A Message Forgotten

By Maria Nguyen

Edna Hammens’s grandson was killed just before his 19th birthday. She said he wasn’t involved in any gangs or violent crime of any kind, and wasn’t using drugs. Four years from the day he was killed, she’s still hurting as if it happened yesterday.

“You take my grandson’s life, it didn’t hurt him. I’m the one that’s hurting,” she said in the documentary ‘Building Peace: One Seed at a Time’ made by Regent Park Focus Youth Media Arts Centre.

Hammens belongs to a group of women called ‘The Dreamers’: family members and relatives of children who have died as a result of violence in the neighbourhood. To remember lost ones and to spread a message of anti-violence, the Dreamers envisioned a monument that became today’s Regent Park Peace Garden.

The Peace Garden memorial sits surrounded by a black fence. A tree stands tall near the centre of the garden patch with purple flowers growing around its trunk. Purple is the colour of death in some cultures. It’s sadly appropriate.

Next to it a blue sign reads, “The Regent Park Peace Garden acts as a rememberance for all the lives lost through violence and accidents. It is an expression of hope, goodwill and unity for all.”

Some flowers still bloom, but weeds grow over the flora that was originally planted there. The two-year-old garden needs maintaining but appears unkempt. It actually looked more like a small cemetery. When I found out why the garden was there, I felt bad for having thought that.

Youth violence involving guns is common in poorer neighbourhoods such as Regent Park, Yonge and Finch, Lawrence Heights, etc. A monument such as this one, however simply built and poorly maintained, acts as a collective memory of a community that suffers a continuing tragedy. Yet despite the powerful message that the Dreamers tries to convey through a symbolic monument – stop the violence – gun homicides continue to rise in the city.

Continuing on towards Oak St., I looked back at the park in which the garden sat. The simple monument once built by the hands of the Dreamers and volunteers now sits abandoned amid blocks of townhouses and apartments.

Click to watch the documentary ‘Building Peace: One Seed at a Time’ on Youtube