Photo credit: Tom Arban
On September 30, 2024, the National Day of Truth and Reconciliation, the Spirit Garden opened at Nathan Phillips Square, after 7 years in development. More than 100 residential school survivors became the first to walk in the space alongside Indigenous community members, Mayor Olivia Chow, The Honourable Edith Dumont, Lieutenant Governor of Ontario and Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland.
The Spirit Garden was designed by Gow Hastings Architects and Two Row Architect as a new permanent space to honour residential school survivors and all the children who were lost to their families and communities. It will also honour the diversity of First Nations, Inuit and Métis cultural traditions.
The garden?s design centres around a six-foot-tall limestone Turtle sculpture by Anishinaabe artist Solomon Kin, placed in a reflecting pool. It symbolizes the First Mother, a commonality of creation stories for many Indigenous peoples. As the Turtle climbs over a boulder, it represents the strength and resilience of residential school survivors, a process introduced originally as the ?Restoration of Identity?. The fully accessible site also includes a Two Row Wampum path, a Voyageur canoe, an Inukshuk, A Tree of Peace, a Three Sisters illustration on metal, and a timber-frame Teaching Lodge.
The Spirit Garden is dedicated to Indigenous history and culture?the first public space built in a Canadian capital city to honour those impacted by the Residential Schools p...