MONDAY: The War Museum

BY MIKE KEENAN

Copyright is held by the author.

In Tribute to Raymond Moriyama

Built from scars, from silent vows,
walls lean — uneasy, off-kilter —
war’s geometry, a fractured world,
tilted by loss and memory.

Concrete bears plywood’s rough grain,
trenches carved in cold stone —
walls raw, unfinished, standing still,
like tombstones speaking in silence.

Outside, poppies bloom each spring,
roots threading through soil and steel,
breathing life through iron and memory —
remembrance that won’t be boxed in glass.

Memorial Hall holds its single stone,
bathed once a year in brittle light,
November’s sun a quiet witness,
touching shadows, naming unknowns —

Lest We Forget in Morse code,
windows blinking soft pleas for peace.
The air tastes of slate and copper,
damp stone whispers of boots and medals,

broken letters folded in time —
each artifact a silent wound,
each display
a reckoning, a prayer.

From sorrow, renewal rises.
Weathered copper from Parliament’s roof,
the museum’s backbone and spine —
to shelter memory’s flame.

Regeneration Hall lifts skyward,
wind whistles through steel ribs,
soft mournful echoes
of battles lost, peace imagined.

Hope stands watch in bronze,
silent on the mezzanine —
while outside, earth rolls in scars,
pitted hills breathing life again,

nature’s slow reclaiming
over graves once forgotten.
At its heart, a deeper story:
a boy in exile, building refuge —

axe and borrowed saw in hand,
from pain, a treehouse sanctuary;
from confinement, a vision —
where sorrow and hope share a roof.

This place is no monument to glory,
but to fracture, memory, renewal —
walls that bend beneath war’s weight,
holding silence,

carrying lessons forward,
from rubble, life, from ruin, design,
from darkest corridors, a space
to remember, reflect, and begin again.

Raymond Moriyama — born to exile,
shaped by silence, building refuge from loss —
his vision lives here, a testament
to endurance and hope.

Raymond Moriyama, one of Canada’s most distinguished architects, was born in Vancouver in 1929. During World War II, he was placed in an internment camp along with 22,000 other Japanese-Canadians.

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