From: Steve Artelle, Chair, Poet’s Hill Committee
Re: Commitment to Literary Commemoration
Context: Literary Pilgrimage in Ottawa

The individuals involved in the Poet’s Hill committee and the Poets’ Pathway project have made wonderful contributions to Ottawa’s literary heritage in the past years, through words, through action, and through advocacy.

We are very fortunate to be on the receiving end of a local literary culture that the journalist M.O. Hammond described in August 1915 after a visit in Ottawa with the poet Duncan Campbell Scott:
[Scott] went out with me, most generously, as a guide on a Lampman pilgrimage.  We took a car to the house in Bay St. where Lampman died, a large red brick building, then to two others over on Stewart St. and Daly Ave., respectively, on Sandy Hill, where Lampman lived at different times.  …  We wound round now over the Rideau and made for Beechwood Cemetery, where Lampman is buried.
Almost a century later, I am proud to be involved in an initiative that seeks to promote and enhance this unique civic and cultural legacy.
Achieving Commemorative Aims

Our success at Beechwood has been due to the active collaboration of the Beechwood Cemetery Foundation.  The Foundation has been generous and accommodating with regard to the objectives of our committee, and in turn I feel the committee has been responsive to the priorities of this organization.  Much work remains to be done, but I am confident that the work we are doing here will resonate for generations to come.

As a literary historian, I simply do not share the view that a commemorative network of literary heritage sites in Ottawa can only be achieved through the will of the NCC.

On June 21, 2005, Marcel Beaudry wrote: “The NCC would welcome a proposal to commemorate national poets along an outdoor route; however, we would strongly advocate that such a commemoration be located in the core area of the Capital, as that is where the majority of visitors focus their experience.”  

In fact, my research confirms the NCC’s position on where Ottawa’s literary history is most in evidence.  Recall the Lampman pilgrimage of 1915: Bay Street, Sandy Hill, Beechwood Cemetery.
Opportunities

Opportunities to establish prominent literary-heritage sites continue to exist under federal, provincial and municipal heritage policies, and through the positive cultivation of community partnerships and volunteer engagement.

It is important, therefore, to specify the range of activity I personally endorse in my role as a member of the Poet’s Hill committee:
 I look forward to advancing our work on Poet’s Hill in 2007, and I look forward to participating in the growth of the Poet’s Hill committee, which I am confident will champion commemorative initiatives in Ottawa for many years to come.