This year’s YMCA of Owen Sound Grey Bruce Peace Medallion has two winners.
A ceremony was held Thursday (Nov 18th) at the YMCA in Owen Sound where Susan Staves and the Gitche Namewikwedong Reconciliation Garden Project Committee, and Aly Boltman and the Potter’s Field Monument Volunteer Steering Committee were both selected for making significant contributions toward peace-building in the community.
The medal is awarded annually to a nominated individual or group who, without any special resources, demonstrate a commitment to the values of peace through contributions made within their local, national or global community.
Local YMCA Spokesperson Courtney O’Donoghue says in a release, “As we navigate through 2021, the urgent calls for action for diversity, social inclusion, and equity are challenging us, as individuals, as communities, and as a country, to reconsider where we’ve been and where we want to go.”
Along with the Gitche Namewikwedong Reconciliation Garden Committee, Susan Staves was individually nominated for being a driving force, founding member and committee chair.
The Reconciliation Garden Committee was established in 2010 to recognize and celebrate Indigenous peoples in Grey Bruce and their history through the creation of a gathering place for indigenous, Metis and non-indigenous people on the traditional settlement site of the Nawash and Saugeen First Nations peoples. It has educational and interpretive components and is meant to provide a place for Indigenous healing from the effects of the colonization and Canada’s Residential School System.
Co-recipient of this year’s Peace Medal is Aly Boltman and the Potter’s Field Monument Volunteer Steering Committee.
Greenwood Cemetery in Owen Sound is home to Potter’s Field, where roughly 1300 people lie in unmarked graves. There are hundreds of newborns/stillborn/toddlers, orphans, seniors, Indigenous people, the working poor, the incarcerated and the homeless buried there.
O’Donoghue says, “Many people from Owen Sound’s historic Black community, including many who escaped on the Underground Railroad and their descendants, share this overlooked resting place,” she adds, “It is estimated that about half of those interred were Black citizens who faced systemic racism, often resulting in deep poverty.”
In early 2018 Boltman led a cemetery tour, telling some of the stories of the people who are buried in the Potter’s Field. This inspired a local couple John and Shirley Reaburn to fund a monument to honour them.
O’Donoghue says, “The members of this committee have given a priceless gift to these families in the form of a monument which reflects on the historic connections of the Underground Railroad to Owen Sound.”
Peace Medal winners in recent years include, Jillian Lyman in 2020 who was 19-years-old at the time and organized the Owen Sound Black Lives Matter Solidarity March in June following the death of George Floyd in Minnesota.
The theatre group Sheatre was awarded the medal in 2019. Sheatre is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1985 at the request of Huron County residents who wanted to tell their stories and address rural issues using interactive theatre. It puts together projects that often engage excluded populations and address high risk social issues through acting, music, dance and writing and film.
In 2018, the medal was awarded to the indigenous Prayer Walkers ‘Da-namaamin moseyang giw-ganchigaazjig kwewag’ who were making their way across the country on foot to raise awareness of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women.
