MEMORY SCARVES
”The Memory Scarves” is an assemblage of beautifully knitted, crocheted and eclectic works (by more than 125 knitters and embroiderers, volunteer citizens), commemorating the 251 seniors of the boroughs of the South-West and of Verdun having sadly succumbed to the COVID in the CHSLD's of our neighborhoods.
We warmly thank the Urban Health Foundation, the Pier 5160 - Verdun Cultural Center, the Verdun district and the South-West district for their invaluable support for the realization of this mobile exhibition which is intended to be a space of meditation and ritual to experience the collective mourning necessary to give meaning to life.
On April 8, 2020, many elderly and committed people in the du communitySud-Ouest and Verdun suddenly felt pushed aside, as if, les seniors who contributed had to withdraw, stay at home.
And there came the idea of trying to reconnect virtually through a zoom, something we had never experienced before. We then started the ZOOM Seniors each Wednesday morning, to break our isolation, tell each other how we were doing, share ideas creative ways to help other seniors in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.
I remember during the ZOOM Aîné.es of April 16, 2020, Jean-Claude Duclos, a citizen Elder very involved in communities and with seniors us a shared that he once saw “knitted scarves hanging around a steeple church in Cap Santé”.
One thing leading to another, by exchanging on what was happening in our boroughs South-Ouest and Verdun, the isolation of seniors, the feeling of helplessness, the carnage of the 251 people who died alone in our CHSLDs... the project Les Memory scarves took shape.
Are grafted and took the leadership of this project Les Scarves of Memory, Francine Campeau, knitter at CÉDA and very involved in the community, who took echofrom the idea of knitting in memory of each deceased person. At the same time Viviane Freedman, citizen of Pointe-Saint-Charles very involved in the Elder consultation, mobilized knitters from her neighborhood. Then Marie-France Hope, knitter at the Verdun Seniors Community Center, citizen of Ville-Émard-Côte-Saint-Paul created a movement of knitters in Verdun.
Several workers from community organizations, seniors' committees, neighborhood tables joined along the way, to support this project initiated and carried by the forces senior citizens of the Sud-Ouest and Verdun!
More than 125 people, senior citizens, volunteers took turns and collaborated to this magnificent project full of meaning and carrying a feeling of coherence.
Miriam Rouleau-Perez,
Community organizer