Bench

Transcript:

The meandering mouth of the river was drawn into the land. Past relations with the Don River led by settlers showed that controlling water through channels and straightened paths does not work.

Sit down and close your eyes. Draw a meandering curving line, without interrupting this line drawing continue it straight, again keeping with the same line let it meander once again. You have drawn a map of the Don River’s trajectory from source to mouth. From meander to channel to meander once again.

A new mouth was drawn into the Land, its trajectory modelled after the pre-straightened Don River and the tentacular and marshy meanderings of the Rouge River.

Ookwemin Minising (Oh-kway-min Min-nih-sing) is the artificial island through which the new mouth flows. Following the Anishinaabemowin tradition of naming places after the Land itself the name Ookwemin Minising means ‘place of the black cherry trees’ which were once bountiful here where we stand and are now being planted throughout the Island.