Joan of Arc statue on Plains gets fix-up

Peter Black, Local Journalism Initiative reporter

peterblack@qctonline.com

Joan of Arc is getting her armour burnished.

The famous statue of the French saint and warrior in the Plains of Abraham garden that bears her name has been barricaded with scaffolding, part of a repair and renovation plan staged over five to 10 years.

A spokesperson for the National Battlefields Commission that maintains the garden said specialists from the Centre de conservation du Québec have been working on the life-size statue and base for two weeks. The scaffolding was to be removed by Sept. 20.

The cost of the makeover is estimated at $30,000.

The statue was a donation from the American sculptor Anna Hyatt Huntington and her husband, Archer M. Huntington, who were enamoured with Quebec City. It commemorates the soldiers who died in the Sept. 13, 1759, Battle of the Plains of Abraham.

The statue is an exact replica of the original one of Joan of Arc on her mount in Manhattan, New York City, erected in 1915. There are three other copies, in Los Angeles; Gloucester, Massachusetts; and Blois, France.

The Quebec City statue was inaugurated in 1938 along with the garden created to surround it.

There is one other statue of a mounted Joan of Arc in the city, located on the grounds of the former Soeurs de Sainte-Jeanne-d’Arc convent in Sillery, now a residential complex.