Cemeteries are heritage and green spaces too

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Cemeteries are heritage and green spaces too

Postby newsposter » Fri Mar 26, 2010 8:54 am

Thanks to Irena for forwarding this to us...

Cemeteries are heritage and green spaces, too

By Irena Karshenbaum, For The Calgary Herald
March 26, 2010

When the Olympic torch relay was coming through Calgary, living a few minutes away from the route, I decided to walk over and greet it at the corner of Mission Road and Macleod Trail. I was a little off on my timing and, not wishing to accidentally miss the historic moment, decided to walk north along Macleod Trail, up Cemetery Hill and finally waited with a growing group of other Olympic enthusiasts on the corner of Macleod Trail and 17th Avenue.

Having lived in the inner city for many years, but never having walked along Macleod Trail, it was an eye-opening and unpleasant experience. Macleod Trail is ugly and, having been built for cars, is hostile to humans. But what the walk really made me see is not only the failed streetscape, but the tragic amount of wasted green space.

The most obvious is the 42 hectares of inner city space occupied by cemeteries-- St. Mary's (opened in 1876), Union (1891), Chinese (1908) and Burnsland (1923).

With the inner city becoming largely inaccessible as a result of prohibitively expensive parking coupled with inadequate public transit service and hostile roads, the inner city cemeteries have morphed into dead spaces in more ways than one. And yet, cemeteries can be vital living spaces. They serve that function in many great cities.

For example, the Pere Lachaise Cemetery in Paris is a beautiful park and one of the most visited cemeteries in the world. San Michele, known as The Isle of the Dead, in Venice is a fascinating tourist destination. Toronto's Mount Pleasant Cemetery is a dignified resting place as well as a popular park.

In contrast, Calgary's inner city cemeteries have become forgotten public spaces whose potential as parks, cultural and heritage spaces have been underutilized.

To be fair, recently, the City of Calgary did something remarkable by restoring the Reader Rock Garden located at the northwest corner of Union Cemetery. The historic site was brought back to life as a world-class rock garden and with a rebuilt replica of the original arts and crafts cottage currently housing a restaurant. Yet, the surrounding cemeteries remain relatively empty of strollers and joggers; they contain crumbling gravestones, few walkways and benches.

With spring just around the corner and many a budding gardener about to brown their green thumbs, Calgarians need to remember William Reader who created the original Rock Garden. Reader was the first superintendent of the Calgary Parks Department, and during his tenure from 1913 to 1942 made the city bloom. He turned the dusty hilltop at Union Cemetery into a glorious Edwardian rock garden and increased the city's parks inventory from two to 16. He planted thousands of trees, including those along Memorial Drive, placed hundreds of benches, built ponds and turned dusty corner lots into tiny parks. He spread his love of gardening through lectures and advocacy work resulting in considerable public funds being invested in civic parks and gardens. Sadly, less than a month after his retirement, Reader passed away and without a spiritual successor, his life's work began to fade. The arts and crafts-style cottage where he lived was soon demolished and the beautiful rock garden he worked so hard to create was neglected and went into decline. By the 1960s and '70s, park spaces lost their place as a civic priority.

The issue appears to be reviving again, having been brought forward in a strategic plan by Archie Lang, manager of northeast parks and cemeteries with the City of Calgary. Lang says, "It's absolutely imperative that we see the importance of cemeteries as history and capture that history for future generations."

Over the next 10 years, the city will be managing an endowment fund that after 2020, will grow to a level that will allow it to fund development to a "higher standard of maintenance," as Lang explains. His vision is to make the city's cemeteries the desirable and livable public spaces they are in many world-class cities. In the short term, given the lack of funding, only small restoration and development projects can be taken on like updating signage, restoring some existing roadways, creating a scattering garden and building two additional columbariums interconnected by gardens.

With so much recent inner city development, creating a vibrant inner city should include creating livable cemeteries, something that should be recognized as a civic priority and a development opportunity. Otherwise, the inner city cemeteries will linger as dead spaces and be seen as appendages of the haunting failures of Macleod Trail.

Irena Karshenbaum is the founding president of The Little Synagogue on the Prairie Project Society (http://www.littlesynagogue.ca) . She can be reached at irenak@shaw.ca

Link to the column online:
http://www.calgaryherald.com/opinion/op ... story.html


The City usually runs cemetery tours starting in the spring. Check this link for updates:
http://www.calgary.ca/portal/server.pt/ ... +Tours.htm

More on Reader:
http://www.calgary.ca/portal/server.pt/ ... Garden.htm
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Postby newsposter » Wed Mar 31, 2010 2:57 pm

Letter to the editor from Dave Marshall in response to Irena's column talks more about the history of Calgary's parks.

The heyday of Calgary's parks
By Dave Marshall, Calgary Herald March 31, 2010
Re: "Cemeteries are heritage and green spaces, too," Irena Karshenbaum, Opinion, March 26.

... (the 60s and 70s) represent the zenith of "civic priority," resulting in some of the most valuable public legacies the city has in its inventory. The river pathway system was inaugurated during that era. University students constructed red shale paths where our upgraded pathway system now runs. Generous federal programs were accessed to build permanent rink facilities and playgrounds. The genesis of Nose Hill and Fish Creek parks evolved in the long-range planning documents brought to council for ratification...

Read more: http://www.calgaryherald.com/heyday+Cal ... z0jnHNmNQ4

:arrow: Newsposter note: a book about the history of Calgary parks is being published this spring; authored by CHI member John Gilpin.
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