March 22, 2013

Finest Hour 155, Summer 2012

Page 34

Churchill Exhibition Reviews – “Churchill in Ottawa”  March  26th – June  27th

By Allen Packwood

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Mr. Packwood is director of the Churchill Archives Centre in Cambridge, England.

As Finest Hour‘s Canada Number made clear last issue, 30 December 1941 was a defining moment for Winston Churchill and for Canada. His address to the joint houses of the Canadian legislature, only days after Pearl Harbor and the fall of Hong Kong, reasserted and reinvigorated the political and military bonds between Britain and Canada, confirmed the resolve of both nations to fight on, and set out the phased programme that would lead to victory. The event was made famous by the iconic image of the defiant wartime leader taken immediately afterwards by the young photographer Yousuf Karsh.

On March 26th the Canadian Library of Parliament opened a small exhibition to commemorate this great occasion. Six pages of Churchill’s speech notes, on loan from the Churchill Archives Centre in Churchill College, Cambridge, along with contemporary film footage of the occasion, and the Karsh portrait were displayed in the magnificent and recently restored Library building, which was constructed in 1876, two years after Churchill’s birth, and was the only part of the Canadian Parliament to survive the fire of 1916.

Ronald I. Cohen, Churchill bibliographer, longtime FH contributor and co-founder of the Sir Winston Churchill Society of Ottawa, realized his dream of celebrating Churchill on Canada’s Parliament Hill. “I’d been talking for years to Allen Packwood about finding some way to bring something to Canada,” Cohen told the press. “It was the first and only time that Churchill spoke to our Parliament, and that is a significant event. It was especially important because we were in the midst of the world war and Churchill had been an inspiration to the world.

“The six typed pages, with handwritten notes by WSC, are some of the most significant and memorable from the 22-page message,” Cohen said. “They include parts written and delivered in French, as well as Churchill’s infamous comment about the French generals’ speculation that ‘in three weeks England will have her neck wrung like a chicken,’ together with his Ottawa retort: ‘Some Chicken! Some Neck!’ Some of those same pages can be seen stuffed into his jacket pocket in the Karsh photographs.”

Mr. Cohen added that the pages still hold lessons for Canadians today: “The speeches are inspirational, and what Churchill stood for is inspirational. He wrote his own speeches. He was a man of principle and an admirable leader.”

Nepean-Carleton MP Pierre Poilievre told Ottawa’s EMC News that he was proud that Canada was the first place outside the UK to showcase the speech. “So much of what Churchill said and stood for stands true today,” he said. The exhibit ran through June 27th.

The display was made possible by the generosity of The Globe and Mail and Woodbridge Company Limited, with the support of the International Churchill Society of Canada. It was opened by the Hon. Andrew Scheer, Speaker of the House of Commons, and was visited by Mrs. Estrellita Karsh, widow of the photographer. The prominent location, which is part of the parliamentary tour route, ensured that the display was seen by over 100,000 visitors during the three-month period, as well as by Canadian MPs, Senators and their guests.

We are grateful to Dianne Brydon and the team at the Library of Parliament for facilitating the return of Churchill’s words to the scene of their original delivery and triumph.

For a an excellent op-ed article on the exhibit in the Ottawa Citizen, see http://xrl.us/bnbvnc.