It has been almost 50-years since the Queen Elizabeth Way Monument, which included a snarling lion, was removed from guarding the western edge of the highway.

Many residents still talk fondly of the Lion Monument, which was popularly known as the ‘Lucky Lion,’ that stood at the edge of the highway from 1939 to 1974.

There was much pomp and fanfare then as Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, with husband the stuttering King George VI, cut a ribbon to officially open the highway that runs from the Humber Bay area to Niagara Falls.

It was the first time a reigning monarch had visited Canada, and many believe it was to rally the Empire as the war with Nazi Germany loomed.

The stone monument had a column with a crown on the top of the base. On the face of the base section is a profile of the Queen, with the snappin’ lion on front of the base.

At a cost of about $23 million, the monument was designed by architect Willian Lyon Somerville and well-known sculptor Frances Loring was commissioned to create the lion.

Loring started the lion after the entry of Britain and Canada into World War II and it inspired her design of “a snarling, defiant British Lion, eight feet high,” which was carved with limestone trucked in from Queenston.

People loved the monument, except for many motorists who claimed it slowed down traffic around the Humber bend area where it was located.

It was one of the best-known Canadian monuments at the time, and became a landmark for Toronto residents, since it was impossible to miss as they drove by.

“It was one of Toronto’s most famous early monuments,” wrote Etobicoke historian Denise Harris. “So well-known to locals that many simply called it the Monument.”

The Sculptors’ Society of Canada even produced a postcard featuring the lion in 1957, which was described by art critic Pearl McCarthy as “one of the finest pieces of outdoor sculpture in Canada.”

For about 35 years, the Lucky Lion stood on the QEW median, until an expansion of the highway to 12 lanes was announced. The Lucky Lion had to be removed as demolition was a possibility. But an outpouring of public support led to it being moved in 1974 to the east side of the Humber River in Sir Casimir Gzowski Park.

It was reassembled and unveiled in 1975 and part of the history of Toronto was saved.

Today the monument stands in a grassy field that is far removed from the road. It has weathered the years well and remains as a reminder of a bygone age when Canada ‘marched in lockstep with the Empire, and when Toronto was a British city through and through.’