The City of Côte Saint-Luc will name its new park at the corner of Cavendish Blvd. and Kildare Rd. after the late Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor and author who fought for peace, human rights and simple human decency.
The new park, to officially be called Elie Wiesel Remembrance Park, will include 11 trees, pedestrian paths, lamp standards, illuminated bollards, 10 park benches and decorative fences.
“Côte Saint-Luc has one of the largest populations, per capita, of Holocaust survivors in the world,” Mayor Mitchell Brownstein said. “It is highly appropriate to honour Elie Wiesel this way posthumously. After he died, it was our own Beth Israel Beth Aaron Congregation that held a Montreal-wide memorial.”
A formal dedication ceremony for the new park will take place in Spring 2017. Over the next few months, meetings will be held with the Montreal Holocaust Memorial Centre and community leaders to ensure that the park tells a story for what Wiesel and other human rights activists stood for.
As the city councillor responsible for naming rights, I was approached by a number of people after Wiesel died with the suggestion that the city honour him. I believe that by doing so at the intersection of two of our most important streets makes a lot of sense. Elie Wiesel was a champion for people of all religions. We are proud of the fact his legacy will live on in our community forever.
This is also in my very own District 2.
Born on September 30, 1928, in Sighet, Romania, Wiesel pursued Jewish religious studies before his family was forced into Nazi death camps during the Second World War. Wiesel survived, and later wrote the internationally acclaimed memoir Night. He also penned many books and became an activist, orator and teacher, speaking out against persecution and injustice across the globe. Wiesel won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986. He died on July 2 at the age of 87.
Work on the park will not be complete until the beginning of November.
