How can we keep an apology alive so the wrongs of the past are remembered and not repeated today? I think that one of the best ways to keep apologies alive is to make an effective memorial. What do I mean by an effective memorial? When I am looking for an effective memorial I look for these things, the first thing is presentation if you cant present the memorial that you have created in a good way people are going to be interested in it, this means that the memorial fails its job of remembering something of the past. The next thing is the memorial itself, this means what is the memorial physically, is it a statue? Is it a plaque? Is it a park/garden? The last thing that is important when making a memorial is that it is something that can tell a story, this means that it can tell or show the actions of the past and (in our case) the apology that it is remembering. If you combine these three things you will have a good memorial. In this project we took a look at 3 different groups of people, we learned the history behind them and took a look at the memorials and apologies made for these people/actions.
Now how did I get this answer? The first thing that helped me come to this answer was the post that we made on the Komagata Maru. For the post, we had to talk about what the Komagata Maru was, what its mission was and what happened. While learning about this and looking at the current memorials made for this I felt like the memorial could be a bit better. I say this because during daylight (or when the lights are not on at the memorial) it does not look like something that I would be drawn to, so when it comes down to the use of lighting location and presentation I think that it did a relatively good job, but I do wish that it would draw your attention more during daylight. However, when it came down to the museum (I did not go to it in person) it seems like it does a much better job at covering every part of the story from start to finish. This brings up another question, could a museum be considered a memorial? While I think that yes a museum can be used to memorialize something or someone often the exhibit is not permanent and that is the main purpose of a memorial, to keep a lasting physical memory of the apology or the actions themselves. Another problem with a museum is that it is something that you have to go out of your way to see. So after doing this research on the komagata maru and the memorial it helped me realize what I need to do to make a better memorial for my group.
The next thing that helped me get my answer happens to be the china town field trips that we went on. The main thing that I feel like this field trip did for me was help me realize that a memorial does not have to just be a plaque or a statue, It can also be a garden or a park. The place that we visited was the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden. This place is less of a memorial and more of a place that is used to capture a time in Canadian history. “It became clear that a physical and tangible reminder of the cultural and historical importance of Vancouver’s Chinatown was needed”. This is a quote from the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen website talking about why the garden was made. And I guess it is less of a memorial and more of a thing used to remember the difference in culture. Now how did this garden help me? I feel like the main thing that it helped me with was releasing that a memorial doesn’t just have to be a statue or a plaque.
Before I get to the conclusion I just want to talk about how the Japanese memorials around Hastings park are not a good example of an effective memorial. I feel like when It comes to the actual memorial it isn’t very good because they are just small plaques around the park, you have to go out of your way and know where to look when looking for them. I feel like the content of the plaques is good and the idea of having them around the actual buildings that these people were interned at.
So this is all of the stuff that helped me come to my answer, and with my answer, I feel like I was able to, with my group, make an effective memorial or a plan for an effective memorial. My group ended up having to make a memorial for the Chinese people, we were supposed to make a good memorial around the head tax but instead, we made a memorial around the railroad and added everything else to this. What I built was a railroad spike. With English text on one side and traditional Chinese text on the other side. The location that we would have wanted to put it is right in front of the train station, this is a great space for the memorial because it is very close to china town and it is very close to the railroad station. When it comes down to if I were to pitch it to city hall what would I do I feel like our pitch was very good, maybe we just need to polish up on it but I feel like, for the most part, we had a good pitch? When presenting this at the winter exhibition we had several people say that we should pitch this Idea to city hall, and I feel like if we got some backing from the Chinese community we could actually go to city hall and maybe just maybe get it made. But I guess we will never know.