Memorial for Kelowna Crane crashes before – Kelowna News

The fences rose around the Knowles Heritage Park, while the long-term plans for the memorial dedicated to the victims of a 2021 Kelowna maca collapse to take shape.

“Finally, I found a source of financing,” said Kelly Hutchinson, treasurer of the RISE Memorial Foundation, explaining the visible change around Bernard Avenue.

Hutchinson said that the identity of the financier will be made known in the following weeks, but is for now.

The dollars that fall arrived as a significant relief.

Only in January, the Foundation learned that the province refused $ 150,000 in financing the subsidies for the project and the entire chronology was thrown. Hutchinson said that there are a few stressful days, because the closest ones to the project have worked to align new sources of funding, but now, after they have, he can comfortably share the chronology.

With the fence, he said that demolition and excavation work will start in the coming days.

“They will make a certain classification of the site and work to try to keep some of the existing vegetation,” he said. “There are not much things at this moment, but there are small things that we do not want to do harm or in any way.”

In April an inheriting tree, the central point of the memorial will be installed. Then there will be a concrete training around the completed tree.

In May, paving stones and such things will be installed, and until June the lives of plants will begin to root.

All this will establish the scene for the July disclosure, which will coincide with the fourth anniversary of the tragedy and give people a place to mourn the loss of five lives.

“This should never have happened,” Hutchinson said. “So, we want a place to remember the men who died, but to highlight the importance of workers’ safety.”

Five men died on July 12, 2021, including Jared Cook, Caulen Vilness, Patrick and Eric Stemmer and Brad Zawislak workers, who worked in an adjacent office.

Vilness’s mother, Danielle Pritchett, said she was glad that a Place to memorize his son And the other men who died that day will be set up.

“It’s amazing,” she said, adding that she will help families involved in what is considered one of the most devastating accidents at work in the city to have a place to mourn.

Hutchinson agrees.

“There was no real space that would allow people to be sad and reunited,” he said, noting that the Memorial Garden will be for all those who have been touched by the tragedy at work.

One of Hutchinson’s other roles is the trade union representative with the Kelowna Labor Council. It does not work with the construction industry, but it was hit by the “horrible” nature of the crane collapse, and he and others thought it was important to climb and do something for those affected.

Said he wasn’t alone in it. This weekend he began to write a list of people who have reached him in a way in the last three years, to try to move the project.

He reached 150 lines, tired and paused, thought he would return to her shortly.

“Kelowna is different – we answered in a much closer way, because we are still a small city,” he said. “There were all these gestures and when it comes to its own project -zis … it is a park of one million dollars and we build it for practically $ 300,000 due to all donations.”