WATCH: Glad Tiding Church has commissioned a local blacksmith to craft a sculpture for a place it calls “Honour Park” to mark three fallen officers shot nearby. Shelley Steeves reports.
MONCTON – Glad Tidings Church in Moncton’s North End has commissioned two local blacksmiths to craft a sculpture for Honour Park.
The park is to honour the three RCMP officers killed in the Moncton shooting last June.
Moncton blacksmith Paul Fontaine and his son Luc say they’ve never felt so much pressure to get a piece just right.
“It’s great to have people in the community who care enough to put this up,” said Paul Fontaine.
Pastor Paul Pattison says he hopes the sculpture and park will help people find some peace and become a place of reflection and healing for the community.
“We just felt that, rather than do another monument, that we’d like to do something that was a little more inspirational, a bit more forward looking as well,” he said.
Fontaine says three steel forms will tower more than 10 feet tall and represent the three fallen officers, a design born between he and Pattison.
“The forms are an abstract of a human body and they face outward, 360 degrees, so it’s kind of a community looking out for each other,” he said.
“I think the whole tragedy has also given people a greater appreciation for those who do serve and protect, that any day they could pay the ultimate price,” Pattison said.
He says he wants this park not to be a place of blame but a place of healing.
“I don’t think that laying blame is the right thing to do but I think it can be a reminder where perhaps we can be more diligent as a community as well as for law enforcement and I am sure that they have learned a great deal from this.”
Luc Fontaine agrees and says he is honoured to see the project through to completion.
“I build it with pride and respect for the RCMP and it feels good to build something for them that I think is going to be there for many years to come and for the community to reflect on it,” he said.
The sculpture will be placed in Honour Park in time for the unveiling ceremony that takes place on Sunday, June 7th.
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