There are fewer memorial crosses at Derek Doubleday Arboretum in Langley, after volunteers removed most of the 215 installed in June of 2021 to honour the memory of children lying in unmarked graves at the Kamloops Indian Residential School.

Cecelia Reekie, who organized the memorial installation, said volunteers took down most of the crosses at the end of April, keeping a small number that were in better condition, having been painted different colours by youth at the Murrayville United Church last summer.

“We decided we would make just one small row,” Reekie explained.

“It’s still there,” Reekie added. “We’re still honouring the 215, it’s still a place where people come and reflect.”

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Volunteers put up the crosses, bedecked with children’s clothing, at the Arboretum at 21559 Fraser Hwy. in response to reports that the remains of 215 children, students of the Kamloops Indian Residential School, had been found on the reserve by the Tk’emlups te Secwépemc First Nation using ground-penetrating radar.

Since then, similar discoveries have been made at other residential school sites.

Someone left a child’s sandal on one of the remaining memorial crosses at Derek Doubleday Arboretum (Dan Ferguson/Langley Advance Times)

Reekie said the painted crosses were in better shape than the many unpainted crosses, that were the worse for wear due to weather-related damage.

“A lot of them were falling apart,” Reekie told the Langley Advance Times.

Reekie said the different colours were chosen to reflect the different personalities of the children and “what they could have been.”

As well, Reekie said the small group of volunteers who installed the crosses also wanted to make it easier for municipal parks crews to mow the grass.

“They’ve been fabulous,” is how she described the crews, who showed respect by carefully trimming around the crosses.

A less respectful approach was demonstrated by whoever was responsible for some incidents of petty vandalism at the site, where someone kicked over the crosses, over the last two months.

Up until then, Reekie said, the crosses were left undisturbed.

She called the incidents “disappointing.”

“We still have all the crosses,” Reekie added, “we’re holding on to them.”