MT. STEWART MEMORIAL.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIX, Issue 67, 16 February 1939, Page 8

MT. STEWART MEMORIAL.

It is to be regretted that the authorities have abandoned the proposal to place a memorial on Mt. Stewart to the pioneers of this country. It was one of three adopted as a centennial recognition of the conspicuous part played by the men and women in the Dominion’s earliest development. The landing of the first colonists at Petone Beach was to be commemorated by a memorial there, and Edward Gibbon Wakefield’s memory honoured by a monument on Mt. Victoria, Wellington. Eor their consummation the province was divided into three wards, Wellington city and the -territory reaching to Levin to be responsible for the Wakefield memorial, the Hutt and the Wairarapa for the Petone Beach plan, and the district from the Manawatu north to the boundaries of the Auckland and Taranaki provinces being entrusted with the Mt. Stewart proposal. Various meetings were held to further this latter scheme, but unfortunately beyond this immediate district practically no interest was evinced in it. The committee which took the matter in hand laboured earnestly for its consummation, but apathy —reflected in the fact that out of -IUO letters sent to various people and bodies only one reply was received —has brought the major scheme to naught. The provincial memorial, it is now stated, is to be the Petone Beach scheme, a hall and bathing pavilion costing £10,060. However worthy this may appear in Petone as a tribute to the pioneers’ memory, from a distance it may easily be regarded as a civic amenity the duty of the municipal authority to provide. It is well, though, to take the wider view failing something of appealing nature to other districts and accept it as the province’s graceful recognition of the pioneers’ services. In the meantime the Mt. Stewart proposal need not be shelved. Before the centennial plans were evolved it was mooted as a tribute to the early colonists of the district, and the money spent by the Manawatu County Council on the site may be regarded as the initial effort towards a district memorial in the future, perhaps one not so elaborate as first proposed. This is something that could be developed and would give immense satisfaction to the descendants of the pioneers of this wide and rich territory.