Remembering the Children Community Art Piece to be Dedicated

During the week of May 24, Alison Hurlburt, weaver and lay evangelist, caught up with her travelling loom at All Saints’ Cathedral.

The Remembering the Children diocesan weaving project was facilitated by Alison, and Fiona Brownlee of the diocesan Indigenous ministries team, in memory of children who died at Residential Schools. 

Members of the diocese were encouraged to weave part of the orange textile while praying for “all those beautiful lives that were lost,” says Alison. The organic project began at Christ Church on Ash Wednesday and was then hosted by looms keepers at several Edmonton parishes. 

“People really embraced this project,” she says. “We had several dozen weavers contribute, including some from outside the Anglican community. Good Shepherd was so excited about it that Archdeacon Jordan couldn't even get a spot in line at her own church! At St. Luke's, the project sparked some cool conversations about connections between weaving, dream catchers, and Indigenous stories about spider woman.”

At the Cathedral, Alison carefully cut the piece off the loom revealing meaningful patterns meant to represent the discoveries of unmarked graves at former Residential School sites across Canada. The piece’s extra-long fringe “represents the way that the loss inflicted by Residential Schools can never be fully captured or represented by a single piece,” she says. The long fringe also symbolises the devastation of intergenerational trauma and the over-representation of Indigenous children in the foster system due to things like Residential Schools, the 60s Scoop, and the Indian Act.

At home Alison is repairing by hand hundreds of small skips: “places where the weft floats over more threads than it's meant to. Part of weaving a piece together as a community is accepting that it's not going to look perfect,” she says. “There are little bumps and skips, denser and looser spots, and wavy edges. When an Indigenous friend came to weave on the project at Christ Church, I apologised for the edges not being straight. He said, ‘Don't worry, the path to reconciliation is never a straight line.’” 

When the woven piece is ready to be displayed in churches throughout the diocese, following a dedication service this spring, Alison will roll it and wrap it in a blanket she is weaving out of local Alberta wool. Alison and Fiona are preparing information to provide context for the exhibit. They intend to take the community art piece out to as many places “as are willing to host it. Beginning with the parishes that hosted the loom, we are hoping that churches and community spaces will be interested in displaying the piece in the coming weeks and months.”

Alison will also share the piece with the weaving class she is teaching at Sorrento Centre in BC this summer. “Sorrento is close to Kamloops, so it would be particularly meaningful to bring the piece back to the area that sparked the latest round of energy around recovering and honouring the children who were lost.”

Follow @rememberthechildren.dioedm on Instagram to learn the date for the dedication service and see more pictures of the project.

Photos by the Rev. Shelly King