Brentwood Park Elementary celebrated the arrival of a seven-foot, 1,500-pound log at the school last week with First Nations drumming, singing and prayer.
Over the coming months, the red cedar log will be transformed into a totem pole that will adorn a space near the school office.
“Totem poles are really about bringing communities together, and for us, we’re very much about bringing our community together,” principal Gillian Lewis told the NOW. “The totem pole will be a rallying point and a way for us to express our values that we hold in common as a community and celebrate those values and the diversity that is our community.”
The project was the brainchild of Meagan Innes, when she was the aboriginal resource teacher for Brentwood Park and 11 other schools in the Burnaby North zone last year.
“We just needed a representation of First Nations culture in the schools that was visible and organic,” she said.
Jackie Timothy, an artist originally from the Tla’amin First Nation near Powell River, has been commissioned for the work.
Some of his other projects include totems for the Vancouver School of Theology and École Gabrielle-Roy in Surrey.
In 2009, he spent several months at Burnaby Mountain Secondary, carving a totem that has since been placed in Powell River.
After hearing that Brentwood Park wanted something that would reflect the school’s community and the traditional First Nations territory on which it stands, Timothy decided on a design that will feature an eagle on top and a mother bear holding a human being.
“That’s kind of symbolizing the nurturing of the mother, teaching the children the basis of life, and then moving forward,” he said.
The log has been set up in a sheltered area outside of the school, and students as well as community members will take part in the carving in some capacity, according to Innes.
The $10,000 project is being funded with $5,000 for the school’s parent advisory council, $2,000 from the school and $3,000 from the school district.
The log was procured from a collection of old driving-range poles pulled from the Burnaby Mountain Golf Course and piled by the tennis courts at Squint Lake Park since 2010.
The totem is scheduled for completion some time before September 2015.
