Rolling hills and a meadow could soon grace the former New Westminster Secondary School site and provide a place for quiet reflection.
After a decade of planning, work on a $1-million memorial park on the former New Westminster Secondary School site could begin within months. The New Westminster School district intends to issue a request for proposals in April and hopes to hire a contractor and complete the work this fall.
Dave Crowe, the school district's facilities director, provided the school board with an update on the New Westminster Secondary School memorial site at its March 11 meeting.
The memorial park will be built on about eight acres of land that had been used as a potter’s field between 1860 and 1920.
It was there that the bodies of poor people, prisoners, stillborn babies, and patients from Woodlands and Essondale (which later became Riverview) were buried. Members of the Chinese, Sikh and Indigenous communities were also buried people on the site.
At Tuesday’s meeting, Crowe gave the school board an overview of the “long-awaited” final plan for the memorial park, which includes greenery, pathways, and signage about the original uses of the land. New Westminster Secondary School was built on the site in 1949.
“You'll notice that it's very, very similar, if not somewhat identical, to the plan we've shown for several years, that we've had in the works for several years. … We were really, really struggling to put together a plan that was on budget,” he said. “So that's what's taken so long for us to tweak it and still maintain the integrity of the intent of the memorial park but get it back to budget. And we believe we've accomplished that.”
Crowe said the entrance to the park will be at Eighth and Dublin streets, near the turnaround circle that was located in front of the old NWSS. He said that space is intended to be a “sacred or feature place” in the park and will be the location of a memorial plaque.
Entering the park, visitors will see rolling berms (hills), a series of connecting multi-use paths, benches, and greenery including trees and a meadow.
“They (the berms) will be attractive as well as discourage the kind of uses for this area that are that are not allowed under the Cemetery Act,” Crowe said. “Things like playing fields and soccer pitches and those kinds of things are not allowed under the Cemetery Act. So, we have to discourage that as much as possible.”
Board chair Maya Russell said community members have questioned why a school district that’s constrained for space and has a 31-acre land deficit cannot use this land for playing fields or portables.
Crowe explained that a substantial portion of the site is a designated cemetery, so it falls under the Cemetery Act. He said the legislation is quite prescriptive about the kinds of uses that can be built over former or closed cemeteries.
“That's where the passive park concept comes in, which is what we have created,” he said. “You're allowed to use it for a place of contemplation and a place sort of refuge, if you want to call it that. But sports fields and things like that are specifically prohibited.”
Crowe said it’s possible to apply to get permission to change the use of the site, but officials in charge of the Cemetery Act have told the district the chances of that happening are “very, very slim” because of the history of this cemetery.
“It was and is a major cemetery in the province of British Columbia. It's one of the first cemeteries, by definition, and it holds a lot of history,” he said. “There's a lot of people connected to it … including many First Nations folks, as well as Chinese benevolent associations and many others. To convince them of an alternate use of it would be extremely difficult to do.”
Trustee Marc Andres said it’s really exciting to see the project come to completion.
“When I got introduced to this, I was really surprised to find the number of people's remains who are still interred on this land and will remain interred on there, probably for a very long time,” he said. “And so, I think this really meets our goals of this project — being a respectful place where people are going to remember a part of our history that we aren't proud of, but that happened.”
Questioned later by the Record, Crowe said the school district does not have good information on the number of people still buried at the site, as that information has been difficult to obtain.
Place of reflection
In one area of the park, trees will be surrounded by meadow grass and low shrubs. Benches will provide a place for visitors to sit and enjoy the surroundings.
Crowe said the park will not include irrigation, so plantings have been selected with that in mind.
“One of the things that we were not to be able to afford is irrigation. There's no water out on this side,” he said. “That's why we're choosing meadow grass and grasses that are drought tolerant.”
Crowe said lighting has been selected that contributes to the “solemn” feeling of the site and follows crime prevention through environmental design principles.
“The idea is to try to get enough light without making it look like a carnival, because it's not that type of space,” he said. “But get enough light so that's it safe for people walking through it at night.”
The City of New Westminster, which owns Massey Theatre, will be doing “a little more grandiose landscaping” to its section of the property, Crowe said.
“It will blend in with our space here,” he said. “They haven't finished their actual landscape plan yet, but it will greatly enhance the look that we have.”
Parking and plaques
Once the park is developed, the site will continue to provide parking.
“Everybody keeps asking me: ‘Have we maintained the same amount of parking on the site that we've always had?’ And the answer is yes,” Crowe said. “We've got about 325ish stalls, which has been the commitment for stalls on the site for many, many years. ... They've been distributed slightly differently. But the numbers are very much the same.”
Crowe said a plaque with storyboards will be located in the “circle” area of the park that’s intended for gathering. He said the district had input from many stakeholders about the content on the plaques.
“We've done our very best to have a meaningful storyboard there, at least for our first phase,” he said. “And hopefully, perhaps in the future, if there's additional funding or additional ambassadors to take over this property, it’s a great starting point.”
Andres noted there will be ongoing costs to the district associated with maintaining the park.
“I do have concerns about the district's capacity to manage costs long term associated with this. And I'm wondering if we do, from district staff, have a plan to try to pursue potentially new relationships to maybe share some of those costs now that the park will be completed, and people will be able to see the space.”
New West Schools superintendent Mark Davidson said overtures have been made over time to try and get folks to join the school district in shouldering those costs.
“But so far, people have not been anxious to share the burden with us, the costs of maintaining the space,” he said. “That doesn't mean we wouldn't welcome partners and certainly reach out, continue to reach out, but thus far, we haven't been successful.”
Why chain link fencing?
Crowe said a chain link fence will surround the park but it will have openings at various spots so folks can access the site and connect to paths, parking, bike lanes and the school.
“The reason we want to fence it is to delineate the space as a cemetery, which the Cemetery Act requires, and secondly, to discourage any notion of people going in there with motorbikes and cars,” he said. “You know, we actually have that problem in some of our other schools. So, we felt a fence was really, really required in order to maintain that segregation, if you want to call it that, between the two.”
Board vice-chair Cheryl Sluis said “the chain link fence is really throwing me off” and questioned if that could be removed or replaced with something different.
Crowe said the chain link fence fits the school district’s budget.
“It won't be a chain link fence, like a jail chain link fence. It'll be black, which we use in all of our schools, and it makes a big difference in terms of looks,” he said. “It’s practical and it's zero maintenance.”
Crowe said the district has been trying to build a park that has extremely low maintenance costs because of the “hits to the operating budget” for maintaining the site. He said the landscape architect is proposing vines that will go through the fence.
“That will take time, but it does green the space up as well,” he said.
According to Crowe, a fence is required under the Cemetery Act, so people know the site is a cemetery.
Student use
Trustee Elliot Slinn said he hopes the students use the park space when it’s completed, so there’s ownership from students and a respect for what the memorial park is all about.
Crowe said the area where the plaque will be located has been designed as a learning space.
“It's an extension of the high school, and we're seeing it as that,” he said. “We've been working with some of the high school folks to promote that, and they see that as a learning space. What a great place to go to do readings or poetry or those kinds of things. It's a great space for that, and that was intentionally created that way.”
Trustee Danielle Connelly said an earlier presentation on the park had proposed an area that would almost serve as an outdoor classroom. She expressed disappointment that is no longer include in the park.
Crowe said the landscape architect determined that proposal, which was an idea included in one of the early plans, would not work and recommended a continuation of the green space for that area. He said school use is being accommodated in the gathering space where the plaque is being placed.
