My team and I were selected by the City of Toronto to design a public park at 254 King Street East, Toronto, in collaboration with Janet Rosenberg & Studio. The successful design proposal led by myself and Artist Oluseye Ogunlesi is informed by a community led vision to celebrate and commemorate the history, presence, diversity and future of black communities in the Moss park neighborhood.

The Artist Team Includes Oluseye Ogunlesi, Abel Omeiza, Ogbe David Ogbe, Ashish Ogidan, Chukwuebuka Idafum

The new park at 254 King East is inspired by the histories of Black migration that have shaped the city of Toronto. This includes historical events like the Transatlantic slave trade, the underground rail road, and the contemporary arrivals, departures and reunions of Toronto’s diverse Black populations.

To create a park that embodies these stories of migration, we will be using four symbols that are relevant to Black and Indigenous people in Canada — water, cowrie shells, cornrows and Sankofa.

From divination, to migration, to births, to burials, to celebrations and beyond, water as a pathway and as a tool is an essential cultural element to both Black and Indigenous people. In the North East corner of the central seating area, there will be a water feature made from stone. The shape of the water feature is inspired by the calabash, a West African object used for storing water. “Water no get enemy” will be engraved on the brim of the brim of the water vessel. This well known lyric by Fela Kuti, highlights the importance of water to all life; to our survival via the nourishment of our physical and spiritual being. By carving out this sacred space to acknowledge water, with recognition of both Black and Indigenous practices, we are once again showing the solidarities across cultures.

Building on the symbolism of water, the proposed park design imagines the park as an ocean or major waterway. In the center of this ocean —at the heart of the park — there will be an island with three large cowrie shells. The shells all be made of bronze and will have a height of almost six feet.

The cowrie is found in oceans across the globe and has been used for centuries as a symbol of Black pride, spirituality, fertility, wealth, beauty and ancestry. Many Asian and Indigenous cultures also value the cowrie for its decorative and spiritual use. Each cowrie represents a region of the world that is important in the narrative of Black migration to Canada. One cowrie stands for Africa, another for The Americas, and another the Caribbean. At the confluence, the point where the cowries meet, there will be a compass engraved into the ground showing the NWSE coordinates.

Flowing from the compass are three braided pathways that take you on a journey to the secondary seating areas in the park. The crisscross pattern of the braided pathways is inspired by the braiding pattern of cornrows. Braids and cornrows are central to Black traditions. They are an expression of pride and beauty and were used to to conceal maps to freedom for those escaping enslavement.

The braided paths lead to the secondary seating areas in the park. Each of these areas corresponds to a region of the world where Black Canadians have migrated from including Africa, The Americas, and The Caribbean. As you travel along the braided path to the corresponding region of the world, you will notice bronze inlays engraved with dates commemorating the historical arrivals of Toronto’s Black populations.

The braided paths meander through the park like the winding curves of the Sankofa symbol, which contains an important lesson about “learning from the past to build the future.” As the braided path approaches the seating area, it rises from the ground and evolves into a circular bench that frames the seated area. Hence, the path becomes the bench, and the journey leads to a resting place: home at the end of a long migration. The final element is a plaque which offers a brief explanation of each of the migration milestones indicated along the path.

To and from, back and forth, the cowries and braided pathways take visitors on a discovery of Black Torontonian history.