Winnipeg's WW I monuments featured in new book

Winnipeg has some of the finest statues and monumentshonouring 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 areamong the most striking statuesin the country, according to Robert Kondorus, the co-author of World War I: AMonumental 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 tothe portion of Ontario's Hwy. 401betweenTrentonand Toronto,travelled by funeral convoys for fallenCanadian Forces personnelfromCFB 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."