0:00

so good afternoon everybody and thank you for joining us today uh for this very special program and i’m

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so very happy to be able to be a part of this event uh collective remembering mike

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mcdonald’s butterfly gardens my name is catherine croston and i’m the executive director and chief curator of

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the archaeological alberta and i would like to begin by acknowledging that we are hosting this event today

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from edmonton and mosquachi waskahekin in 36 territory and region 4 of the

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metis nation of alberta we acknowledge this as the traditional ancestral home of the nahiowak

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kri anishinabe soto misatopi blackfoot nakota sioux dene and metis peoples and

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acknowledge the many indigenous first nations and inuit who make alberta their home today we know that this acknowledgement

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is just one small recognition of the work we need to do to address and reverse the ongoing impacts of

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colonization tonight’s panel is part of a series of discussions about gardens that were

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organizing this summer in association with our exhibition cornelia oberlander genius locai this

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exhibition explores the work of the internationally renowned canadian landscape architect cornelia oberlander who from

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the 1950s until the present day has revealed ways of understanding the human connection to the natural

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environment for today’s panel we’re very happy to have lisa myers and becca taylor participating with us lisa myers

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is an independent curator artist and educator with a keen interest in interdisciplinary collaboration

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based in toronto import severn she is a member of gymnasium beausoleil first nation an

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assistant professor in the faculty of environmental and urban change at york university

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myers is an internationally recognized artist and curator and her research focuses on contemporary indigenous art and curatorial practice

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indigenous food systems and food sovereignty through socially engaged art she creates gatherings that respond

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to place sharing indigenous foods and reflecting on underrepresented histories and collective forms of knowledge exchange

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becca taylor is an artist and curator of cree and metis descent her practice involves investigations of

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indigenous community building through food sovereignty gathering deep listening conversation and making

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notably becca co-curated the fourth iteration of lebanese

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in 2018 co-led the land-based residency common opulence in northern alberta in

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2018 and curated mothering spaces in 2019 at the mitchell art gallery here in

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edmonton becca is also currently the director of the

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contemporary art center in amasukashiwaskihika before i turn things over to our

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distinguished guest speakers just a few notes we’ll be speaking for about 45 minutes following

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which there’ll be some time to answer questions so please and oh you don’t have to answer your

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questions in the chat this time because we’re actually going to have an open forum conversation uh because we’re doing this as a zoom

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meeting so uh please feel free to participate freely in the open conversation of following

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the presentations and i would also like to take this opportunity to acknowledge the pool family foundation

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at the edmonton community foundation who support the pool center of design at the aga our cornelia overlander

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exhibition and the summer garden talk series are presented as part of our pool center of design programming

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and i would also like to thank the canada council for the arts and epcor who provides support for all aga online

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programming through their heart and soul fund i’m now very very pleased to welcome and

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uh ask lisa myers to come to the zoom platform so thank you very much

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okay thank you so much catherine um lisa myers and dignitas pojo lisa mars

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and dignikaz nisaway gamikoi indigo wabashashi dodem and also acknowledge otter clan too

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chimnessing don jaba and port sovereign dinda so i’m lisa myers i’m a martin clan

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from my my community is gymnasting in ontario here post lay first nation and

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um i live well kind of split my time between port 7 and toronto um

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so i’m just happy to be here today and thank you for listening um so i’m i’m um

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i’m really happy to be here this evening well it’s evening here in toronto um and i want to thank michael and

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catherine for uh and the aga for hosting this conversation and i’m also happy to be here with my

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friend becca taylor from ositsiwon and it’s been great to be working on this on these things with you

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so i’m interested in how we can remember together and as a way of understanding artworks especially artworks that no

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longer exist different from objects objects and collections um they take that take a material form

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and that are you know conserved um we found that the gardens by mike mcdonald have had a different kind of

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life and relationship with institutions but and a life on their own as these sort of growing spaces

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um macdonald made these gardens later in his career and i’m going to talk a little more um about the trajectory of his

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practice and how gardens became a part of that work uh and and um this um these things i’ve

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learned as part are part of this research on honest gardens uh that started for me with a project

5:46

out of york university where i work um that’s where i work and it’s a project called finding

5:52

flowers uh with my colleagues sheila cola who studies wild bee pollinators and our associate researcher

5:58

who’s also an artist dana prieto and so we’ve been working on this for a couple years now researching gardens

6:05

across the country and um also we’re able to replant

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um too so we have um so if if we

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if you don’t know i’ll just give a little introductory of mike mike the late mi’kmaq artist mike

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mcdonald he was also had beotuck in european ancestry

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he was a documentarian and a media artist who later in his practice as i mentioned created medicine and

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butterfly garden artworks he was born in sydney australia i’m sydney austria sydney even nova scotia

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he lived for many years in vancouver bc and he was also a two-spirit person he started making

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documentaries in late 70s for anti-nuclear activist groups and by the 80s he dedicated his video

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work to indigenous issues making documentaries for the native brotherhood in british columbia

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so from researching and planting mcdonald’s gardens i’ve come to understand them as spaces of contemplation and places for slowing

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down to be in relation to other living beings and i’ve thought of them also as

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knowledge systems meaning like they hold space for the interconnectedness between humans plants

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soil and insect um mutualisms and it is video and and so as video work

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in his garden artworks they i think of them as this kind of constellation that that asserts this kind of interconnection between

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human and more than human relations and offering this uh that perspective that

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questions large scale research resource extraction projects so we can

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think about his gardens as a kind of restoration however i would say that restoration seems to suggest being

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a little bit too resolved that that that he you know i don’t think he his work totally restores a space you

7:49

know once he he plants these these gardens that have indigenous plants in them but i do think that

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mcdonald’s gardens raise a lot of questions and also he he never it seemed to me from what i’ve

8:00

i’ve read and learned is that he he never would um avoid the tensions that would arise in

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in having you know to to uh to plan plan and plant a garden so

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during the 80s and 90s mcdonald’s something that’s important i think to the foundations of these gardens is that during the 80s and 90s mcdonald’s worked

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with the git sand and whatsoeverton tribal council to document oral histories from elders who were not able to go to court to

8:25

testify in support of the git sana what so attend challenge to the provincial government and the crown for title and jurisdiction

8:31

over their land and what we what we know of now we know this court case as the delgamet

8:38

case which went on for 10 years from late 80s to the 90s

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so through this time working um in git san and with zoeten territory he also made video installation sculptures that

8:50

use the arrangement of video monitors to display you know these really complex compositions of synced videos

8:56

um and and um seven sisters is one of those so i have it up on the screen

9:01

also you might be familiar with electronic totem and secret flowers there’s quite a few of his work works that

9:08

worked in this way um through his work in seven sisters which is from 1989 he brings together

9:14

images of seven sisters mountain range and gitzen territory in the northern interior of what we now know as british columbia and seven

9:20

sisters is a seven monitor video sculpture um and it shows the

9:25

different peaks of the bc mountain range of the same name and then throughout the duration of this these videos change

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um it goes sort of from idyllic idyllic scenic mountain mountainous landscapes

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that are shot from a helicopter and you know with these treaty tops and rock outcrops to aerial shots of similar

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regions with clear-cut logging so mcdonald explains that this work calls for changing methods of research

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resource extraction and um another point is the video is is um like

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i could go into a lot of detail but i’m just going to give you a little reveal the video goes into um it’s accompanied

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by a song sung by getsun hereditary chief mary johnson and as mcdonald explains it’s set as a

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kind of soundtrack to heal the land and and i want to say um there’s a lot more to say about songs and their their

10:14

how they assert bond to land but i will just say that some songs are i mean songs also show um assert a

10:21

jurisdiction over land and have been used in court for uh as evidence for that that jurisdiction

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so this artwork you know kind of holds a lot of these ideas are you know kind of brought me into thinking about a lot of

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these um these uh dynamics i guess so i want to think through mcdonald’s medicine and

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butterfly garden artwork as more than a response to resource extraction but as sites

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to assert energy towards the continuance of plant knowledge and also language so i’m kind of

10:49

approaching it that way in my work and so if we go to the next slide um we can i wanted to use this slide as the

10:57

backdrop for just talking about how i understand maybe like one of the origin stories of

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how mcdonald turned to planting gardens as artworks and it comes from sites of contested

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land land slated for clear cutting so this there’s this interview uh with

11:14

um mcdonald conducted by uh critic gran john grand and mcdonald recounts his

11:20

experiences working with elders on a medicine plant uh project in the git sand community and

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during this project he was taking photos of plants in a valley near kiwanga bc and

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butterflies would often land on plants and flowers he was photographing or shooting with his video camera

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he showed these images to an elder and she explained that excuse me the butterfly would um show

11:42

him the medicine plants he needed to heal and be healthy and from then on mcdonald considered butterflies his teachers and would study

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the plants that he observed from them landing on and the relationship between those those

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the butterflies and the plants and then also the the use of the plant as medicine

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um so this is in part the beginning of his work with medicine plants and butterflies he continued to learn more

12:05

about medicinal plants and to research and even had like this really big garden in vancouver when he lived there with over

12:10

60 varieties of indigenous plants um and so that kind of is sort of the

12:16

origin story it kind of came from those same territories but then the gardens of course he started planting across the country so

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if we go to the next slide you’ll see there’s a map of how mcdonald planted his gardens across the country

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and he would drive as catherine even recounted you know that he to me at an earlier conversation that he would

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drive across the country to tend to these gardens each summer um and in a way i was thinking about

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this you know we have this map that we’ve you know mapped these these points these gardens that we know of um and there’s a wave that these um this

12:46

remapping is um asserts a kind of re-inscription of the land through restoring indigenous

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flora many of them are outside of art galleries where there are like kind of you know

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lawns you know grass cut and so you get this up crop of of indigenous flora

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among this monoculture he he um so he he plants these

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indigenous plants but he also sometimes introduces contradictions or tensions in the form of

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uh like introducing a plant that is not indigenous in into the composition of the garden and seemingly

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it might seem out of place adaptive and adopted these introduce plants from europe or outside of canada

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open up the concept of invasive and also suggest a metaphor for colonization the invasive introduced or misplaced

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insect or plant appears in different ways through mcdonald’s gardens through his work and they’re done by

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design but also because gardens are porous and open to the dispersal of seeds in the wind and carried by animals

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um seeds are key players in the ecology of migration and evidence of the movement that plays out

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in these growing spaces so eventually you know you’ll see if you go to the next slide we have a garden that

13:59

was a garden at the walter phillips gallery that was planted in 1999 so it’s over 20 years old

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and from the hard work of um curator catherine iltallo we’ve learned that

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there are over like 90 species of plants in here and some of them are obviously were not planted by a

14:18

macdonald but that were introduced by that kind of movement of of seeds uh whether it’s wind or or mice

14:25

or birds um it it the the there’s an ongoing kind of life of this space that changes all the time

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so the garden this garden is uh planted it’s part of the holdings of the walter phillips gallery so it’s considered an

14:37

artwork in their holdings it’s also planted between these two buildings uh there’s a cobblestone path um through

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the center if you want to change to the next slide you can see that um and i think of it as this when you first

14:50

look at it it’s it looks very uh un sort of untended somewhat feral uh when we think of the concept of a

14:56

garden although like a manicured garden and then although distinct from a composed ornamental garden this garden takes up

15:03

the identity of what i would call the bush and signifying a kind of remoteness where trees plants and shrubs are mostly

15:09

left to their own inclinations and so over the last 20 years as i said seeds have spread rhizomes have nestled

15:15

between their original planting or beyond their original planting and branches reach far from the original sapping saplings

15:24

in planting the garden uh so here’s the story of like how this garden came to be which was really interesting because

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as a finding flowers project we went there and spent uh some time there and gathered some stories so here’s

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here’s kind of a cool story that came out of this visit to the walter phillips gallery in planting the garden macdonald

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purchased some plants but he also replant he also transplanted plants from around the national park

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so banff the banff art center where walter phillips gallery is is in the banff which is a national park um as

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recounted by one of the preparators assisting him with the garden they would drive around the park in a quick in a pickup truck stopping at

16:00

different places to find and learn about the plants of this of this place transplanting some for his

16:05

butterfly garden as i mentioned before important to his

16:11

work are the tensions between plants that are indigenous to a site including some that are introduced species

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this inclusion was not merely an intervention by mcdonald but a reflection of the reality of plants that had already established

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themselves this leads to a plant story shared with me one early morning by a long-term employee of

16:27

the banff center i i got locked out of like a building i had to get through this building to get to the garden so he like let me into the

16:34

in he let me in the building and then he asked me like what are you up to and then i started talking about mike’s garden and so he shared this

16:39

story so this so he shared with me he reminded me that the planting of a garden in a national park means

16:45

following guidelines and observing restrictions on what plants can be used the park’s experts oversaw and approved

16:52

each plant’s appropriateness to the integrity of the floor in this protected area which is interesting when we see

16:57

from catherine and latallo’s survey of the garden for its care that many introduced plants are

17:02

present and no one can really control this mcdonald had to go through a process of getting approval for the

17:08

plants he had planned to include he presented the park biologists with the plant list and it was approved except for one

17:15

mcdonald asked the official why he did not approve the stinging nettle and the parks rep said that the plant is not

17:22

indigenous to the park he said we don’t have it here and macdonald informed him that the park

17:27

has the red admiral butterfly and therefore has to have the stinging nettle as the butterfly lays its eggs on that plant

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and what i like about this exchange is that macdonald could read the space this park this

17:39

protected area in such detail that his understanding of medicine and butter like it showed how his

17:44

understanding of medicine and butterflies was quite meticulous the story was so important to

17:50

understanding the way that mcdonald worked and how there were institutional challenges and tensions within the garden artworks

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whether in the case where one plant seemed to not belong or whether it was him digging up plants without

18:01

within the national park um and then you know prioritizing the medicine plants and butterflies

18:07

to to his to this space so if we change to the next slide we’ll um i’ll move on to just talking about

18:13

that’s sort of what we’ve learned um some of the things we’ve learned we’ve learned a lot more about some of that we’ve learned just from the

18:18

garden that still exists the mike mcdonald garden at walter phillips and this has taken us into looking at

18:24

some of the work that has happened other places so at the woodland cultural center

18:31

tom hill curated a show called natural inclinations and this was in 2004 and

18:39

part of that show was the medicine butterfly garden and they put together a nice little catalog which

18:45

included this illustration so um this was sort of the first kind of sort of the only

18:51

uh really defined sort of structure or composition of one of his gardens um

18:57

illustrated for us so we uh asked the woodland cultural center we i should say crystal mowry uh from

19:03

kitchener-waterloo art gallery now of the mackenzie art gallery um crystal and i approached the woodland

19:09

cultural center to see if they would want a replanting of that garden and that kitchener waterloo art gallery could

19:14

also replant that could plant that a version of that garden at their gallery so it was this kind of twin planting

19:20

an effort to kind of connect a public gallery to uh um the woodland cultural center which is

19:26

an indigenous uh run lead um uh museum and um

19:31

uh art gallery museum anyway and um so and also because the these both

19:38

these institutions are along the hildemont tract so there’s a kind of like acknowledging of the land that these galleries are on which i

19:44

think is really important um and i think crystal murray’s efforts to reach out and to think through that a

19:50

little bit and by replanting this garden was um was part of that anyway so i’m as i see uh mcdonald’s use of the

19:59

i was thinking about the use of the term garden and how we we associate it often associated with um like

20:06

a kind of a kind of remaking of land to look like something familiar from like say a british perspective or a

20:12

french perspective but i i think of uh mcdonald’s use of the word garden is

20:17

very different a kind of like meaning plants and flowers meaning that you know we’re growing

20:22

plants and flowers but the ecology’s independence with within these growing spaces is really important and i’m approaching these

20:28

gardens as a nishidabe artist curator who’s also learning language and i’m interested in understanding how

20:35

land language and plant knowledge connect so i’m considering that mcdonald’s artwork

20:41

involved planting on sites across this land we know as canada therefore these gardens exist or existed

20:46

on many different traditional lands of many first nations communities surrounded by different plant life and languages

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and each garden is comprised in distinct ways but all gardens incorporate indigenous plants from the region that offer sources of medicinal

20:58

qualities and habitat for butterflies and likely other wild pollinators who have co-evolved with these plants

21:04

his gardens are are part i think of them as part of land remediation project in the replanting of indigenous plants

21:11

on the exterior of museums and art galleries they build soil and they create small

21:17

spots of plant and insect biodiversity but also a kind of remediation of the museum or

21:22

institutional system so one example already mentioned in this like is you know his

21:28

interaction with parks canada and that kind of like in that negotiation there’s some kind of a remediation

21:33

of um of maybe the way the parks canada conducts themselves i’m not sure um but uh for museums having a garden as

21:40

an artwork demands care of the land outside the gallery walls and a deeper acknowledgement by the

21:45

gallery of the land on which it stands on a symbolic level these butterfly medicine gardens re-inscribe the material

21:52

land tensions and pressures that collide in processes of urban development whether they be like industries real

21:58

estate plans and even golf courses like when you’re trying to change something um on land especially municipal

22:04

municipalities there’s lots of lots of red tape so if we go to my final slide i’ll just finish up here

22:12

as we continue so as i continue this project each site comes from uh

22:19

as we continue this project with finding flowers each site comes from the local community so

22:25

whether they are urban indigenous or on reserve um each site garden site we’re working with the local

22:32

uh organizations uh people to figure out how what these gardens will look like when

22:37

we if we do replant more gardens in different communities so as mentioned earlier mcdonald’s medicine

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butterfly gardens artworks are more than a response a reaction to colonial landscapes there are sites to assert

22:48

energy towards the continuance of land and plant knowledge and language they they also stop us to think about

22:54

our relationship to land also uh also to contemplate resources uh approaches um different resource

23:02

extraction approaches they they represent a way of looking at the world that does not separate

23:07

humans and nature and i hope this conversation can be a catalyst for your memories of the mike

23:12

mcdonald garden that was at the edmonton art gallery we’re really interested in if anyone has

23:17

photos if anyone has any anecdotes about the garden the garden that was there they were in i

23:23

i understand it was like a series of barrels that were on a large concrete patio so we’re really

23:29

interested in hearing about that if you have anything please do contact aga

23:35

so i’m thinking if we think of land and water as readable a kind of document without the edges of of a page limiting its breadth rather

23:43

with a range that is fluid and ever-changing living and legible then we can see how one’s understanding of land grows over

23:49

long periods of time and i see that as as you know mcdonald’s

23:54

uh travels across the country every summer and how he got to know those spaces so

23:59

um mr dawiag thank you for listening and over to you whoever’s next

24:08

thank you lisa i think i’m next uh all right am i next are you gonna go

24:13

becca i think you’re next catherine okay i’m next okay so um i was invited by

24:22

lisa and becca to just speak sort of quickly about um the history of the mike mcdonald

24:28

butterfly garden at the old edmonton art gallery space um and i thought i would just maybe

24:34

start by saying you know my relationship with mike uh began in 1995

24:41

i started work as the curator at the walter phillips gallery at the banff center and had the good fortune to work with

24:47

mike on an exhibition that i did very shortly after i arrived there it was an exhibition that i co-curated

24:53

with sarah diamond and dinah guidas and it was titled call of the wild

24:59

and in that exhibition which happened in june of 1995 we exhibited mike’s uh two of mike’s

25:05

video installations but uh interestingly if you look at the timing and the relationship

25:11

of that time in 1995 to the beginnings of mike’s garden’s works

25:16

mike’s first gardens were actually created in 1995 so it’s a kind of interesting time for me

25:22

to have met him and to have begun what became a kind of collaboration over

25:28

a few years on the garden at the edmonton art gallery so i left the walter phillips gallery in

25:35

the fall of 1997. mike and i had already began talking about gardens and the potential for

25:41

gardens as you’ve begun working on them um and when i left banff

25:46

i moved to edmonton to be the curator at the edmonton art gallery and continued my conversations with mike um

25:53

during that time and ultimately this ended up in another exhibition i did with mike at the ehe in

25:59

1999 uh entitled natural order and in that exhibition again

26:04

uh inside the gallery we included video installations and that’s when we actually were

26:10

first able to produce uh the edmonton art gallery garden so uh that called the national order

26:17

exhibition opened in april and ran until june but mike spent about two or three weeks

26:22

in edmonton in may working on the garden but in advance of that uh earlier we had

26:29

kind of created a special relationship with holes greenhouse here in edmonton where they were willing to work with us

26:35

to sponsor the garden in terms of supplying us with plants and soil

26:42

our original intention if anyone knows the old edmonton art gallery space was to turn the front outdoor patio area at the

26:50

front of the building into a big planted kind of raised garden bed

26:56

unfortunately we were not allowed to do that by the city of edmonton because beneath that is the main lrt

27:04

the churchill station lrt station and so the concern was that the weight of the soil and the water

27:10

and all of that would potentially uh jeopardize the infrastructure of the lrt um so instead

27:18

mike developed an idea that we would do a barrel garden so luckily our relationship with holes

27:25

extended to the fact that they then gave us about 50 barrels half barrels which they

27:32

we filled with dirt that they supplied and then they gave mike free rain to uh go through the greenhouse and

27:40

select plants that we would then plant uh in the garden but in addition to that i think as lisa

27:46

was saying mike also brought with him plants that he had uh kind of brought from other gardens uh

27:54

plants that he found out in the wild in alberta and very much wanted to create a

28:01

garden that was filled with indigenous alberta plants

28:06

but also again i think a few transplants kind of made it their way into the edmonton garden

28:11

so in the end we had about 50 barrels and i have a little note from mike

28:17

actually here that says um the garden contains just over a hundred varieties of plants so 50

28:23

barrels with 100 different varieties of plants um and i was going through the files in

28:29

preparation for this talk and you know i’ve got all of mike’s notes on the on the flowers that he picked and the

28:35

plants that he picked and why he picked them for the garden space in edmonton

28:41

and because it was a container garden we were actually relying on a kind of combination of perennials

28:48

and annuals i think many of mike’s permanent gardens like the walter phillips garden

28:53

really has mostly perennials in it but in our case because the perennials wouldn’t uh survive or overwinter in the barrels

29:01

we supplemented with annuals as we so we basically replanted the

29:07

garden every year for three years um and so we’ve got a few memories that were

29:13

provided to us by uh aga staff who were able to work on those gardens back

29:18

uh really from 1999 till 2002 when we uh basically our soil was depleted of

29:25

nutrients by that time and um we our barrels were beginning to

29:30

disintegrate so in the end the garden was temporary it lasted three years um but the nice thing is that in

29:38

disbanding or dismantling the garden we offered the barrels to the public so that the garden kind of became

29:45

dispersed across the city um and one of our employees still as an aga employee to this day has

29:52

five of the barrels in his front yard and he’s going to send us a photo of that so um

29:58

it was uh really fantastic working with mike on the garden and i think one of the as they said one of the stories

30:05

um mike would travel from halifax to vancouver every summer

30:10

and stop with the gardens on the way west and then on the way east uh and so spent

30:17

you know probably several weeks with us every summer working on the garden and stopping in to

30:22

check on the banff garden and i know katherine ilatello is here with us so she has a lot of knowledge

30:28

about the banff garden and i’m hoping that catherine you’ll share with us when we get into the conversation part of this um

30:36

this discussion so um that’s really my history of the edmonton ark rally garden

30:41

and the work that’s been on the screen while i’ve been talking is a quilt that uh is in the aga

30:49

collection that we acquired from mike in 1999 um at the same time as he was doing the

30:54

video works and doing the garden works he also was producing these kind of

30:59

laser uh image uh fat fabric quilts uh with different images of butterflies and

31:06

flowers um and so this is one that’s in the arc alibaba’s collection and

31:12

is behind me in my zoom screen here so i think i’ve got a you know

31:18

lovely file here with notes from mike and um thoughts on the gardens and why he

31:24

chose the different plants that he did what butterflies he hoped would appear in the edmonton garden

31:31

um and so i think that as lisa was saying there’s so much important history here in terms

31:38

of talking about um how these gardens are you know obviously places that might

31:46

try to recuperate or just somehow in our case to recuperate the city in a way and

31:51

to bring um indigenous life in terms of garden in terms of plants

31:58

and animals to um the art galley of alberta or the edmonton art gallery at that time

32:03

so maybe lisa i’ll stop there and turn things over to becca who will talk about um the future of the

32:11

of mike’s gardens in edmonton

32:19

thank you catherine and thank you lisa and catherine for having me to be a part of this conversation um i’m

32:26

becca taylor i’m a cree metis irish artist and curator my family comes from fisher

32:32

river cree nation in manitoba and my metis lineage comes

32:37

from the red river um but i was born and raised here in a mosquito

32:42

and grew up with a lot of the um plains cree folks

32:48

in this area learning a lot of their stories and a lot of my nieces and nephews are

32:55

from this area so i very feel very connected um to this region and also view this as my

33:01

home um yeah so otziwan um

33:07

created um once again thanks to the aga for uh

33:12

filming this really beautiful um garden a video of the garden the other day but uh yeah so we um

33:19

[Music] let’s see one um i guess let’s start with a little bit of

33:25

our history so we formed in uh 2015 um as a collective

33:31

um in kind of response to um the lack of representation of indigenous

33:37

contemporary artists within the city but also um not really having a space to gather

33:42

and have conversations with one another so we formed as a collective and started uh presenting projects by

33:48

indigenous curators and artists in the city and by partnering with different organizations

33:54

so we actually worked with the aga previously for parallel excavations with dwayne

34:00

linklater and tanya lukenlink later and worked with other spaces such as latitude 53 the windspear center

34:08

um some edmonton parks to present programming and around 2018 we kind of really

34:14

realized that we need to activate our own space and really create a space for conversation

34:20

and that is led by indigenous voices for indigenous voices and a really safe place for us to have

34:26

the conversations we were really needing to have so we um opened up uh what’s this one

34:32

contemporary arts center in 2020 right as the pandemic was shutting everything down we were opening our

34:38

doors um so we’ve never really been fully open to the public but we’re very excited to have a space that we were able to

34:44

renovate to fit our needs um and and honor our like indigenous

34:50

mythologies within our practice and one of those elements that we always knew that we wanted to have

34:55

as a part of the center was um an outdoor garden or a space

35:01

for um folks to visit and we weren’t really quite sure what that was going to look like

35:07

um until i ran into lisa actually at the bath center we were both there for different programs and um

35:14

over dinner one night we were um sharing and at least i mentioned this project and it just felt like such a natural fit and

35:21

something that we really wanted to pursue um and continue the conversation with

35:28

so uh we were literally lucky after a year of conversations we were able to really start to see this project come to

35:35

light um the way that where the garden is located is right actually right beside the center there

35:40

was a vacant lot a friend of ours owned and we had everything with this project was really

35:46

like serendipitous the way it kind of like fell into place because right after i had a conversation with lisa i was

35:52

having coffee with my friend sean zee and he was telling me about this new space beside us and and then we entered into the

35:57

conversation of having the garden within there and uh he was very generous to allow

36:02

this space for us to activate um while he was um he wasn’t using it

36:08

so and it’s a space that we are hoping to use over the next few years um so uh

36:14

so yeah it worked out really really well and we kind of um thanks to the research that the aga

36:21

provided and lisa provided with us we were able to start um pulling elements from

36:27

the original garden in edmonton and be able to source out materials and resources here that we could utilize now

36:34

um so thanks to the plant list because we have the original invoices of the plants that were purchased and then the

36:39

lists of plants that were in the garden we were able to start sourcing them out and start designing the space

36:45

from there once again that natural serendipitous thing that kept happening was i was going through the

36:51

hardware store one day and they had all these barrels that were on sale at that time so i was able to pick up uh 28 of them

36:59

and be able to bring them into this space and the hay waddles were designed by tiffany shaw collage

37:06

who is a core member of footsitsy1 and actually created a community garden in the same neighborhood that we are

37:12

currently located in a few years previous so we are able to carry those garden beds forward

37:19

in this design as well

37:24

so because this was a temporary space we knew that we had to um and i’m sorry if you could hear my dog

37:30

whining it’s feeding time and they are very upset that i’m not feeding them right now so i apologize but um

37:36

we knew we needed to create some raised garden beds because we weren’t sure how permanent this was going to be

37:41

we knew eventually that this space would be utilized for something else so when we were really thinking through the design and what we were going to

37:48

bring for we knew we wanted something that we could actually move to another location at a later date if

37:53

we needed to um the barrels and they’re not in yet but the benches were getting designed for the space

37:59

we wanted to make sure that we could easily pick them up and move the the water system was donated to us from the boyle

38:06

street community center and um and was purchased and but when we purchased it we purchased it for the

38:12

community with the the idea and the concept moving forward within this garden as we want to maintain this garden

38:18

within our community of boyle street so even after it can’t exist within this

38:24

space we want to make sure that we can be able to move it into another space and hopefully one day find a permanent

38:29

home within our community i if you could move on to the

38:35

this next the image i don’t know how much longer we have of the video i think it’s just repeating itself thank

38:41

you um so this is the bird’s eye view of the garden

38:47

um so when tiffany and i and our project coordinator

38:53

michelle were in conversation we were really see one references the

38:58

north saskatchewan river here water the river is a huge element in the way we

39:03

we curate and we program and our concept behind how we operate in our governance structure so we really wanted to kind of

39:11

still bring in a lot of um our methodologies our practices so water

39:16

this is also really this design’s also really inspired by um kennefa valley is doing a mural on the side of our building

39:22

and um this kind of mimics some of the things he was thinking about within it but this idea

39:28

of this ripple effect and and the future and moving and the impact that it has so we still

39:36

while thinking through the motion of water and pathways we also wanted to honor um the

39:42

directions the cardinal directions within it and we were really thinking a lot about

39:47

numbers um so i got really stuck on the number 28 and so we had 28 oak barrels um

39:53

available we were thinking a lot about the four directions um also 7 and 13 we were trying to find a

40:00

way within this space as well so tiffany came up with this really beautiful design for the space and uh

40:09

yeah and it’s it’s been really beautiful to um witnesses as you can see some benches will be put in and as well as a

40:14

canopy will be put in so kind of view this year very much as a foundational year um kind of really activate this space

40:21

with opportunity to allow it to grow for years to come we’ve had a lot of um

40:26

really beautiful response for the community they helped us drink in

40:34

so much dirt because there was nothing in this space they were helping us build the beds and put the dirt in and

40:41

are helping us tend to this space over the summer and just spending a lot of time in there

40:46

and and they’ve been asking us a lot lately for vegetables next year so they

40:52

keep on uh so they’re kind of adding their own elements within it and what they would like to see within their community um

40:58

moving forward but they’re really taking a lot of ownership over it which is really nice i guess the last thing i’ll really kind

41:03

of ad is through this research that we were doing with the previous plants and

41:09

everything i also flexed my own um i’m definitely still learning i’m not by any means an

41:16

expert gardener but i was actually using a lot of elements from like the what i was taught from michael come and

41:22

mother through the gardening process and definitely asked my mother for a lot of support during this as we were trying to

41:28

drink through um we didn’t have a lot of documentation of the previous garden so we were trying

41:34

to figure out the placement of the plants and which ones were going to align so i had

41:40

to really use um kind of some expert knowledge in our community and also really thinking through um

41:48

resource sharing through this garden and you know we entered into a conversation with christian christina battle who

41:55

was very generous to bring us some seeds for the space and um and we have some goji berries

42:03

coming to the space as well and kind of thinking through those exchanges that happen within the community i know growing up

42:10

that like our gardens i remember my mother digging out perennials in her gardens to gifted people to start their

42:15

gardens and and that exchange of food that happened at the end of each year and the harvest

42:21

so we really wanted to start thinking through those exchanges as well that happen within that space

42:28

you know the exchanges amongst community the exchanges of knowledges and how we can nurture that so over the

42:33

summer months uh we have uh keona lightfoot who is our community coordinator designing some

42:39

really beautiful programming that will exist within that garden so we have some elder talks and there’s going to be some

42:45

performances in the space and some workshops so it really does it really is a place that’s centered in

42:51

care and people could come together and kind of exchange exchange knowledges and gifts

42:59

as we move forward so we’re just really excited to see the space grow over um the next few years and the kind of

43:06

continuation that will happen as the community takes more ownership over the space thank you

43:17

it’s so nice to see that garden becca because i haven’t really you know i i knew that was happening but this is a really big

43:24

moment for me to to see like the idea that we started discussing um that you’ve taken it and really built

43:31

it and and i guess there was kind of conversation about like whether this was a mic like that it was maybe not a

43:38

replanting it’s not like a mike mcdonald garden but that it definitely has it’s informed by his his work and his

43:45

story the story of his work i guess and and the history of the work in um at the edmonton art gallery with

43:52

the barrels and um yeah so it’s it’s really exciting and it’s like and as you’re talking about

43:58

the the programming and things like that that was sort of the the intention when i first started well the with this project was like i

44:04

thought oh we’ll just plant a bunch of these gardens and then we’ll build programming around it but then you know it’s way more involved to to to

44:12

go somewhere new like where i’m not from and say hey let’s plan something so it’s been a really nice process to do

44:18

that with you and and it feels like the right we did it sort of figured out the right way to do it you know so it’s been

44:23

really good so thank you very much i love i love i love it

44:29

thank you yeah no it’s uh it’s been it’s been just and i think i i knew this

44:36

was going to happen because i mean the way we where we’re located within edmonton like we have quite a transient

44:42

community here um you know like a lot of low-income folks live here a lot of the houseless

44:47

population um really uh surrounds our building every day so it was also a really

44:53

wonderful opportunity for us um especially during covet we were never able to open up our doors but to

45:00

create an outdoor space that is for them to really belong in as well

45:06

and not be isolated outside of you know we’re meeting so many of the community members and community

45:13

organizations around our neighborhood too and i think these spaces these really beautiful outdoor spaces

45:19

um really activate that um i guess that neighborly affectionate

45:25

conversation uh between people and kind of really foster that conversation

45:33

that’s great catherine you worked with mike you know way longer ago than us well i’d

45:40

have never worked with mike i’ve worked with his work but i’m just wondering is it what is it like for you to like hear us talk about

45:45

this and um i know is it i feel like you have a knowing that i’m interested to hear

45:54

what your response to us is in terms of like what we’re taking up here oh

45:59

i know i think that i mean i think mike would be honored by all of this so you know quite honestly i

46:06

think um probably other people on this colony mike as well i think robin you probably knew mike quite well

46:12

as well so um yeah i think you know i spent several weeks every summer with mike and

46:19

then um you know you know at times at banff and whatever so yeah i think he would be like probably

46:26

surprised and honored by it all but robin what do you think

46:31

uh yeah i think that probably both surprised and honored um

46:38

i’m aware that almost a quarter century has passed since i worked with mike on the the exhibition at msvu

46:45

and uh that’s a long time in gardens and uh it’s interesting to hear how the they

46:52

they’ve drifted or adapted over time and and i like uh visa how you’ve put that

46:58

in the context of of uh the nature of gardens and the migration and and their kind of their

47:05

dialogue with the land i mean one thing i am remember thinking about if you’re saying that was about the

47:10

the indigenous gardens and forest forest gardens that have been identified recently in some places in bc

47:16

that were planted hundreds of years ago that are still and in some cases have not been cared

47:23

for the the people who planted them peoples who planted them have not been had the access to

47:28

care for them the way they would have at one time before contact but that those those gardens remain uh active

47:35

ecological systems they maintain many of the plantings that were made 150 or more years ago are still active and those areas have

47:43

higher degrees higher numbers of species diversity than the surrounding

47:48

forests so they speak of the the kind of mindful relationship with the land

47:53

that uh many indigenous peoples have had and that for me it it’s something that inspired me to try to

48:00

achieve something we try to to attain that kind of mindful relationship again and mike is a key figure in

48:07

in that uh bringing that concept to the mind of the canadian art community

48:13

yeah yeah i mean i i it’s interesting to know catherine as well whether you actually would

48:20

did you work with mike on the vamp garden or did you come in after the mike had finished with the garden

48:27

oh you’re muted catherine i’m looking at you because you’re on that side of the screen

48:33

oh now you’re not looking at me but you’re not now yeah yeah yeah no i came in after you came in

48:39

after yeah but i did meet him at obero when he had the butterfly garden on the roof there

48:46

which was another temporary garden and he had a bunch of lots on the roof and some lawn chairs

48:51

and i got to meet him there with barbara todd so oh nice i would love to talk to you

48:58

about that catherine because we’re talking to um borrow a bro about um bringing the like i’m

49:05

putting together a mike mcdonald kind of retrospective or like a big exhibition and sort they really want to

49:14

have the exhibition even an edited version there because because he had his garden there so it’d be great to talk to you about that

49:19

garden sure sure yes um i mean for me i’m just so

49:24

heartened to hear what you guys are doing and when you talk about the ripple effect becca i mean that’s the perfect

49:30

word for it you know the ripple effect of all of his gardens but especially the one at the walter phillips because that was kept

49:36

alive um and so many of the other ones haven’t haven’t either we’re temporary to begin

49:44

with or or have now disappeared so yeah and it was interesting for us because we mike was working on the

49:49

edmonton garden and the banff garden at the same time and so there was different the way he was

49:55

thinking about the different gardens was quite obvious as one being actually planted in the

50:00

earth versus ours which was the barrel garden which was a very different thing so um but i do think that that we

50:07

share plants i think that there are plants from the edmonton garden that are in the banff garden and plants

50:13

from bats that are that were in the edmonton garden i think he kind of moved things back and forth

50:18

yeah and i never i never really was clear on a list that he made a

50:25

definitive list so so lisa part of the trying to identify things was just to try and

50:30

figure out what did he plant you know oh i have i have a definitive list on the edmonton card

50:36

because we have mike made a list and then he also we have the invoice like not the

50:42

invoices but he would go to the greenhouse and they would would check out what he took

50:47

right so we have a full list of what he actually took and planted but having said that the garden evolved

50:53

over the three years that we had it because we some of the perennials survived through the winter a lot of them didn’t

51:00

we would replace like some of the planets we always replaced we always replace the arrow because the arrow

51:06

always grew really well and um was quite attractive and then we as we i said we supplemented

51:14

with different annuals um and mike was clear there’s no trees

51:19

in the garden no trees and then the other thing that i think and i mentioned

51:24

this to lisa that um he was very he was there always had to be that hot

51:31

landing spot for the butterflies like the places that would retain heat so that the butterflies would would come

51:36

and and be able to stay because of the heat but um so yeah so i have i have lists that i could

51:44

maybe share with you and you could compare them to what’s in band right now sure and i was able to get lists across

51:49

the country of some of the gardens too right and i i was just trying to understand

51:55

i’ve learned so much from working with the garden and trying to understand what he was doing

52:01

and every year i get some new aha moment so for a while

52:06

it was really important for me to identify every single one but now i’m so interested in the matrix

52:14

and how it all works together and the pollinators and all of those things so yeah and there’s

52:20

i mean one of the things that’s really important is from you know the research that i’ve got in

52:26

the files from mike is the plants have to do different things like there have to be plants that feed

52:32

the butterflies there have to be plants that they nest or that they lay eggs on there have to be put so there’s different

52:38

types of plants that you need in order to fulfill the different kind of life functions of the butterflies

52:43

and so it’s not just one one kind of function that the garden needs to serve and and it takes so long for that to

52:50

build up so when i first started i mean there was kind of people would make fun of this

52:58

space and go there’s a butterfly that no butterfly garden that no butterflies come to but soon

53:03

butterflies started to come and a few years ago i actually saw caterpillars that would become

53:09

butterflies but the caterpillars would be staying over the winter so not migratory butterflies but

53:15

ones that stayed it turned out they were moths so it wasn’t quite so romantic but i was pretty excited about that and now

53:22

there’s birds hummingbirds even came you know it’s it’s a magnet

53:30

um i think lisa you talked about how it’s he thought of the spaces as

53:36

contemplative spaces or places where you you kind of understand knowledge in different ways

53:44

yeah yeah he wrote a little bit about that especially contemplation yeah yeah and i think lisa you and i talked

53:50

about the other thing was like when i was talking with mike about it he talked about them as medicine

53:55

gardens and i think that the important the other important part of it was that a lot of

54:01

these plants that sustained butterflies also were important for indigenous medicine and healing so that it’s a

54:07

healing garden both physically but also probably psychically and mentally as well

54:13

and a few years ago cease weiss came from vancouver and she did a a special

54:20

ceremony in the garden she brought a gift of song and audio tape that she made just for the garden as a gift

54:26

to the garden and there was an elder from morley who came so that’s the first time that we’ve

54:32

done that yeah that was season anne riley that did that project and

54:38

and the cassette is called radical soundtrack rattles radical

54:43

soundtrack for the love of butterflies and it’s on a cassette and it’s a beautiful collection of

54:50

different transformational um organizations or people who have created transformation in their communities

54:55

so thinking about butterfly medicine as transformation and anyway it’s really great it i learned so much from it as

55:00

well it’s beautiful and you were talking about how sound is important how

55:06

song is important i thought of that right away yeah yeah oh does anyone have any uh thoughts or

55:12

memories about like we know you know the medicine plants are important them having medicinal

55:18

also that you know the butterfly connected to it but does does anyone ever recall and we might have asked this at another

55:23

panel but i always like to ask if mike talked about any other kinds of pollinators like ever talked about bees

55:29

ever talked about um yeah bees in particular

55:36

i remember my memories of that at all i don’t remember peace okay i’m just

55:43

curious

55:48

though i think in some of those interviews i think there’s he talks about pollination

55:55

okay oh and oh sheila posted some things okay

56:02

great yeah i wonder though how um his thinking

56:08

about the gardens changed as he has he continued to make them right yeah

56:13

because the woman when was the last garden in 2000 and i think i

56:20

i don’t know the answer to that question

56:32

oh lisa you went on mute i don’t know if you know yeah i don’t i don’t have it right in front of me but yeah it was like early 2000s

56:39

um yeah i’ll have to i’d have to pull up my old computer

56:45

which would might be anything no i was just curious um because i know

56:50

that mike died in 2006 and i don’t know whether he continued to make gardens up until that point

56:56

or whether he stopped before then

57:03

i don’t know the answer to that either i think the walter phillips was one of the last 2003 was the last one

57:09

2003. okay as far as we i don’t i don’t have in

57:14

front of me the exact one but

57:20

he also did some like you know in the in berry they did a show called

57:25

shorelines and it was a series of outdoor it might have been curated by mary reed maybe anyway i’m sorry if i’m wrong on

57:32

that um and that mike mcdonald mike did a garden at the hospital

57:38

a chef’s garden and it was like the only one that i saw that was like not called a medicine it was like herbs

57:44

and stuff for the chefs the kitchen and stuff anyway that was an interesting kind of anomaly out of the

57:49

out of the gardens and i think that was done in the early 2000s you know what i have a note from my says

57:56

okay most culinary herbs are attractive to butterflies very low visit chives oregano rosemary

58:03

chamomile and feverfew the large black swallowed tail in the montreal area is called priscille

58:09

because it lays eggs on parsley okay awesome hey i really like these

58:15

little notes you have i am curious i would like may i please have a scan of all of them

58:20

okay well artist files are interesting that way uh sometimes you see some interesting notes that are sent

58:26

around um yeah and also there’s uh berry plants

58:31

uh saskatoon choke cherry snowberry blueberry and potential

58:36

so nectar from the berry plants are awesome that’s nice okay aside from his like

58:43

more formal garden works as an artist and he remained quite active as a gardener

58:48

as far as i know great up until you know through the whole of his life um he my friend jim mcswain who is a common

58:54

friend of mine and and um and mike’s here in halifax has a wonderful uh garden and there’s many

59:00

um signs of mike’s presence in that garden

59:07

oh when i’m in when we’re in halifax have to check that out yeah go ahead

59:13

i didn’t have this land here uh it was my mother’s but i wasn’t gardening here when when mike was alive but i have i

59:21

can see it i was out my window of a planting tub that he gave me so he’s

59:26

kind of present here and i’m i’m very aware of him in terms of uh what i hope to do with the land

59:32

here i i know i’ve talked with you lisa about this too but there’s also um uh the whole um uh location of mike’s

59:39

practice as a queer practice as well certainly in terms of uh healing plants there was uh

59:45

the whole movement of self-healing and self-care for people living with aids

59:53

particularly a time when the the main medical system was not really responding to people’s needs people had to find

59:59

ways to find their own way ways to medicines and [Music]

1:00:04

i know that you know he would talk about specific things like echinacea for example which uh were important in that

1:00:12

queer community self-healing movement i think it’s echinacea behind you and so

1:00:18

maybe in your in your yes [Laughter] yeah this is so this is a shot of the

1:00:25

kitchener-waterloo art gallery replanting this from last year i think so it get really uh filled out well

1:00:31

that’s a really great point though um robin i appreciate you mentioning that because that’s a

1:00:37

aspect of maybe his work or himself that you know

1:00:42

i even going through a lot of his artist artist files a different get you know um he doesn’t really write

1:00:48

he doesn’t really overtly talk about that um but uh like a lot of curators have talked about

1:00:54

in yourself included i think uh about the idea of transformation being connected to

1:00:59

um uh queerness or gay being gay or being to spirit like a kind of like that being

1:01:05

kind of a metaphor to to sort of acknowledge or signal that so i think that’s really interesting too and it was really important to me when i

1:01:12

and i have to say like i have to admit that i it was more recent it was after i saw after i listened to

1:01:18

cease uh uh weiss and anne riley’s uh cassette tape that i learned that um

1:01:24

mike uh was a was queer and and it was so exciting to me because i was like i feel

1:01:30

like um because i’m also queer and i was thinking about like oh it’s so nice to like be looking at an

1:01:35

artist’s work who i feel you know there’s a kind of uh connection in that way um and

1:01:43

and to and it also also actually happened with another artist i was looking at

1:01:48

who had passed on i was looking at her work and then later as i was looking at it found out that she was um

1:01:54

she was queer as well so there’s kind of this like interesting elder artist kind of connection that has been

1:01:59

really significant to me um and so i’m really happy to to hear from you about that robin

1:02:05

um being being pretty good friend of mike’s i i understand so um yeah and we’re we’re

1:02:11

we’re going to work on eventually after covid the replanting of that garden at mount st vincent gallery and that was

1:02:18

the garden that was originally in the show that you curated with with mike um back in the i forget which year but

1:02:23

you could probably say it but yeah so we’re gonna that’s another garden that we’re hoping to to replant just been delayed a bit

1:02:29

yeah yeah yeah it was 97 in digital garden okay so i i had two

1:02:37

two things i will try and remember both of them but one of them uh is about how plants are more

1:02:43

available now than they would have been when he was planting indigenous plants in alberta

1:02:48

especially so we’ve got a couple really brave growers who are collecting seeds

1:02:53

ethically within a 50 kilometer radius so we’re when we do need to replant

1:03:01

because even the perennials not all of them are long-lived so we are able to work with people who

1:03:07

are gathering seed and taking cuttings in it in an ethical way

1:03:12

and he wouldn’t have had access to that yeah so um so that’s one thing and the other

1:03:18

thing i was thinking about the form of the walter phillips gallery i mean i’m so impressed with walter phillips being

1:03:25

committed to keeping that garden going so all the way from nemo in the beginning saying it needed a fence

1:03:31

on either side to keep the elk from browsing the whole garden and i think mimo says that you know mike

1:03:38

mcdonald never wanted a fence around it but the garden wouldn’t have survived without the fence right so

1:03:45

um but it’s one long walkway and on either side there are really two

1:03:51

different gardens one is the sunny warm garden another is the shady moist garden

1:03:56

and that idea of marrying two two things together along a journey uh as the form for the

1:04:04

garden i think just listening to you guys it’s a new thing that i’ve realized about the garden so

1:04:09

yeah yeah sorry i mean in talking you’re talking about that catherine i

1:04:14

remember mike talking about the challenge of the banff garden because of the fact that that one wall

1:04:20

gets so much sun and is so hot and the other wall is constantly in shade and uh having

1:04:26

and actually thinking through that as a as a garden design problem and the sunny side now the has a lot of

1:04:33

the fruit-bearing things so the saskatoons are there and the douglas uh there’s a a hawthorn a black

1:04:40

hawthorn that’s grown to be taller than any other black hawthorn i’ve ever seen and it’s you know it’s in the perfect

1:04:47

spot that is so great to hear that i just love that that adds a lot

1:04:54

because you know it’s almost like trying to trying to decipher the gardens to understand what his

1:05:00

thinking was um just so that adds even more uh to the to the story which is really

1:05:07

nice thanks catherine and and and catherine and catherine

1:05:15

i just realized i was like thanks catherine wait which catherine did i just thank uh okay catherine i’m gonna pick the

1:05:21

cake thank you

1:05:27

are there any questions or thoughts or responses or like to what we were just talking about even if you have never heard about this

1:05:33

before if you feel like chiming in i think we have a bit of time do we michael

1:05:41

okay we have five minutes

1:05:49

i have a question for becca maybe so in the in the garden that’s there now

1:05:54

without i i’m going to go visit on i’m going to the gala tomorrow so i can come down tomorrow but um who’s tending your garden on an

1:06:02

ongoing basis is the community attending the garden do you have a team of gardeners how is

1:06:07

how are you keeping your garden because i think for us the garden only lasted three years

1:06:14

because you know the soil became an issue but also i think there there was a question of like just the

1:06:19

ongoing maintenance of the garden so you know catherine’s been doing that in banff and i’m just

1:06:25

you know thinking of what the plan for 161 will be yeah uh currently we’re um the staff

1:06:32

really does a lot of the maintenance work um it’s actually kind of a really beautiful wonderful start to our day the first hour we kind of spend in the

1:06:38

garden and then tend to it um as it’s whatever its needs are kind of like that

1:06:45

day or just even just to spend some time in there um with because in the early in the

1:06:50

morning when it’s still shady out um you know a lot of the neighborhood rabbits will come hang out

1:06:56

and it does has been like quite active with butterflies and and bees it’s kind of really and it’s

1:07:02

before the community really is activated it’s kind of a really peaceful reflection moment that we’ve been taking advantage of

1:07:08

um but you know what we have a lot of community folks that come in and want to help and

1:07:13

really want to participate um with it so they’re kind of really

1:07:19

activated by us being out there and they want to come in and spend some time and and kind of share their knowledges as

1:07:26

they move forward so i would say it’s a bit of both i think we definitely uh start it but

1:07:32

i definitely think the community uh really picks it up uh when we get there and allows us to be able to get through it

1:07:37

because there i honestly there would have been no way it feels like we’d be able to get all that dirt in there without the communities

1:07:43

and support and building everything so they’ve been really quite wonderful

1:07:50

becca question because one of the things that i’ve thought of a lot with at the walter

1:07:55

phillips is how uh when some people see some of the plants they start telling you

1:08:02

their stories and their knowledge about that plant and they’ll say there were some some

1:08:08

german students who came and the minute they saw the stinging nettle they were like you know i want to make soup right and

1:08:16

so they started telling their stories about that or other people come and they just relate to a particular plant and they might

1:08:22

have certain knowledge about that plant and it’s it’s medicine in its in the biggest sense of the word right

1:08:30

so i wondered if you could be gathering stories if the community is offering you those kind of things

1:08:37

yeah i mean it’s something we’ve definitely been in conversation i know lisa and i’ve talked a bit about this too um you know and it is really beautiful

1:08:45

to hear them like talking about like being back uh in their home community and what they’re used to seeing and the different

1:08:51

uses and a lot of that conversation we’re also kind of activating with um

1:08:56

elders as well and kind of like there’s a lot of um because edmonton has this like really

1:09:01

beautiful river valley that has a lot of traditional medicines alongside of it so we actually have a lot of elders that

1:09:07

come and do um beautiful talks and walks the community through so you

1:09:12

to really like um show what is available within our city that you don’t have to have to like leave

1:09:17

the city limits in order to access so we’ve invited them um our plan is to invite them into the garden as well to also think through

1:09:24

um you know we would really love to do a tea talk you know and like and how uh those are

1:09:31

activated i’m kind of hoping within those conversations um yeah those exchanges will happen and

1:09:37

when we think when i think about this space i really do think about it as uh like an exchange uh between the

1:09:42

community ourselves acknowledges and and i’m not like 100 sure how that’s going to be archived over the time

1:09:49

you know for for myself this is definitely like a longer term project i feel like this is a really much a

1:09:55

foundational year and even through this conversation i’m like taking like notes as you’re all talking so i’m just like oh i didn’t know that

1:10:01

that’s really good for me to take into consideration for next year and to think through um you know because

1:10:07

i think it’s a chance for it to really expand and i loved hearing about like the herbs because the

1:10:12

community’s been asking us so much for like food resources which makes sense because there’s so much food scarcity like within

1:10:18

those communities so it and i think that’s that exchange like we’re offering the space to them and

1:10:24

and and that like yeah that reciprocal relationship and this garden really being a foundation of that as we move forward so

1:10:32

i don’t really know how to answer your question how are we gonna archive these conversations how are we gonna you know um you know when we were

1:10:39

offered that goji berry uh you know which we i happily accepted because i was really thinking about

1:10:44

because we’re in the chinatown like old chinatown and i was really thinking about the story that was shared to me about the

1:10:50

shaw conference center and how that was before that was built there was it was all goji berries on that hill which is just a couple blocks away from

1:10:56

us and how the community came and took those goji berries and planted them in their backyard so now we have goji berries all over the city and these

1:11:03

different you know so i think a lot about those exchanges as well so when they offered it to us it just felt

1:11:08

right to bring it back to that space where it would have existed not too far so i’m kind of curious and

1:11:15

interested to see how this kind of like transforms over the years and those exchanges kind of

1:11:20

um yeah that ripple effect of those exchanges like how well this grow and you know when that property needs to be

1:11:26

utilized for its intended use like how are we able to continue these exchanges

1:11:35

in this relationship within the community of boyle street and maybe find a more permanent home that can really be tended to

1:11:43

over the years like you’ve done for the butterfly garden at the bath center you’ve got a lot of material for teas

1:11:48

there yeah and we have some really really amazing

1:11:54

um teas like teas by uh made here and from indigenous people

1:12:01

so it’s really want to activate those conversations here because we have some really great companies that are

1:12:06

operating out of here that uh that are just like really utilized by the community and um

1:12:12

yes i’m really excited to like engage in that conversation and that relationship between um you know plants and pollinators but

1:12:18

also plants and like people and those uses and those um to take care of

1:12:24

ourselves and you know as we think about like food insecurity but also like health

1:12:29

like chronic health issues and and then medical trauma and how a lot of folks i know that are suffering from

1:12:35

chronic illnesses that don’t have equal treatment within hospitals how they’re starting to go back to a lot

1:12:40

of more traditional medicines to take care of themselves um you know in that kind of like relationship as well

1:12:53

okay so thank you very much becca that was great um michael says that we’ve run out of

1:12:59

our five minutes so um i just want to close by saying a great big thank you to lisa and

1:13:06

becca for not only being with us for this last hour but for all of the work that you’re

1:13:11

doing to um bring attention to mike’s gardens and to keep them

1:13:17

both alive uh in real life but also in our memories so thank you very much and

1:13:22

i hope everyone who’s here in edmonton goes to see the attijuan garden uh which is now uh planted so that’s

1:13:29

wonderful becca i’m really happy about that uh and just thank you all for being here and um

1:13:36

again thank you lisa and becca for being here as well yeah thanks a lot for hosting us this

1:13:42

was great we should i guess a big thank you uh to mike mcdonald

1:13:47

yeah thank you very much hi hi thank you okay thank you awesome okay take care

1:13:54

thanks everyone bye bye

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