Sunday, December 28, 2008

A monumental task....

Back in the summer of 2008 I was asked to assist the Curve Lake First Nations People in a community park project. In the center of their community sits a cenotaph stone dedicated to the people of their community who lost their lives in WW1, WW2 and Korea....

I was asked to design and organize the surrounding park area into a properly functioning space for annual community events. The place to start was with the monument itself!

After speaking with the committee, I got the sense of what they were looking for in terms of the monument. I decided to give it a better height and reposition it so that the face of the stone pointed in the right direction (facing the main entrance). The committee then told me that the monument was to sit in a medicine wheel with the red, white, yellow and black colours displayed in a proper order.

The Chief of Curve Lake requested to me that the base of this monument be made to last a couple hundred years or so... I designed it to be at least 6 inches thick with re-bar set in and also to have some foundation piers that go below frost.

The end result looks much like the concept drawing I did. The project is still in progress so the finished park will have to be photographed in the coming year...

I look forward to continue working with the people of Curve Lake on this project!