kariouk. Disappearing Peace, Ottawa 2

This “memory” proposal aims to instigate an ongoing debate regarding the efforts and consequences of “peace missions” such as our current involvement with Afghanistan. The proposal takes no sides; it is only a public documentation of events: each time a Canadian soldier is killed the Prime Minister is to plant one Birch tree on the lawn in front of Parliament’s Peace Tower. As such, the burden of either remembering who and what is being memorialized, and the burden of comprehending lessons to be learned, remains with the public and not the memorial. A cemetery with its rows of identical markers can continue to expand across the land with little noticeable change to the land. Conversely, the increase of Birch trees is evident: the rate at which the Peace Tower is slowly obscured by the planting and maturation of Birches allows the Peace Tower to serve as a barometer of our “Peace Missions”.

The Birch trees symbolize a new start and the cleansing of the past, and as a deciduous tree they seasonally re-enact the process of dormancy (public indifference) and blooming (public engagement). If an era of public, political blooming prevails the hope is that the process of tree-planting stops.

Paul deBellet Kariouk received his architectural degree from Columbia University.  He began his own practice in 1998 and in 2001 he moved his office, PdK:A/Kariouk Architecture, from New York City to Ottawa.  Alongside his practice he is a tenured faculty at Carleton University.  The project is a collaboration with Frédéric Carrier, OAQ, FRAIC, National Architect, Public Works and government Services Canada

www.karioukarchitecture.com

Stanley Britton + Pierre Muanda. Reconciliation in the DRC 2

The psychological need in the Democratic Republic of Congo today is a demonstration of people coming together in forgiveness and sharing rather than sadness for the recent past.  Our suggested location at Kinshasa’s Stad des Martyrs carries special importance as a reconciliation-through-sport theme: the recent African Championship of Football Clubs by the Tout Puissant Mazembe team from Lubumbashi in the DRC southeast!
On the road to the 2010 FIFA World Cup of Soccer this win by the DRC is becoming a big rally for national pride.   An unintended consequence.