Last week, my tasks downtown completed, I rested at Pioneer Square, the sun-dappled pocket park at Quadra and Rockland, adjacent to Christ Church Cathedral and opposite the busy YMCA. I sat on a bench in the sun, revelling in summer, the greens of the trees, the flowerbeds, the monuments, the people passing by, the dancing yellow-and-black butterfly.
I thought of the protests in Turkey and realized how precious our green spaces are.
All the Pioneer Square benches were occupied, people enjoying a quiet moment, a smoke, a coffee, the newspaper, a conversation. Some people sat in the sun on the grass. We were spaced out quite evenly, a richness of green embracing each of us, all gently pursuing shade or sun depending on mood or need. A middle-aged man on a sun-blessed bench darted to one in the shade as soon as it was vacated, launching a lithe young woman to the free spot in the sun.
I plotted where more benches could be placed, in sun or shade, while preserving the private space the current plan allows. I wondered why I’ve never seen signs at Fort and Quadra, or at Blanshard and Broughton: “To Pioneer Square.” Is there a walking tour, I wondered, from Spirit Square to Pioneer Square? Where was the interpretive archival information to tell tourists what was here before the settlers, how the First Nations used this land and what use the colonial government put the land to? I wondered whose pioneer bones are interred here.
And so I thought of Taksim Square and Gezi Park, one of the last green spaces in Istanbul’s Beyoglu district. I’d passed through Istanbul years ago, on the hippie trail to India, but had retained no sense of the geography or the significance of the park.
Yet any demonstration defying the destruction of precious urban oases, wherever in the world, is attention-worthy. More so when the Turkish government has aggressively mishandled the peaceful protest of a development plan by a Turkish conglomerate with ties to the conservative ruling party.
For 134 years, military barracks stood on the current park grounds, until 1940, when the barracks were razed for a park that extended to the Bosporus. Inexorably, that urban park and its water access was reduced for shops and hotels, as Istanbul swelled to a city with 40 times Victoria’s population, until only Taksim Gezi Park remains.
The conglomerate will rebuild the barracks as a mall and luxury flats. Neither the municipal nor federal government consulted locals about sacrificing another urban oasis. A modest band of environmentalists peacefully occupying the park was assaulted with tear gas, clubs and water cannons.
A protest to save trees and demand consultation before urban “renewal” exploded into nationwide demonstrations to save Turkey’s imperfect democracy from additional centralizing efforts of authoritarian Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has significantly restricted freedom of the press and speech and seemingly hates people communicating: “To me, social media is the worst menace to society.”
Imagine a Canadian conglomerate intimately tied to federal and municipal politicians planning a mall and condos for “one of the only urban green spaces near downtown Victoria,” as Victoria’s website describes Pioneer Square. Would Christ Church Cathedral and local residents want this park paved, replaced by commercial enterprises, when these abound within a 10-minute walk? Would we gut the historic colonial heart of the city and disturb our ancestors’ spirits to house the wealthy and help us fulfil our economic function as consumers?
(The irony is that this was done, for generations, by colonists to lands used by First Nations.)
Where does it stop? Would we take a stand?
When inexorable “progress” paves the very nature that sustains us and robs us of the visible signs of our history, will we rise up like the brave Turks and reject a government-imposed development plan devoid of consultation?
Take 10 minutes on a bench in the shade or sun of Pioneer Square, watch the butterfly dance and answer this question for yourself.
Hendrik de Pagter is a retired hospital social worker living in Victoria.
