Frederick Varley, were in Europe sketching munitions factories and various theatres of operations where Canadians were active. Other artists, C.W. Jefferys among them, recorded the war effort at home in Canada. In 1921, the Beaverbrook-funded war collection was deposited with the National Gallery. Walker also served on both the Canadian and British Commissions on War Records and Trophies, formed in 1918. In the Canadian plan, a gallery for the war pictures and a hall of trophies was to be built on Sussex Drive in Ottawa. Efforts to complete the building in 1922 and 1923 were unsuccessful and the paintings and trophies were loaned out. In 1971, the paintings were transferred from the National Gallery to the Canadian War Museum and now are displayed. Innisfree For weekend retreats, Walker began to purchase land in 1890 at De Grassi Point in Innisfil Township, Simcoe County. "Innisfree," as his wife named it, became the centre of Walker's family life. There, he built "Broadeaves" designed by leading Canadian architect Frank Darling. Darling was the architect of the University of Toronto and designed many buildings associated with Walker such as Convocation Hall and Trinity College at the University of Toronto and the Canadian Bank of Commerce (now Commerce Court North) on King Street West in Toronto. In 1913–14, Walker built "Innisfree Farm" to further his interest in livestock husbandry. Innisfree was left in trust to his descendants as a private land trust. Managed today with the assistance of the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources, Innisfree is designated an Area of Natural and Scientific Interest for its prairie grassland and remnants of an old growth forest ecosystem. Last years Sir Byron Edmund Walker left his imprint on the financial, artistic, and intellectual development of Canada. A wizard of finance, skilled in the intricacies of exchange and international business, he molded a tiny bank into a national institution and was largely responsible for overhauling the Canadian banking system. Simultaneously he established a wide range of cultural icons - the National Gallery of Canada, the collection of "war pictures" forming the nucleus of the Canadian War Museum, the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Royal Ontario Museum, the Champlain Society, the federation of colleges that became the University of Toronto - and many more. An amateur paleontologist, he was also an author of note. He was knighted by King George V, was a Knight of Grace of the Order