By Daily Mail (U.S.) | Created at 2024-09-30 04:45:19 | Updated at 2024-09-30 11:41:19
7 hours ago
A park bench designed to celebrate Indigenous reconciliation has divided a sleepy Canadian community.
The controversial bench was installed in Kinsmen Park in Happy Valley-Goose Bay, Newfoundland and Labrador, to commemorate Canada's National Day for Truth and Reconciliation - an annual holiday on September 30 to recognize the atrocities and multi-generational effects of the Canadian Indian residential school system.
Mayor George Andrews said the bench was meant as a place here people can sit and reflect, noting to the CBC that it has been positively received by some of the residents.
But two women are speaking out against the new seating arrangement after the town council removed benches from public places last year.
One of the women, Jade Rachwal, has even gone as far as to call it a textbook example of hostile architecture - due to the placement of an armrest near the middle.
A bench installed in Kinsmen Park has divided the community of Happy Valley-Goose Bay, Newfoundland and Labrador
'If you were to Google "hostile architecture," you would see a picture of a bench that looks like that,' said Rachwal, Labrador Friendship Centre's youth programs manager, referring to an urban design concept that incorporates certain elements to guide behavior.
Its installation came just one year after the Town of Happy Valley-Goose Bay removed benches around the community of around 8,000 people - including at trail entrances - to combat 'loitering and illegal activity.'
'We're all witnessing the increase in the loitering,' Andrews said at the time. 'Intoxicated folks, groups of folks.
'The evening before last, we had 20 to 25 folks loitering around the plane [at the American military monument], throwing rocks, beer bottles, that kind of stuff.'
He said the loitering became common practice since the Labrador Winter Games that March.
'What we're trying to do is just prevent those gatherings and that activity, you know, people sleeping and drinking - that kind of deal in these particular locations.'
But members of the community opposed the town council's decision, saying it takes away benches from people who need a break while walking - and Avery Brown, a social worker and board secretary at the Labrador Friendship Centre - says the new bench is an affront to them.
'To remove that accessibility from not only folks impacted by homelessness, but also people who may have mobility concerns and need a rest in the middle of their walk, it just seemed a little ironic to me,' she told the CBC.
'You know, defending this bench through accessibility when the rest of the community was made less accessible.'
Mayor George Andrews said the bench was never meant to create hostility, and was instead designed as a place for people to sit and reflect
Both Brown and Rachwal said they would like to learn more about how the placement of the bench and armrest were considered by town officials, and about any discussions officials had about other reconciliation efforts.
'It just leaves me wanting more,' Brown said. 'The bench feels really small in comparison to what it is meant to commemorate.'
Andrews, though, says the bench was never meant to create hostility.
He said it was placed in the park to serve as a place to sit and reflect, and noted there were no concerns about people lying on the bench overnight because the park closes at 9pm.
'A couple of years ago, we were in a different situation, where pubic safety was viewed in terms of certain locations,' he said of the town council's decision to remove benches in 2023.
'The only reason it was done is because the activity that was happening around those benches - in our mind, as a council, was viewed as, you know, being a public safety issue.
'This has nothing to do with that particular issue.'
The mayor went on to say that the decision to add a center armrest was a 'last minute kind of thing.'
He also said the town has not added back any other benches yet due to other infrastructure priorities.
