People in BC are planting wildflowers to honour children who didn’t come home from residential schools

Locals across B.C. are planting wildflowers to honour the children who never came home from residential schools.

Running Free Memorial Wildflower Gardens started a year ago, and along with other organizations across the province, have planted about 12 gardens.

After hearing about the discovery of likely 215 unmarked graves at the former Kamloops residential school last year, Valerie Nicholson, the founder of Running Free Memorial Wildflower Gardens, says she was gifted a dream.

“In my dream I saw children running free, their hair was down, they had their braids, and they were running toward a horizon, but they were in a field of wildflowers,” Nicholson says.

“I thought of these children, [whose] graves had been found, they never had the chance to run free.”

This dream eventually prompted the creation of Running Free Memorial Wildflower Gardens.

Nicholson says the gardens are a place of remembrance and healing.

“A place where everyone could go to honour these children, to grieve in their own way and also to remember them.”

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The Truth and Reconciliation Commission estimates 6,000 children died at residential schools, which operated from the 1870s to 1990s. The group’s hope is to plant a wildflower garden for every child that never came home from residential schools.

“Communities come together, from all nations, to put these gardens in and to have a place that we can gather and have ceremonies,” she says.

“It’s a place of gathering, it’s a place of healing.”

The latest garden was planted during a ceremony on Thursday at Vancouver’s Oxford Park.

This memorial is part of an already existing garden created by the Vancouver Urban Food Forest Foundation (VUFFF), initially created for Indigenous people to heal and learn about Indigenous medicines.

“When we’re doing any activity together, especially from an Indigenous point of view, when we’re painting the rocks or if we’re planting, we’re in a moment of silence. Whether they realize it or not, you’re in a moment of prayer,” Leona Brown, co-creator of VUFFF said.

Nicholson says her dream now is to see a wildflower garden planted in every school, and in every neighborhood.

“I would like to see a garden for every child. For every child,” she said.