Homeless in Vancouver: A child’s garden of remembering

Remembrance Day may be technically over for another year but I certainly couldn’t forget to mention the blazing memorial that I saw on November 13 on the Cambie Street and 12th Avenue corner of Vancouver City Hall.

Planted on the southwest lawn of the city hall grounds was a small field of some few hundred handmade poppies—each one with petals made from clear cellophane-like plastic and painted in brilliant hues from pink to rhodamine to fire engine red. Each had the same bit of black at its centre and each was utterly different from its neighbours.

Every one sprouted a single green leaf marked on one side in black with the first name of the child who had made it.

A brilliant show of empathy that stopped everyone in their tracks

The poppies were accompanied by three small laminated signs for people to read. One said:

“This poppy art installation was made by Grade 5 students at Shaughnessy Elementary School.”

Another:

“This display honours the men and women who sacrificed their lives for the children of today and in the future.”

And a third:

“Please have respect for the students who made the poppies by leaving them in the ground….thank you!”

The little signs were one thing that I saw people stop to read, but the field of poppies were a brilliant and arresting sight, more than capable of speaking for themselves it seemed.

Everyone that I saw come along stopped at least for a moment, if not to bend down and read one of the signs then just to stand silently for a moment and regard the poppies, alone with their own thoughts—as individual as the poppies themselves.