Parc de l’Espoir
Like the Texas AIDS Memorial Garden, most other AIDS memorials were created by a few committed people who wanted to both honor the dead and draw attention to the crisis. The journey to create Montreal’s Parc de l’espoir (Park of Hope) began in 1990 when activists adorned an abandoned lot in the city’s Gay Village with ribbons and mementos—only for the lot to be cleared repeatedly by city workers. Finally, in September 1994, the city relented, and the lot was designated a commemorative space. The Parc, the Quilt and the Garden embody the desire that memory scholar Marita Sturken makes reference to in her in her 1997 book, Tangled Memories, when she writes, “The desire to memorialize the AIDS epidemic while it is still occurring reveals the need to find healing amid death.”
