mona parsons life-size
© 2017 nistal prem de boer
nistal prem de boer
bronze sculptor
Unveiling Mona, May 5th, 2017
Mona Parsons, born in Nova Scotia, met Willem Leonardt in New York, where she was a dancer and an actress. They married and moved to Holland, where they were living when Holland was invaded by the Germans in 1940. They got involved in hiding downed Allied airmen and were betrayed. She was condemned to life imprisonment. However, when her jail got bombed, she managed to escape and to walk back to Holland through Nazi Germany. In Holland she was found by a Canadian Regiment, also from Nova Scotia. Her husband did not survive long after the war and she moved back to Wolfville, Nova Scotia, where she married a Canadian officer. In a letter to her parents dated 5th May, 1945, she wrote: ‘The joy is almost too much to bear’… It is this moment, the liberation of Holland, that I am portraying in my sculpture. The story of Mona was retrieved from obscurity by Andria Hill of Wolfville, Nova Scotia. The sculpture has been created to honour Mona and with her all the women that brought great and unknown sacrifices in WW II and all wars.