OTTAWA — Vimy Ridge is just too far away.

That’s why senator and retired Gen. Romeo Dallaire wants to “repatriate” the site to Canada, but “not even a General,” he joked, is “foolish” enough to try to replicate the entire monument.

Instead, the former lieutenant-general wants to build a towering replica of Vimy’s largest statue, the Figure of Canada (also called Mother Canada or Canada Bereft), on the banks of the Ottawa River in Gatineau.

He’s eyeing 2017 as the end date, not only because it’s Canada’s 150th birthday, it’s also the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Vimy Ridge.

“The aim is ... to make Vimy Ridge more tangible to Canadians, Canadian society and to future generations,” Dallaire said Friday.

The original statue, sculpted by Italian artist Rigamonti from a single 30,000 tonne piece of limestone, is nearly four metres high. Dallaire said he would want to see the statue built “two or three” times the size of the original and in the same white limestone — called Seget — as the Vimy memorial.

“You go towards the river ... and you see this incredible white monument standing amongst the greenery of the parks on the other side. It will stand out,” he said, adding the Ontario side of Ottawa is “saturated” in monuments already.

Veterans Affairs Minister Jean-Pierre Blackburn has said he is “open” to the idea, but his ministry has a limited budget for monuments — $1 million this year and $1 million next year.

“What is the cost? I don’t know. It’s for that I have to be prudent,” Blackburn said Friday. “But I like to see personally General Dallaire trying to remind to us what’s happened in our past and I think it’s good — I like that.”

But Peter Stoffer, the NDP’s veterans affairs critic, said the government should support repatriating the Vimy memorial.

“Many Canadians will never have the opportunity to travel to France to see that beautiful and moving monument and testament to our World War One heroes,” he said.

The Figure of Canada depicts a young woman mourning the dead, and as much as it is about commemorating the past, Dallaire said it’s also about Canada’s future.

“There will still be sacrifices of this nation by its youth and others ... in far off lands to advance things that we take for granted,” he said. “Mother Canada will continue in the future to suffer and remember those loses.”