The mystery of who completed the stone work on the Terrace Cenotaph about 20 years after it was erected has been solved.
The cenotaph was unveiled to the public in front of city hall on Nov. 6, 1966.
It was constructed of indigenous materials: aluminum from Alcan, cedar from the Terrace area and lava from the Nass Valley.
But in the 1980s the cenotaph was raised and placed on top of a stone base. An honour roll plaque was added with names of those who gave their lives during the First and Second World Wars.
No one knew who did the stone work, or precisely when it was done. Not even local legion members.
Helene McRae, who had done “a lot of looking” herself, thinks she found the answer when Jim Faber sent an email to Legion member Peter Crompton and McRae with information he had discovered.
“Looking back I remember a stonemason and block layer Roger Addink; we worked together on some construction jobs,” the email said.
“Roger built fireplaces and he had a helper with him, I traced this man, Mike Van Vught, who is living in Quesnel BC, he confirmed that he worked with Roger Addink doing the rockwork on the Cenotaph in 1984. The stone work was done with local rock from the Copper River.”
The Cenotaph celebrated its 50th year here in 2016 and is one of the memorials on the Heritage BC War Memorial website, which has an interactive map of B.C. that shows the location of communities that submitted war memorial information.
It can be found at heritagebc.ca/war-monuments-and-memorials-map.
