Moncrieff Williamson, first director of the new Confederation Centre Art Gallery and Museum, in Charlottetown, PEI, negotiated for some years to secure a Mayhew sculpture for this significant space. He was finally successful, and a sculpture was commissioned jointly by the Confederation Centre Art Gallery and Museum, and the Fathers of Confederation Memorial Trust, through a grant from Moosehead Breweries, Saint John, N.B., arranged by Philip Oland, O.C. The huge column was cast in 30 sections, bolted together, and shipped across the continent from Eugene, Oregon, to Charlottetown. It was installed in time for the 100th anniversary of PEI in 1973, marking the province’s entry into Confederation.
Further history:
“Charlottetown, late in 1942, was where my mother and father were last together. My father Alan Mayhew was stationed in PEI, last stop before Europe. Family were not allowed, but my mother went anyway, taking me on the train with her.
Alan Mayhew was a pilot, he flew a Catalina, the big seaplane.
On June 11, 1943, his plane went down in a hurricane off Ceylon.
It was a profound twist of fate that thirty years later, my mother would be commissioned to make a public monument, in that very place where they had said farewell.” – from Anne Mayhew.
In a letter to Crieff Williamson, December 7, 1972, Elza wrote about the column:
“Certainly it has been the most challenging of all my sculptures. The two formal verticals proved very demanding, and would tolerate little deviation. And yet to satisfy me, a sculpture has to refer warmly to human experience.”
Column of the Sea was the subject of a documentary film, Time-Markers: the Making of the Column of the Sea, by Karl Spreitz and Anne Mayhew, 1985.
