A 93-year-old Fairfield woman with a dream to memorialize her love for her husband and the city they lived in wept as the rose garden she donated to Beacon Hill Park opened Tuesday.
Rebecca Anne Steers watched her decade-long dream for a legacy landmark garden become a reality.
“I am so thrilled with this garden,” Steers said. “I haven’t been out of the house for three years — and to come here in this beautiful setting, it’s wonderful.”
The rose garden is across from the Beacon Hill Park petting zoo. It was relocated from the corner of Heywood and Bridge streets. The new garden features a custom-made ornamental iron gate in a heritage design and includes new benches, concrete pathways, an arbour, two gates and four obelisks.
A bronze plaque featuring a poem by Steers is affixed to a rock in the garden, which features 150 rose bushes, including Kosmos Fairy Tale, Red Riding Hood and Grand Amore.
A poem by Steers, who took up writing poetry in her late 80s, was read by friend Dave Hepburn to a crowd of dignitaries, friends and city staff.
The poem talks of a dream in which a homebound and mostly wheelchair-bound Steers is walking.
She reminisces about strolls she used to take with husband Ernie in the park on a Sunday afternoon, and picnics at the bandshell that lasted until the moon rose.
“We’d do all that young couples did and still do in this refuge from a busy world; we had not cares but each other as our blanket we unfurled,” the poem reads.
Steers was born in Manitoba and educated in Vancouver.
She married Ernie, 30 years her senior, in 1942.
The couple both worked but never had children. Ernie died in 1982 at age 92.
The couple would visit the rose garden and admire every bloom, she said.
Steers would not disclose the amount of her donation, expected to be in the tens of thousands of dollars.
“Ernie and I would inhale deeply of ocean air and of the fragrance of a rose: This garden seemed to prune away our worries, we always forgot our woes; so Victoria, here is this garden. It’s my legacy of beauty and love for you; Speaking of love, Ernie, I know you’re here, so inhale, like we used to do,” the poem concludes.
“I’m sure he’s looking down on this,” Steers said.
