LETTER – Battle Street Cenotaph deserves a garden of contemplation

I recently took a curious look around the publicized upgrade to the Kamloops Cenotaph, anticipating a marked improvement, not so much about the monument itself but with respect to its surroundings.

There is some sort of park around the Cenotaph, a grassy slope with a mixed stand of mature trees and an old stand-out but dying maple. I remember calling upon the City’s Parks Department a while back requesting them to intervene in pruning away at the plentiful dead branches adorning melancholically the upper reaches of those mature trees.

Unfortunately enough, the much needed pruning intervention did not yet occur even despite the highly anticipated uplift. I felt let down. But to further complicate the hopelessness, I glanced over to the newly planted area adjacent to the stony monument.

This is an important monument not only for our city, but for our era, for mankind.
This is a monument dedicated not only to remember the sacrifice of the young and courageous, but to the memories of a lifetime of sorrow for the families of the departed.

And within the sobbing and the anguish the mind cannot avoid dedicating a thought to the exultance and celebration of life and liberty.

I was hoping for a newly created garden with layered, multi-seasonal planting. This was to be a garden for thoughtfulness, for contemplation but with a hint of reassuring comfort, with the hope to rise above the sorrow. Instead I encountered a few plants, strewn with disparaging, disconnected carelessness. Even the newly installed black fence is smeared with the same cold, careless fingerprints from whoever was entrusted to complete the renovation of this important and poignant landmark.

How can all this come to pass, I ask? How can all this have even been contemplated in the first place, I ask? We can do better than this…much better.

For the memories never to be relegated to the margins, but to be rightfully and always celebrated, every day of the year.

PIERRE FILISETTI

Kamloops