Robson Park has been selected as the location for a multicultural garden that will feature a commemorative post memorializing Jasper’s sister city relationship with Hakone, Japan.
Council envisions the park, located next to the library and cultural centre, will grow with time to include additional markers commemorating other important relationships and moments in Jasper’s history, like Queen Elizabeth II’s visits to the park.
But, for now, the priority is to get the eight-foot commemorative post in the ground before the end of June, so it’s ready when a delegation from Hakone arrives in Jasper for the Alberta/Japan Twinned Municipalities Association Conference.
The post is a replica of one that is planted in Hakone.
While visiting Jasper’s Japanese sister city in 2012, members of council were taken to a beautiful garden to see a white lacquered post commemorating the 40-year relationship between the two communities.
Engraved on the post, in both English and Japanese, are the words “40th anniversary of Jasper and Hakone sisterly relationship.”
When council returned to Jasper, it planted a tree in the Connaught Drive boulevard across from the information centre in its own gesture of commemoration, but it has always intended to do more.
So, in time for a visit from delegates from Hakone, it is recreating the post.
Last December, Coun. Dwain Wacko suggested the high school exchange land would be an ideal location for a memorial garden, but acknowledged the reclamation of that land might not be completed in time.
So, council asked the Greenspace Advisory Committee to consider other possible locations and make a recommendation.
When the committee’s recommendation came back it was for Robson Park.
Council liked the idea and requested that administration draft a plan, which it presented at the March 24 committee-of-the-whole meeting.
Phase one of the plan shows a three diametre plaza with a bench, the commemorative post and the transplanted trees from the Connaught Drive boulevard, as well as some feather reed grasses.
For future expansion, it shows a granular pathway leading up to the plaza from Geikie Street, with plum trees flanking either side.
Bruce Thompson, the municipality’s director of operations, also suggested that in the future there could also be a memorial forest incorporated into the space, “where a loved one is part of the forest, not a specific tree.”
He also noted that as the garden increases in size, there could be satellite installations coming off the main plaza.
Now that the location has been selected and there is a general consensus that a multicultural garden is a project worth pursuing, council has asked that the Greenspace Advisory Committee come up with some recommendations for the space.
In the meantime, the commemorative post is moving along, with the municipality’s Gord Hutton currently working on a stainless steel base. Once that is completed, the post will be transported to Edmonton where the script will be carved into the wood.
Nicole Veerman
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