A Nova Scotia company has been hired to build the Tomb of the Unknown at the Newfoundland National War Memorial in St. John’s, a month after a Bishops Falls company was stripped of its prestigious contract.
However, prices have gone up considerably.
The Department of Transportation and Infrastructure confirmed on Thursday that Heritage Memorials is the new supplier of the grave, which will be placed at the base of the monument between Duckworth Street and Water Street.
The monument is undergoing a $6 million renovation by Bay Roberts’ Can-Am Platforms and Construction ahead of the monument’s 100th anniversary on July 1.
The contract for the new grave is $236,830, more than double the $105,000 contract signed with Ocean Floor Granite owner Mark Brace last spring.
In early December, the agency announced it would part ways with Ocean Floor after the company failed to deliver required sculpture samples, and the agency paid a $30,000 penalty.
Ocean Floor operates a quarry and stone processing plant in Jumpers Brook near Bishops Falls. The plant was not connected to the state’s power grid because thieves stripped the electrical infrastructure to obtain the copper.
Brace had been powering the plant with industrial generators, but another government department (NL Services) ordered it shut down last fall, saying it didn’t meet modern electrical standards.
After learning he had lost the contract, Brace called the decision “an insult to all Newfoundlanders and veterans” and suggested the government would have difficulty finding a replacement supplier to meet the project’s schedule. .
“I don’t believe there will be a grave,” Brace said on Dec. 6.
A spokesperson for the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure said in a statement to CBC News on Thursday that the grave will be completed by July 1.
repatriation of soldiers’ remains
The remains of an unknown Newfoundland soldier who died in World War I will be returned from a battlefield in northern France this spring and placed in a grave in a ceremony on July 1.
The project is a partnership between the federal and provincial governments and the National Command of the Royal Canadian Legion.
The Commonwealth War Graves Commission, which manages the graves and memorial sites of those who died in both world wars in France, does not comment on the cemetery selection process to avoid speculation about the soldiers’ identities.
Hundreds of soldiers from the Royal Newfoundland Regiment were killed in places such as Beaumont Hamel during World War I, many of whom could not be identified and were labeled “God knows what”. buried under a tombstone.
The remains of one of these soldiers will be returned to St. John’s, creating Canada’s second Tomb of the Unknown. Another one of his is at the National War Memorial in Ottawa.
The soldiers will represent all branches of the military, as well as other members who served during the war, such as the Merchant Marines and the Forestry Corps.
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