People, Power, & the Park
A moveable history of community activism in Allan Gardens
May 12th – July 29th
Community Gallery
Public Reception:
Friday, May 12th, 6:30-8:30 pm, presented alongside our Main Gallery exhibition, Infrastructures of Dissent.
For over 125 years, Allan Gardens in downtown Toronto has welcomed communities including nineteenth century suffragists and World War I veterans in the depression, to twenty-first century environmentalists, antipoverty and gay rights activists. Indigenous communities have lived and gathered there for millennia. In the park, people have come together through time to celebrate their communities and advocate for their causes.
People, Power, & the Park features a structure composed of thirty individual display cases each telling a story about individuals, organizations, and events related to this storied history of the park. It celebrates Oronhyatekha, Canada’s first Indigenous physician; Milton Acorn and his fellow poet-protesters; the healing ceremonies of the Native Women’s Resource Centre; the persistence of Ontario Coalition Against Poverty; the resilience of the street nurses of Toronto’s downtown east, and more.
People, Power, & the Park: A moveable history of community activism in Allan Gardens was designed in collaboration with multiple stakeholders and built by students and staff at Toronto Metropolitan University. WAHC is proud to offer this exhibition in partnership with Toronto Metropolitan University’s Office of Social Innovation.
WAHC wishes to acknowledge the Ontario Arts Council, the City of Hamilton, the Province of Ontario, CUPE National, the Provincial Building and Construction Trades Council of Ontario, the Canada Council for the Arts and OSSTF for their support of our exhibitions and ancillary programs.