City of Calgary partners with Fort Calgary to build residential school memorial – Calgary

The City of Calgary and Fort Calgary announced a partnership to build and design a permanent memorial for residential school survivors.

According to a news release on Saturday, the city said it started working on a permanent memorial after the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc announced the discovery of 215 potential unmarked graves at the site of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School in May 2021.

A temporary memorial was placed in front of City Hall soon after the announcement, which the city said made the need for a permanent memorial more evident.

The city said its Indigenous Relations Office began working with several partners in November 2021, including several Indigenous communities, the Indigenous Residential School (IRS) Elders Advisory Group and the IRS working group to design a permanent memorial.

The city and Fort Calgary signed a letter of intent to confirm the partnership earlier this week, according to the news release. Fort Calgary was chosen as the site of the memorial after broad community engagement throughout 2022 because it is at the confluence of the Bow and Elbow rivers.

A marker indicating the site of the future memorial has been placed in the northeast corner of the Fort Calgary community garden.

“As we move along a path that includes both truth and reconciliation, our actions must come from the heart and reflect a commitment to do better into the future,” Mayor Jyoti Gondek said in a statement.

“This permanent memorial will be a space to honour residential school survivors, their families and the thousands of children who never returned. It will be a reflective space to mourn individually and collectively and ensure that our shared history, no matter how painful, is not forgotten.”

“Fort Calgary’s legacy will forever be tied to role of the North West Mounted Police in enforcing the Indian residential school system. Officers searched for and returned children who had run away, they fined parents whose children did not go to school, and they assisted Indian Agents with the removal of children from their homes,” said Jennifer Thompson, president of Fort Calgary.

“Truth must come before reconciliation, and the IRS Memorial will help deepen the community’s understanding of the truth that is represented here at Fort Calgary.  We are grateful to the community and the City of Calgary for selecting this place as its future home.”

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