Burrard View Park to be scanned for unmarked graves
The newly discovered details about the death of this Indigenous boy — and the potential that other youngsters may have died in the orphanage and two nearby institutions for children — has prompted the Vancouver park board to order an archeological assessment of the land where these buildings once stood.
George Leask , with his older brother Henry and his father Tom . George is believed to be about eight years old in the photo, which would have been taken in the mid-1920s. Photo courtesy of Lisa ChastonThe popular three-hectare park, at Wall and Penticton streets, has a playground, off-leash dog area, field house with community programming, and a daycare.
Leona Brown, who is both Gitxsan and Nisga’a, was asked by the Urban Forest Foundation to be part of the project, partly because she is trained to investigate the history of lands and waterways so Indigenous people can better understand their culture. , written by historian Jeanette Taylor, who had interviewed Lisa Chaston, the granddaughter of George’s sister Mary.Article contentThe family history said George and his four siblings lived a modest life in Heriot Bay on Quadra Island. But their mother, a Haida woman, died of influenza in 1919 and, about five years later, their Scottish father drowned.
“With the tension and all the fraught nature of this — in some ways, I think, a painful but awakening era that we’re in — it’s good to be careful, that’s really what we’re trying to achieve here,” Irwin said. That is the right decision because it is not just sites of residential schools where unmarked graves could be hidden, said Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, director of the UBC Indian residential school history and dialogue centre.
She also found a UBC research paper that analyzed the society’s annual reports and “discharge summaries” for the periods before and after the orphanage was built in 1906. It noted 21 children in the society’s care died between 1901 and 1917, and from 1922 to 1929 records indicated the deaths of another 33 children and nearly 200 who were sent to the hospital for various reasons.Article content
“The building in which the home is located is a fire trap,” the story says. “In this building are housed 150 children, and a recent surprise night visit there by the Vancouver police startled even hardened uniformed men when they found that all these children were left alone at night in this building without any adult guardian.”Article content
Dec. 20, 1934. Juvenile Detention Home on Wall Street. Photo credit: Stuart Thomson/City of Vancouver ArchivesThe separate “babies cottage” continued to operate “for those children who cannot be removed to private homes.” Today, the building, which was restored, is a hospice.Article content After two long nights of public hearings, the board voted 5-2 for the southeast location. It was a heartbreak for Cate Jones, co-chair of the neighbourhood association’s parks committee.Article content
Cate Jones, co-chair of the parks committee for the Burrardview Community Association, in the northwest side of Burrardview Park.The Urban Forest Foundation says it has the support of several Indigenous service organizations, including the Aboriginal Mothers Centre and Pacific Association of First Nations Women, who hope to use the forest as a teaching and gathering space, and as an opportunity for people who live in apartments or basement suites to have access to a garden.
The area the park is in was renamed Hastings Townsite by white settlers and was provincial government land until 1912, when it joined the young city of Vancouver. That is why the orphanage, which was overseen by the province, was located in that then relatively rural spot, Atkin said.
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