ANZAC Day Origins

Welcome!

Canon Garland Memorial (formerly known as the “Canon Garland Memorial Society” or “CGMS”) welcomes you. Canon Garland Memorial – ANZAC Day Origins was officially unveiled, dedicated and handed over by CGMS to the People of the City of Brisbane in a ceremony at Brisbane’s Kangaroo Point Cliffs Park, heralding Centenary of ANZAC Day commemorations on 22 April 2016. Check out The Memorial Project page to learn more about our five-year-long journey to that happy day. Follow us on Facebook and...

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A New Day.

Canon Garland Memorial. has picked up the baton from where the Canon Garland Memorial Society Incorporated left at the end of 2018. In these following pages we trust you will discover resources and information about the ongoing legacy of the late Reverend Canon David John Garland OBE, the “Architect of ANZAC Day.” For more up-to-the-minute news, please hit us up on our socials. Thanks for browsing by!

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Anzac Day editorial, 1924

“LEST WE FORGET.” KIPLING’S magic sentence fitly expresses the Australian feeling behind the continued observance of Anzac Day. The public memory is said to be short, and short it is on most matters, but not where the heart is touched so deeply as it is by the story of Gallipoli and all that it stands for. So today, for the eighth year, we are remembering soberly and solemnly, the sacrifices that were made on April Read more…

By The Garland Collection, ago

ADF Chaplains honoured

THE NATIONAL DEFENCE CHAPLAINS’ MEMORIAL GROVE DESIGNED and erected by Brisbane City Council, this serene civic space is the first memorial to honour the gallantry, sacrifice, dedication to duty and commitment of our military Chaplains to the spiritual and material wellbeing of Australian Defence Force personnel — alongside of whom they have humbly served in time of war and in peacekeeping operations, since 1901. Located on a slight ridge in the eastern quarter of Toowong’s Read more…

By Peter Collins, ago

Canon Garland Overpass at last!

A COMMUNITY-BASED campaign to honour the memory of the Queenslander who gave ANZAC Day to the world has culminated in the renaming of a bridge at Toowong. The Queensland Transport and Main Roads Department (DTMR) rebadged the Toowong Cycle and Pedestrian Overpass to “Canon Garland Overpass” a year after an e-Petition was presented to the Queensland State Parliament in 2018. It then took until 3 June 2022, however, for standard DTMR signage to finally be affixed to Read more…

By Peter Collins, ago

Padre Maxwell’s sermon

ANZAC DAY — FOURTEENTH ANNIVERSARY, 1929. St John’s Cathedral, Brisbane, 11am. 1. Cor. XV. 54: “Death is swallowed up in victory.” “Today Australia kneels, and puts aside All lesser cares — all lesser grief and pride; And every heart keeps solemn tryst with thee And with thy tragic graves — Gallipoli.”* [ *AN EXCERPT FROM BRISBANE AUTHOR, EMILY HEMANS BULCOCK’S 1922 POEM, “IN MEMORIAM”. ] Fellow Soldiers, Brother Anzacs.— Once again we are gathered in Read more…

By The Garland Collection, ago
Chaplain Colonel Merrington ministering to First AIF troops on the Gallipoli Peninsula in 1915.

ANZAC Day No.1

Anzac Meeting. Crowded Exhibition Hall. Stirring Deeds Recalled. A Solemn Incident. ANZAC DAY ended, as it had begun, in sober recognition of the heroic deeds performed in Gallipoli at the cost of so many brave lives; deeds which are a lasting inspiration to the men now – or soon to lie – on the battlefront. The meeting in the Exhibition Hall, which brought the first anniversary observance to a close, was an unqualified success, the big Read more…

By The Garland Collection, ago