Caption: still from pollution probe’s documentation of the 1969 funeral for the don

Funeral for a River: A Puppet Procession and Open Studio Gathering at Evergreen Brick Works

When: Wed., July 13, 2022 4 – 8 pm

Start and end: Evergreen Brick Works Building 1 (The Burrow)

Organized by Brandon Latcham and Shannon Gerard, with Mare Liberum

In 1969, the future organizers of Pollution Probe – now one of Canada’s most influential and longest-running environmental justice groups – held a funeral performance for the “deceased” Don River. This shallow, meandering river had been colonized, dredged, straightened, industrialized, and eventually left to stagnate at the core of the city. This celebrated Funeral was both a performance and a protest, a gesture of resistance and a refusal to accept a world so full of harm, and a launching point for later work to “reclaim the Don.”

Today, with the Don River Valley experiencing a resurgence of interest and attention and the Don River greeting more visitors in the COVID era than perhaps ever before, we ask, “What is the future of the River Don?” How does the Port Lands Flood Protection Project and the Don Mouth Renaturalization project, on the one hand, vie with propositions for the future use of the Don Valley by Metrolinx and other developments on the other hand? What will increased density and urban development along the edges of the Ravines spell for the Valley’s fragile ecosystem(s)? What might we have lost, or what might we stand to either lose or gain? More broadly, as we are living through a time of loss – from mass extinction and global extreme climate events, to personal and collective/cultural loss in the current global pandemic – how might we reinterpret the funeral for a river as a chance to hold a ritual or ceremony that recognizes what is both lost and what might possibly be regained? How might a funeral for a river present both an end point and a new beginning?

We will walk from Evergreen to the Don, in a procession of puppets and boats. At the Don, we will pause to read, sit quietly, meditate, be with time.

Please bring something to share with others or to sit with and hold close - writing, a poem, a word, a memory, a loss, a gain, something you wish to be rid of, something you’d like to hold onto.

Following the procession, we will reconvene at Building 1/the Burrow at Evergreen Brick Works for dinner (food trucks on site - or bring your own).

Rain or shine.

Free.

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This guided walk is presented as part of Mare Liberum's 'In Which We Draw A People's Map of the Don' project, through a partnership between Evergreen's Public Art Program and Waterfront Toronto’s Temporary Public Art program.

The project is made possible through generous support from ArtworxTO and the Canada Council for the Arts.