How a sacred forest space in Champlain Heights is fostering healing and connection

On a trail in Champlain Heights near her home, Marge Wylie sits on one of several low, carved benches, which are arranged in a semi-circle amongst a stand of fir trees.    

“There are times where I come just about every day,” Wylie told Vancity Lookout, referring to the spot along Red Alder Trail where we’ve arranged to meet that day. 

Wylie is a member of the Tl’azt’en Nation, and grew up in Tachie, a village about 30 miles from Fort St. James in the central interior of B.C. Wylie is also a survivor of the residential school system, which she attended for five years from the ages of 5 to 10. 

The forested garden where we’re sitting is part of the National Healing Forest Initiative, a Canada-wide community-led project to create green spaces to honour residential school victims, survivors, and their families. 

“I survived the residential school. So for the first 30 years of my life, I was just surviving. Now I'm trying to just reconnect with what I was born and raised in, [being] one with the earth,” Wylie said.  

We’re in one section of the Douglas Fir Teaching Garden, an area that’s been rehabilitated and is being maintained by the ecological stewardship group Free the Fern, which Wylie is a part of. As part of its work in the area, Free the Fern created this sacred circle, commissioning Squamish carver John Spence, along with his apprentice son, Koda, to create carved cedar benches and a teacher’s chair for the space. 

It’s currently the only space publicly designated as a Healing Forest in all of Vancouver. It’s a place for everyone, whether Indigenous or non-Indigenous, to visit and use for reflection and healing.   

“This space was here, but [Free the Fern’s founder] Grace has turned it into this wonderful healing space. Up until recently, you had to go somewhere else, like over to the island or some small town to try to find it. So how wonderful that [it’s] almost in my backyard,” Wylie explained.

The folks behind the National Healing Forest Initiative, founded in 2015, emphasize that these spaces can take many different forms, led locally with the involvement of local Indigenous people and groups. 

“Each community decides for themselves what their Healing Forest will look like and how it will function. The only condition is that the forest is created and used in the spirit of reconciliation, healing, shared understanding and respect,” according to the initiative’s website. 

“It’s very important to me, because that's what I know this as. I'm not going to just sit here and do something else. It's about my work,” Wylie said, who shared that her mother also had to go to a residential school. 

“I think when you take somebody when you're that young, it's not an easy thing to get out of,” Wylie said.

“We didn't have a good childhood, because she drank to escape her memories and her pain,” Wylie shared, adding that her own daughter comes by the healing forest and that telling her daughter that she went to residential school has helped their relationship. 

“I do sit here and do some work about the residential school, because I know that I haven't done all my work surrounding that,” Wylie said, adding she’s also used therapy and silent retreats as other tools in her healing journey. 

Wylie, who is 73, has spent most of her life in Vancouver and has lived in co-op housing in Champlain Heights since 1990. She described how fortunate she feels to live in such a green, tree-filled part of the city, after living near Commercial Drive and around Knight and 41st Avenue earlier in her life.

Killarney, which includes Champlain Heights, stands out as the only neighbourhood in East Vancouver currently hitting the city’s goal of 30% tree canopy cover. That’s about double the tree coverage compared to neighbouring areas, and far more than areas like Strathcona (9%) and Downtown (13%).

Zoom in further and it’s clear the forests and green spaces in Champlain Heights are responsible for that figure, with most the community, including the area that’s home to the Healing Forest and the surrounding trail network, having more than 40% canopy cover.  

Wylie shared other circumstances where the space has been helpful for her, like when she lost a good friend just a few weeks ago, who was a big part of her healing journey. 

“She was like family to me… that's the first thing I did was I came down here. I feel like I'm closer to her here,” Wylie described, choking up with the rawness of her friend’s passing. 

“I think I've always known that I want to keep growing and healing until I stay one with everything. Because, unfortunately, even though I had reached that [and] I know what it is, you kind of drift off in life. That's what [the space] has done for me, Wylie said.

As we say goodbye, Wylie mentions she’s off to make jam — blackberry, blueberry, and rhubarb — to contribute, along with homemade bannock, for an upcoming Free the Fern event at the end of the month. The event is free and open to everyone.   

As the sacred circle and the garden have been established through communal effort, it’s only fitting that the space is also used to come together, share, and celebrate.