Founder’s Walk will soon be a place of healing for residential school survivors now that city council has moved to add a commemorative garden to it.
Council voted unanimously Tuesday to add the Healing Garden Project to the next phase of Founder’s Walk, and to add any funds raised by the community for that garden to the project’s budget.
Founder’s Walk is a series of commemorative plaques and signs on Mission Hill and Perron Street meant to promote the city’s history. Council committed $710,000 last year to extend the walk from Mission Hill to the grain elevators.
Last fall, former Nechi Institute CEO Maggie Hodgson and United Church Rev. James Ravenscroft teamed up to propose the creation of a garden in St. Albert that would serve as a reminder of the city’s history with Indian residential schools. St. Albert was once host to two such schools.
He and other community members asked the city to put this garden on Founder’s Walk.
“The idea is to have a tangible sign in the community of our desire to walk together as indigenous people and non-indigenous people,” Ravenscroft said in an interview.
Ravenscroft said initial plans for the garden include a small memorial that speaks to the city’s residential school past, as well as various edible traditional medicinal fruits, such as saskatoons and chokecherries. The garden group was still working with local aboriginal elders to finalize the design.
Founder’s Walk is about showing the history of St. Albert, and we can’t just gloss over the bits we’d rather forget, said Coun. Tim Osborne, who strongly backed the proposed garden in council.
“It’s important to recognize and learn from what happened.”
The garden will be funded out of the current budget for phase two, with community fundraisers covering anything above that budget, said Kelly Jerrot, cultural services director. Location-wise, it would be built in one of two spots across from St. Albert Place along the Sturgeon River east of the Children’s Bridge – an area set to be developed in phase three of Founder’s Walk.
Ravenscroft said he was very pleased with council’s support for the garden and would start fundraising for it as soon as the design was finalized.
Osborne said he hopes that the garden would be finished by next year.
