In February 1919, the Battle Exploits Memorials Committee, a Special Committee of the House of Commons, was formed in the
United Kingdom with the mandate of identifying the principal battle sites and allocating sites to appropriate countries. The Canadian representative to the committee,
Brigadier General Garnet Hughes, applied for eight memorial sites based upon the recommendation of a collection of Canadian military officers, presided over by
Canadian Corps commander
Lieutenant General Arthur Currie. The committee recommended that memorials be erected at "
Vimy,
Bourlon Wood,
Le Quesnel,
Dury and
Courcelette in France and
St. Julien,
Hill 62 (Sanctuary Wood), and
Passchendaele in Belgium." The Battle Exploits Memorials Committee also recommended that Canada hold an
architectural design competition, open to all Canadian architects, designers, sculptors and other artists, to determine the design or designs to be adopted. The commission held its first meeting on 26 November 1920 and during this meeting reaffirmed the principle of a design competition open to all Canadian architects, designers, sculptors and artists. In October 1921, the commission selected the submission of
Toronto sculptor and designer
Walter Seymour Allward as the winner of the competition, and that of Frederick Chapman Clemesha as runner-up. The commission revised its initial plans and decided to build two distinctive memorials—that of Allward and Clemesha—and six smaller identical memorials. In the end, the commission selected Vimy Ridge as the preferred site, largely because of its elevation above the plain below. In the interval between the 1st and 2nd session of the
14th Canadian Parliament,
Speaker of the House of Commons of Canada and Canadian Battlefields Memorials Commission committee member
Rodolphe Lemieux went to France to negotiate the acquisition of land on Vimy Ridge. In December 1922, Lemieux concluded an agreement with France in which France granted Canada "freely and for all time" the use of of land on Vimy Ridge, in recognition of Canada's war effort. The only condition placed on the donation was that Canada use the land to erect a monument commemorating Canadian soldiers killed during the First World War and assume the responsibility for the maintenance of the memorial and the surrounding battlefield park. ==Members==