A rare gold medal with a Canadian connection, worn by King Edward VIII only a few months before he abdicated the English throne, is on its way to the Canadian War Museum, thanks to a successful bid at auction in London.
The Royal Canadian Legion Vimy Pilgrimage medal, given to the King (later Duke of Windsor) at the July 26, 1936 inauguration of the Vimy Memorial in northern France, was one of 20 lots of jewellery and curios once owned by the Duke and his wife, U.S. divorcée Wallis Simpson and consigned to Sotheby's for sale Tuesday. All 20 lots sold, earning a total of more than $8-million, including buyer's premium.
The museum, bidding from its headquarters in Ottawa, paid almost $20,000 for the medal - four times the high end of its pre-sale estimate of roughly $5,000. All funds for the purchase were provided by the Montreal-based Vimy Foundation, founded in 2005. "It was almost exactly to the penny what we had lined up," said an ebullient Andrew Powell, founder and president emeritus of the foundation. Had more money been needed, the museum would have accessed its national collection fund.
Fought in April 1917, Vimy Ridge was one of the most important (and successful) battles fought during the First World War by the Canadian Corps who suffered 11,000 dead and wounded. While 8,000 medals were cast in bronze for veterans attending the 1936 inauguration, only five replicas were minted in gold. One was given to Edward (who would abdicate in December 1936), another, in 1937, to Canada's then-Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King and the remainder to, respectively, the president of France, the king of Belgium and Walter Allward, Canadian designer of the huge memorial. Mackenzie King's medal is now housed in Library and Archives Canada in Ottawa.
The war museum has 18 bronze Vimy Pilgrimage medals in its collection. But "it was very important to have the one the King was wearing at the time," explained Jim Whitham, the museum's director of collections. "Even in the reports of the time, it was seen as such a sign of respect that the King was wearing this medallion. So it was important to have that link with the member of the Royal family wearing this legion medallion."
Powell, a retired investment banker, was contacted about the medal about four months ago by Michina Ponzone-Pope, a Sotheby's jewellery expert and former Torontonian, who told him it would be up for bidding in London. The battle of Vimy and the memorial as well "is an incredible story," he noted, and he decided about six or seven years ago that it afforded "an opportunity to teach people about Canada." The foundation eventually started a program for high-school students, backed by the Beaverbrook Foundation, in which 16 teens, two from England, two from France, the remainder for Canada, spend a week in England and a week in France. It now has other project on the go.
"In itself, the medal is just a piece of metal," Powell noted. "But, of course, it's the symbolic importance of it ... We're very happy we were successful today and that it wasn't a runaway horse race." It was always the foundation's intention to give the medal to the war museum, he added. Also helping with donations to the Vimy cause was McGill-educated entrepreneur and philanthropist John McCall MacBain, currently a resident of Switzerland.