Part 1 - That Graced This Site

At Victoria University in Wellington, an unofficial memorial plaque pays tribute to a tree sacrificed to make space for one more car park. While memorials to trees aren't common in this country, memorials of other kinds certainly are. Every town has a war memorial or two, most have historic markers and commemorative plaques, and a few have statues to famous sons and daughters. It seems there's a near universal urge in this country to physically record our memories in stone or bronze or marble. But what do we remember with these monuments and why? Who decides who we commemorate? And can we really freeze history just by building a statue to it?