A future 35-foot high stainless steel sculpture aimed at promoting inclusiveness will sit in Victoria Park next spring if Saskatoon city council approves the plan during its meeting on Monday.
The ‘Where Our Paths Cross’ commemorative artwork will feature a 20-foot high beaver pelt stretcher with two poles intersecting above it. One 35-foot pole will represent First Nations peoples, while a second 28-foot pole will represent the Métis community.
“It’s really where paths are crossing,” Kevin Kitchen, the city’s community development manager, said in an interview on Friday.
‘It’s going to be quite a striking piece of artwork.”
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The project was conceived in the fall of 2016, after the federal government awarded the city and its partners $250,000 to put toward the artwork. It’s projected to be complete by the spring of 2018.
“It will be very much a sensory and tactile type of artwork,” Kitchen said.
“It’s meant to be touched, the public can go under it, they can go through it, they can go around it.”
The project is in response to a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) call to action and keeps with the city’s commitment to the reconciliation process, according to Kitchen.
Priscilla Wolf, with the Saskatoon Tribal Council (STC), said the piece is meant to be inclusive.
“It includes the City of Saskatoon, newcomers, settlers and our members and it’s a way for us all to be connected,” Wolf said. The STC is one of the city’s partners in the project.
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Wolfe added that Victoria Park is the ideal location for the sculpture since it sits on the Métis’ “ancestral area, as well as a traditional area for First Nations people on Treaty Six.”
“It’s just a location that we all feel connected to,” Wolfe said.
“It has a really good history.”
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