The figure of a cloaked young woman stands on top and at the centre of the front wall and overlooks the Douai Plains. She has her head bowed, her eyes cast down, and her chin resting in one hand. Below her at ground level is a sarcophagus, bearing a Brodie helmet and a sword, and draped in laurel branches. The saddened figure of "Canada Bereft", also known as "Mother Canada", is a national personification of the young nation of Canada, mourning her dead. The statue, a reference to traditional images of the and presented in a similar style to that of Michelangelo's Pietà, faces eastward looking out to the dawn of the new day. Unlike the other statues on the monument, stonemasons carved "Canada Bereft" from a single 30 tonne block of stone. The statue is the largest single piece in the monument and serves as a focal point. The area in front of the memorial was turned into a grassed space, which Allward referred to as the amphitheatre, that fanned out from the monument's front wall for a distance of while the battle-damaged landscape around the sides and back of the monument were left untouched.