In an effort to inspire residents and honour their veterans, Delia Communities in Bloom has been working hard to make a beautiful and accessible park around the Cenotaph on the end of Main Street.
Thanks to the efforts of residents, the Delia Cenotaph has been undergoing a revitalization in recent months.
“Communities in Bloom has been revamping our Cenotaph Park. It’s looking quite nice,” said Delia CAO Caroline Siverson.
Since March of this year, Communities in Bloom have been working on the park around the Cenotaph. They have added walking paths, gates, flower beds, and a new gazebo. A year ago the park was in need of some maintenance according to Communities in Bloom chair Dennis Thordarson.
“We want to bring in a younger crowd, so we decided to make the area into a park, with the monument as the focal point. We started talking about it a year ago. It had got to a point where it needed a lot of work, the maintenance on it was a little lacking. We wanted to turn the park into a place of inspiration,” said Thordarson.
Communities in Bloom starting designing the new park in March and started work in May. The original goal was to have things done in time for the 2014 centennial. The project is almost finished.
“We had hoped to get it done by 2014 for Delia’s centennial, but the response has been so great that we’ve been able to do it all this summer,” said Thordarson. “The club has put in the bulk of the hours, but other people have come to help out too. When we were putting the roof on the gazebo, we had volunteers come out for that. The response from the community has been overwhelming.”
Thordarson, who lives within sight of the park, has noted an increase in visitation from residents of the community and beyond.
“It’s brought a lot of people in looking at it. Visitations to the park these past two months have doubled compared to all of last year. Other villages are coming down to look at it and are now considering similar projects,” said Thordarson.
The speed at which the work has progressed has also left time to consider other things to compliment the Cenotaph. It is hoped in the near future everyone who fought for Canada will have a place of honour within Delia.
“We have the names of our fallen soldiers on the Cenotaph, but we want to give recognition to everyone from our community who served and fought for our country. We’re going to build a wall of honour with everybody who has served as far back as we can go to today. It’s a matter of finding all that history before we can begin work on the plaques,” said Thordarson.
Communities in Bloom hopes to have the new memorial complete next fall. For the time being, they are conducting research and fundraising for the new memorial.
