Brandon prepares Gone Too Soon garden

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This article was published 12/05/2025 (328 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Community members and volunteers gathered at the Riverbank Discovery Centre on Saturday morning to prepare the city’s first Gone Too Soon memorial garden.

The 10-by-60-foot flowerbed is located beside the Labyrinth of Peace on the northeast corner of the centre’s grounds along Kirkcaldy Drive.

Organized by Moms Stop the Harm, Brandon and Area Overdose Awareness advocates and the Brandon Gone Too Soon committee, the garden will serve as a peaceful tribute to lives lost to substance-related harm.

Volunteers spent the day tilling and preparing the land ahead of a public planting, aiming to create a space of remembrance, healing, and community support, chair Antoinette Gravel-Ouellette told the Sun.

Though the planting will not occur until May 31, she explained Saturday’s work signified about five years of effort coming to fruition.

Gravel-Ouellett, also the program manager for Moms Stop the Harm, stood amid the early spring sunlight and freshly tilled earth with a sense of mourning and hope.

“We’ve been working on this for about five and a half years,” said Gravel-Ouellette. “This is a garden for remembrance — a place of solitude and peace. It’s about honouring people who are gone too soon and showing that every one of them mattered.”

The idea for the garden was inspired by a similar project in Winnipeg. Brandon’s version is being built collaboratively by Moms Stop the Harm, Brandon and Area Overdose Awareness advocates and community volunteers. While the garden is still taking shape, its purpose is clear: remembrance, reflection, and reducing the stigma that still clings to substance use.

“This isn’t just a garden,” she said. “It’s a way to honour their spirits, their light, and who they truly were, not just how they died.”

The statistics behind the garden are sobering.

In 2024, Manitoba lost approximately 570 people to substance-related harms. While provincial data does not break down those numbers by city, the impact on Brandon is deeply felt. Gravel-Ouellette shared that she knows over a dozen individuals lost in the past year alone. One community member told her she had lost 55 friends over several years.

“Every single person had someone who loved them,” she said. “They are not statistics. They are sons, daughters, siblings, parents. They are more than their behaviour. People are people.”

The Gone Too Soon garden is an effort not only to memorialize those lives but also to help those left behind grieve in a healthy and supported way. The space will offer a quiet area for reflection, with a planting day on May 31 open to all community members who wish to take part.

Gravel-Ouellette emphasized that the grief surrounding substance loss often goes unspoken due to societal judgment. “Grief is the other side of love,” she said. “We grieve because we love.”

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