Terra Nova Rural Park, Westminster Highway, Richmond, BC, Canada
Every time I take a visit to Terra Nova’s Rural lands, I learn something new. Terra Nova is a beautiful part of Richmond, BC that overlooks the Fraser River and contains some of the five heritage buildings left in the city. There are so many stories to be found at Terra Nova and every time I take a visit I get a chance to walk down memory lane and reflect on stories that I once lived through as well as the stories that have lived on the land long before me. Today, I want to share and reflect on two stories in particular. The first story involves the time when I began working on Terra Nova’s lands as an educator at their Nature School for school aged and preschool students. I had never seen the Parson’s Heritage home before so naturally, I wondered why a creepy old house that was boarded up still existed beside a well established school. Little did I know, I learned shortly after that this home was uniquely built in the early 1890’s in “Queen Anne Revival Style” and shares stories of early settlement (City of Richmond, 2000). The second story involves my most recent visit to Terra Nova when I stumbled upon a sign that said, “Terra Nova Scavenger Hunt” with a QR code beside it. I thought I knew a lot about the lands on Terra Nova given the fact that I worked there and learned so much alongside my students, who often times knew more than I did because Terra Nova is somewhere they grew up since many of them were toddlers. However, while I could easily locate the spots on the scavenger hunt, I had no idea of the intentional art that was in place in parts of the park. For example, I was brought to a bench that was made of basalt rock that I was familiar with but had not noticed the details of the bench before this day. In past times, I used to have students sit on the bench between long walks around the park but this time I got to learn and read about the engravings on bench which displayed Indigenous art of two ravens (see image). The artist Thomas Cannell, an Indigenous artist stated that this piece of art is there to remind visitors of their ancestors from the Coast Salish community that inhabited this land thousands of years ago (City of Richmond, 2011).
Reflecting on all of this, I began to really resonate with writers Styres, Haig-Brown, and Blimkie (2013) who wrote, “our stories are layered…just as the footprints are layered on one another” in their piece titled Towards a Pedagogy of Land. To think that long before my experiences at Terra Nova, members of the Coast Salish peoples and individauls from early settlement walked along my very same footsteps makes me realize the significance and history of this land and how important it is that we keep these stories alive to share with future generations. Knowing these rich stories and histories makes me cherish and respect the land so much more. There are so many stories that live on lands that you may pass through every single day, yet are all the stories embedded in the land told or hoped to be found? It is important to take on a decolonial lens in this process to think about how much a place has changed from when it was first inhabited respectfully by Indigenous nations who lived off of the land.
The next time you stumble upon a place that you visit frequently, I urge you to take some time to research on the significance of the land or simply take a closer look and spend some time reflecting on who’s stories you can find around that place. Ask yourself, “who’s stories live on this land?” and “Who’s stories may have been forgotten?”
Rianna L