Toronto’s Spirit Garden: a place of history, homage and healing

By Keith Gauntlett, former member of the national council

Spirit Garden canoe Jardin de l’esprit canoë
The Spirit Garden features a stainless-steel sculpture of a voyageur canoe by the Métis artist, Tannis Nielsen. (Michael Swan)

On September 30, Canada’s National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, I had the privilege of being among the hundreds gathered next to Toronto City Hall for the unveiling of the Spirit Garden.

This new monument memorializes First Nations, Inuit and Métis Survivors* of Canada’s residential schools; their families and communities; and those children who never returned from the schools. It is a permanent installation spread over 19,250 square feet of space at the southwest corner of Nathan Phillips Square, Toronto’s most emblematic urban plaza.

The Spirit Garden came about in response to 82nd Call to Action of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, which reads:

“We call upon provincial and territorial governments, in collaboration with Survivors and their organizations, and other parties to the Settlement Agreement, to commission and install a publicly accessible, highly visible, Residential School Monument in each capital city to honour Survivors and all the children who were lost to their families and communities.”

The Spirit Garden spoke to my spirit

The Toronto Council Fire Native Cultural Centre led the Spirit Garden project. Its work of leading the project was supported by the Restorative Relations Working Group (RRWG), which was co-chaired by Andrea Chisholm of Council Fire and, until recently, Rev. Brian McIntosh, a retired United Church minister.

I, a longtime member of Development and Peace ― Caritas Canada (DPCC), had the honour of being the first Roman Catholic member of the RRWG. As a settler descendant, I have participated in the RRWG’s work for the past ten years. I was eventually joined on the RRWG by two other Roman Catholics: Fr. Bert Folio, SJ, and Jack Panozzo, a former DPCC staff member.

Folio, who has served at Wikwemikong and M’Chigeeng on Manitoulin Island, has for the past four years been stationed at Martyr’s Shrine in Midland, Ont., and serves the Indigenous people of Christian Island. After leaving DPCC, Panozzo served for many years as project manager for social justice and advocacy for the Catholic Charities office of the Archdiocese of Toronto.

For my part, I cannot possibly overstate the esteem and respect I have for Council Fire, its staff and all it does. It provides Indigenous leadership in the city in many ways, not the least of which was in leading and shepherding the Spirit Garden project. As a DPCC member, I say this: “It was in my DNA to support Council Fire and the Spirit Garden project.”

A living, teaching monument

Spirit Garden residential schools Jardin de l’esprit pensionnats
The names of the 17 residential schools that operated in Ontario are inscribed on wall in the Spirit Garden. (Michael Doucet)
Spirit Garden John Keeshig Jardin de l'esprit John Keeshig
Anishinaabe knowledge keeper John Keeshig Maya-waasige tells a story in the learning lodge. (Michael Swan)

Going forward, the Spirit Garden will be an important gathering place for teaching, learning, healing, sharing, contemplation, celebration and ceremonies. Shaped by Indigenous peoples, it will serve as a crucible for education and the building of relations with the larger Toronto community.

At the centre is a 10-ton limestone Turtle sculpture designed by Solomon King, an Anishinaabe artist and member of Neyaashiinigmiing First Nation on the Bruce Peninsula. Near the sculpture, the 17 residential schools that once operated in Ontario are identified.

The garden also features a stainless-steel voyageur canoe designed by Métis artist Tannis Nielsen; a five-foot high Inuksuk designed by Inuit artist Henry Kudluk; a Three Sisters garden, in which beans, squash and corn are grown in a traditional agroecological practice; a Three Sisters panel designed by Tuscarora and Seneca Nation artist Raymond Skye; a Two Row Wampum walkway, that commemorates an early attempt at establishing amity between Indigenous and settler peoples; and a reflecting pool.

A core element of the Spirit Garden is a learning lodge, where, according to Anishinaabe knowledge keeper and lodge designer John Keeshig Maya-waasige of Neyaashiinigmiing First Nation “non-Indigenous people can come to get an understanding of the people who were here before their arrival.”

* Following the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s practice and in keeping with the Canadian convention of using the upper case for the word “indigenous,” the word “survivor” is deliberately capitalized in this context as a way of acknowledging the suffering and honouring the courage of those victimized by the residential school system.

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