Old St. Vital community project highlights neighbourhood's history

A newsculpture andfour narrative panels were unveiled inOld St. Vitalon Thursday as part of a community project to draw attention to the area's unique past.

St. Vital, in the south-central part of Winnipeg, was established by Francophone settlers in 1822 and theKingston Crescent Residents' Association hopes their projectwill teach others about the area's history.

"It's sort of a separate little neighbourhood within St. Vital, and it's their effort to celebrate the history," said St. Vital Coun. Brian Mayes, who contributed about $6,000 in ward funds to the project.

Two of the panels outline the power of the 1950 flood which devastated the neighbourhood and claimed the life of volunteer Lawson Ogg, who was checking in on an evacuated house in the area. A street near the area was given the honourary name of Lawson Ogg Way to commemorate him.

The other panels tell the story of Elm Park, which was established in 1890, and the elm tree forest that once thrived in the neighbourhood. One invites residents to plant their own trees and showcases the work of Lake St. Martin First Nation artist, Jackie Traverse.

"It was the trees that started all of this," Heather Bidzinski, a volunteer with the residents' association, said in an interview on Up to Speed Thursday. "This whole area was forested by majestic elm trees and of course this has been decimated through development and then Dutch elm [disease]."

The last elm tree, which stood at the south end of the Elm Park Bridge, was removed in 2022 due to the disease, but artist Kevin Kelly and carver Fred Thomas turned it into a wooden bear sculpture called the Dancing Golden Bear which was also unveiled Thursday.

"Dutch elm disease was wiping out all the big, old elm trees in the neighbourhood," said Kelly, who designed the sculpture and volunteers with the residents' association.

"I wanted to make a piece that was about that kind of connection to the forest and to the animals in the forest."

The bear, pointing up at the sky where a canopy of elm trees once swayed in the wind, was painted gold as a reference to Winnipeg's Golden Boy statue, Kelly added.

"The meaning behind him, the whole design there, him pointing up at the canopy of the trees, the original forest that was here," Thomas said.

"The message, I think, is we have to look after the Earthso it looks after us."

The residents' association created the project with help from the city and with guidance from Elder Robert Greene, an Anishinaabe of the Ojibway Nation, and Dakota Grandfather, Wanbdi Wakita, the association said in a release Wednesday.

It was created as part of the city's Welcoming Winnipeg initiative, which aims to better reflect the history of First Nations, Mtis and Inuit people.

More than 50 residents donated to the project, the association said.

The association hopes to develop more phases to the project, Bidzinski added.

"It's hoped that as people walk through our neighbourhood in the summer, especially as traffic increases, that they'll take some time to learn a little bit more about not only our history as a community here but the history of those that traveled before us," she said.