The Healing Garden

117 East Hastings

On the 100 block of East Hastings in what is colonially known as Vancouver, British Columbia, on the unceded lands and shared territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations since time immemorial, time out of mind - there is a garden.

This garden has many names and functions that we are learning, including:

● K’emk’em’elay, the Place Where the Maples Grow (Squamish Atlas)

● əmə́mələɬp, a word for the Hastings Mill site (Musqueam Place Names)

● Selected Impacts of Colonial Development on Burrard Inlet (Tsleil-Waututh Nation)

● The Garden of Care (Environmental Youth Alliance Internship Zine)

● The Hastings Folk Garden (DTES Gardeners and Beekeepers)

● The Healing Garden (forming, emerging, moving together, in formation)

Another name for this land, for many Downtown Eastside community members is: home.

When you visit the garden, we ask that you orient yourself around the ongoing impacts of settler colonialism, white supremacy, forced intergenerational displacement from territory, family and culture and the many ingenious ways people have learned to keep themselves and each other alive amidst an overwhelming presence of nonprofits, charities, developers, service providers, institutional researchers and colonial law enforcement. We ask that you consider this garden as alive and a part of this struggle.

If you have deep relationship in the DTES, with frontline and urban Indigenous community, we are looking to share access and responsibility for tending the land at the Healing Garden on the 100 block of East Hastings.

Please download and read this Key Holder Orientation for the garden, and reach out if you would like to hold a key and open the space to DTES community, including for celebration, ceremony or memorial.

There is currently no lease agreement for the garden and Hives for Humanity provided ongoing administration and coordination despite this. Since 2007, the property has been open to community as a garden, in a loose handshake-lease-agreement, which was initially managed by PHS Drug Users Resource Centre, and transitioned to Hive for Humanity in 2012. Concord Pacific is unresponsive to invitations into mutually beneficial relationship.

Ground Truth Map

This was a project of the inaugural Hastings Folk Garden Artist in Residence Program, coordinated and facilitated in collaboration by Hives for Humanity and by Artist in Residence, Gentle Geographies. Funding for this work was provided by: Enabling Accessibility Fund, TD Friends of the Environment, SFU Community Capacity Building, SFU Community Engagement, Embark Sustainability, Earthand Gleaners, 221a Artist Run Center, Artist Run Center Association (ARCA) and Tkaronto chapter of Architecture Lobby. This living map will be profiled on countermap.land as demonstration of our relationships of struggle and care.

Ground Truthing Map

Take a moment to consider a place that you love. A place you are called to. What do you feel when you think of it?
Visit this place. Perhaps only in your mind. Pause here to listen.
What do you hear? Close your eyes.
What memories come to your mind and body? Speak them outloud.
Plant your seeds and return to watch them grow.

Welcome, to our “Ground Truth Map”

The being portrayed in this map represents the Hastings Folk Garden at 117 East Hastings and the places, satires and many lives we commemorate through story, shared culture and art.

Each Icon within the map has a story associated with it which you can listen to below. 

Map design by Keenan Marchand.

This is not an ordinary life. Garden of magic and madness by Horace “the Bear Whisperer” Daychief

Horace “the Bear Whisperer” Daychief recites a poem he wrote reflecting on a life living on East Hastings.

Street Mom with DJ Joe

DJ moves in her practice of care along East Hastings and to the Folk Garden, sharing what it means for her to be a street mom — someone who cares for the community living on the streets. 

Fireweed with Jim McLeod

A story and personal reflection by Jim on what the Fireweed plant has meant to him and the community of the garden.

Considering care in space and time with phin

Reflections, curiosities, and questions offered by phin, while he moves through the Hastings Folk Garden, Garden of Care.

Reality 101 by Theresa Delores Gray

Theresa recites a poem she wrote about connection to earth and the world around us.

Phase change by Cait of Gentle Geographies and Sarah of Time & Times

Considering change, durational care, protection of land, resistance of violence, Sarah and Cait breathe and walk into being through accordion and piano, the worlds they dream of emerging.