Presentation to Victoria City Council
by Sylvia Van Kirk
For The Church Of Our Lord
Thursday August 21, 2008
Mayor & Councillors,
I am Sylvia Van Kirk, Rector’s Warden and Heritage Co-ordinator of Church of Our Lord and I appreciate the opportunity to speak to the importance of Saving Cridge Park for us and the wider community. Church of Our Lord is an active member of the Cridge Park Rescue Group. Our Rector Rod Ellis, who is here this evening, has written publicly about the need to preserve this strategic green space and we are delighted to see this ground swell of community support.
Since it was built in 1875, the Church of Our Lord has always been flanked by the green space now known as Cridge Park. The name Cridge comes from our founder, that remarkable pioneer Bishop Edward Cridge, who with his wife helped to found such other notable city institutions as the Royal Jubilee Hospital and the orphanage which is now the Cridge Centre for the Family. The land on which our Church is built (Lot 1270)
was the gift of Sir James Douglas, now widely recognized as the ‘Father of B.C’. It is noteworthy that the lands which originally made up the Crystal Gardens complex, including the park, derived from Crown Lands and a gift of the grandsons of Sir James Douglas.
In 1930, the major development of the Crystal Gardens and the adjacent Bowling Green in Cridge Park were complemented by the building of a new church hall called Cridge Memorial Hall. For decades the Church has been granted the use of the Park for outdoor activities such as congregational picnics and had a harmonious relationship with the City Parks Department. A city park bench was located on the grounds in front of the hall and the city maintained this small lawn in addition to the park, prior to the expansion of Cridge Hall into our new Community Ministry Centre in 2002.
Church of Our Lord is the oldest church building in Victoria still on its original site. It was designated a National Historic Site in 1998. Recently, its distinctive neo-Gothic architecture has been dwarfed by the construction of modern high-rise condominiums on more than two sides. Cridge Park remains the only green space contiguous to the Church and to the Crystal Gardens, also a historic site. The bowling green itself should constitute a heritage green site, having been continuously maintained and used by the Canadian Pacific Lawn Bowling Club (CPLBC) for over 75 years. It would be a travesty to violate the purposes for which the city itself designated this land so many years ago. On the contrary, the whole park provides an enhanced setting for the Crystal Gardens, now part of the city’s convention centre. We understand that funding for the beautification of this space already exists. Cridge Park is also strategically located to constitute a “natural village green” for the neighbourhood.
The Church of Our Lord respectfully asks the City Council to
- preserve and beautify Cridge Park and give it official park status in perpetuity
- renew the lease for the CPLBC.
- develop appropriate plans for building on the ‘Apex’ site in consultation with the surrounding community through an open & transparent process as promised.
Thank you for your attention.