Tree (lost): Royal Canadian Air Force - WW2 HQ, Tree, 1946
War Memorial
Erection date: /1/1946
Here, in these historic fields, overlooking which the Royal Canadian Air Force had its headquarters during the war of liberation, this Maple Tree, the gift of the Mayor J. Stanley Lewis Esq. and citizens of Ottawa, was planted by Alderman Wilfred E. Mullen JP, Mayor of Holborn, on the seventeenth day of January 1946 as a living symbol of the mutual respect, friendship and affection which in those years, began, grew and flourished between the sons and daughters of the Dominion of Canada and the people of Holborn.
In the film the year on the plaque is slightly obscured and looks more like "1942" but surely the event must have taken place after the end of the war? And Mullen was Mayor from November 1943 - 46 so the event must have happened in 1946.
Site: Royal Canadian Air Force - WW2 HQ (4 memorials)
WC1, Lincoln's Inn Fields, 20 - 28
This is now a 3-part memorial: a building to the north of Lincoln's Inn Fields and, in the public gardens, a small monument and a tree, all three having their own plaque in English and French. In our photograph the building can be seen behind the memorial and the tree (outside the picture) is the other side of the path. The tree, the monument and its short ceremonial path line up, pointing at the door of the building.
The ceremonial planting of the now unmarked 1946 tree was brought to our attention by Benjamin Moogk via Facebook. He sent us two links to British Pathe films on Youtube: film 1, film 2 the first of which gives a close up of the plaque.
Certainly the plaque is gone, but the tree survived - planted between the road and the path and slightly to the east of the building entrance there is a tree with maple-shaped leaves and, with a girth appropriate, as far as we can guess, for 70 years of growth.
