engagement, and the Canadian government initially decided that each battlefield be treated equally and commemorated with identical monuments. In September 1920, the Canadian government formed the Canadian Battlefields Memorials Commission to discuss the process and conditions for holding a memorial competition for the sites in Europe. The commission held its first meeting on 26 November 1920 and during this meeting decided that the architectural design competition would be open to all Canadian architects, designers, sculptors, and artists. The jury consisted of Charles Herbert Reilly representing the Royal Institute of British Architects, Paul Philippe Cret representing the Société centrale des architectes français and Frank Darling representing the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada. Each jury member was a leader in the architectural field; Reilly was training students in design and development of war memorials, and Cret had been selected by the United States to design national monuments in Europe. Interested parties submitted 160 design drawings, and the jury selected 17 submissions for consideration, commissioning each finalist to produce a plaster maquette of their respective design. The jury recommended in a 10 September 1921 report to the commission that two of the designs be executed. In October 1921, the commission formally selected the submission of Toronto sculptor and designer Walter Seymour Allward as the winner of the competition; the design submitted by Frederick Chapman Clemesha was selected as runner-up. Allward's other commissions included the national memorial commemorating Canada's participation in the South African War (1899–1902). The complexity of Allward's design precluded the possibility of duplicating the design at each site. The approach of selecting one primary memorial ran counter to the recommendation of Canadian Battlefields Memorials Commission architectural advisor Percy Erskine Nobbs, who had consistently expressed his preference for a series of smaller monuments. The consensus went in Allward's favour, his design receiving both public and critical approval. The commission revised its initial plans and decided to build two distinctive memorials—those of Allward and Clemesha—and six smaller identical memorials. At the outset, members of the commission debated where to build Allward's winning design. The jury's assessment was that Allward's submission was best suited to a "low hill rather than to a continuous and lofty bluff or cliff like Vimy Ridge". The commission committee initially recommended placing the monument in Belgium on Hill 62, near the location of the Battle of Mont Sorrel, as the site provided an imposing view. This ran counter to