Œuvre d'art public
Aids Memorial
Curved wall, like a ribbon. On it, the names of thousands of BC AIDS victims have been cut out in the steel. A poem is written above.
With you a part of me hath passed away
For in the peopled forest of my mind
A tree made leafless by this wintry wind
Shall never don again its green array.
Chapel and fireside, country road and bay,
Have something of their friendliness resigned;
Another, if I would, I could not find,
And I am grown much older in a day.
But yet I treasure in my memory
Your gift of charity, your mellow ease,
And the dear honour of your amity;
For these once mine, my life is rich with these.
And I scarce know which part may greater be,--
What I keep of you, or you rob of me.
“But the energy that is me will not be lost” Dr Peter
Name of AIDS victim
Aids
The names have been placed randomly on the Memorial, representing the random nature of the impact of HIV/AIDS.
The poem's title, W.P., refers to Warwick Potter, a friend who died in an 1893 boating accident.