From Wedding Cake to Music Garden

"Sculpture intended for outdoor public sites is costly,” notes John Warkentin in Creating Memory: A Guide to Outdoor Public Sculpture in Toronto. “It takes time and support of many different kinds.” This set of constraints helps explain the remarkable differences in the stock of outdoor public sculpture found in various Canadian cities. Montreal’s rich sculptural heritage, for example, says much about the centuries-long creative tensions between the English and French. Vancouver’s collection may be smaller due to its more recent origins, but in many ways it is as impressive as Montreal’s, especially in the imaginative appropriation of aboriginal themes by West Coast artists.

Toronto’s accumulation of sculpture is so varied and wide-ranging as to be virtually impossible to categorize. This is one reason Warkentin’s meticulous study is so welcome. There is more public sculpture in Toronto than in any other city in Canada—more than 600 works, in...