Liam Brown
natural watersheds. Their to date unrealised proposals focus on the literal unearthing of buried rivers, returning the city’s parks and ravines to a native form of water management. 5 Combining the richness of Toronto’s buried river mythology with the dispersal of ashes is an opportunity to create meaningful, accessible spaces of memorial within the city that de-marginalise the presence of death. In this proposal, in parks where rivers once ran, ash dispersal areas centre on cedar installations that echo the original courses of the streams, embedding the memory of the individual within the collective memory of the city. The cedar weathers and as consecutive pieces are added the path of the river is re-established along a variegated mnemonic structure. Each consecultive piece of cedar can carry the name of a person whose ashes are nearby. This ash-dispersal network could integrate into the existing network of funeral homes and cemeteries and be stewarded by either a municipal memorial society or the already community-active, compassionate group of local funeral directors. 6 These sites navigate the private and the public, negotiate the slippage between sacred and profane and engage a meaningful relationship between life and death. 7 In ashes, we observe the elevation of a material that despite its sacred content is still considered dust. It is, Connor states, ‘both a terminal and a mediate matter, inert, but sometimes, for that very reason, omnivalent’. 8 n
1 Wallace,Alfred Russel,‘The Importance of Dust:A Source of Beauty and Essential to Life’ (1898) Alfred Russel Wallace Classic Writings. Paper 7 . 2010 http://digitalcommons.wku.edu/dlps_fac_arw/7 2 Roth, Michael S.‘Graves of the Insane, Decorated’, Library of Dust , ed. David Maisel. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2008 3 Sousa, Eduardo.‘The Water Commons: Moving from Watershed Management to Watershed Consciousness in Toronto’. Alana Wilcox, Christina Palassio & Jonny Dovercourt. GreenTOpia – Towards a Sustainable Toronto. Toronto: Coach House Books, 2007 p119 4 Joseph Campbell, Bill D Moyers, Betty S Flowers. The Power of Myth. New York:Anchor Books, 1991 p28 5 Wickens, Stephen.‘What Bubbles Beneath our Streets’ Globe and Mail . 29 Oct. 2005: M5 6 The Ontario Ministry of Consumer Services states that ‘any individuals or families who wish to scatter the cremated human remains of their loved ones on Crown land and Crown land covered by water in Ontario can do so. Individuals and families are permitted to scatter on unoccupied Crown land, and those Crown lands covered by water.There is no need to obtain government consent to scatter on or in such areas, which include provincial parks and conservation reserves, and the Great Lakes. Individuals wishing to scatter on private land, or private land covered by water, should obtain the owner’s consent.’ ‘Scattering Cremated Human Remains in Ontario’: http://www.sse.gov.on.ca/mcs/en/Pages/Cemetaries_and_ Funerals_Scattering_Remains.aspx 7 Clifton D. Bryant, editor of The Handbook of Death and Dying quotes Lloyd Warner:‘The maintenance of the identity of the dead is necessary for the living to maintain their identity’. Warner,W. Lloyd. The Living and the Dead. New Haven:Yale University Press, 1959 8 Steven Connor ‘Pulverulance’ Cabinet , Dust Issue 35. 2009
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