Saugeen members rebuilding stone amphitheatre

Young community members learning the ancient art of dry stone walling have nearly rebuilt the roadside amphitheatre, beloved by the Saugeen First Nation community, but hidden from view and underused for years.

The new amphitheatre includes a seating area of stone slabs arranged in curved rows down a hillside, overlooking a central performance area and the Saugeen River valley below.

A tall, solid but mortarless wall of carefully fitted stones runs halfway around the amphitheatre so far, from the base of the hill in the east, up the hillside and as of this weekend, to just past the midpoint at the back of the venue.

People will enter through a grand, arched stone entranceway, which has been built at the top. The name of this picturesque site translates from the Ojibwa as Creator’s Garden.

The 48-year-old amphitheatre presented safety and liability concerns and so a plan was created to transform the site, said Jennifer Kewageshig, who is overseeing the project she conceived and has been driving for the past seven years.

She’s the band’s employment and training officer, also responsible for amphitheatre maintenance and programming. The vision she’s helping to carry out is to transform both the amphitheatre, community members’ lives and create opportunities.

“Not only is the whole place changing, the lives of the men that are there are changing. And in a sense, that’s changing our community,” Kewageshig said. “There’s not as much animosity and negativity.”

Dean McLellan, a dry-stone-walling master craftsman in Holstein, in southern Grey County, has been training the young workers on the site.

Twelve young men work on the site and more may be added, depending on funding, Kewageshig said.

Saugeen First Nation’s amphitheatre and the stone wall around it are being rebuilt and are slated to be finished by fall. Photo taken Saturday, May 30, 2020 at Saugeen First Nation. (Scott Dunn/The Sun Times/Postmedia Network)

An initial burst of work launched in 2014 but in 2016 construction was halted after worker problems arose. The project resumed in spring of 2018 and is on track to be completed this fall.

The “Princess Staircase” along the east side of the amphitheatre has been rebuilt, a stone oven was added, as was a ceremonial fire pit was made and a monument to missing and murdered Aboriginal women established.

There has been divided opinion about the extensive site work too, which has involved removal of an old stone staircase, trees and to date and the partial removal of an original retaining wall, Kewageshig said during a visit to the site Saturday.

Renewal of the site was prompted when it was discovered the wall surrounding the original amphitheatre was improperly built and the seating area sat precariously on sand and rubble on the side of a hill.

Maintenance needs were growing and mortar was being applied to the original, mortarless walls which, when opened up, were found to have been filled with sand and other improper material, which was allowing them to shift.

But those stones are being reused in the new, bigger and more impressive ring wall.

“In a sense, it’s an excellent teaching tool that’s been left there for the men of today, to teach them a new skill to give them a good wage to provide for their family, and keeping that money within our own community,” Kewageshig said.

The original amphitheatre, located just east of and below Wesley United Church, was a community-building project too.

In 1972, Rev. Earl Stotesbury and Chippewas of Saugeen Chief James Mason collaborated on the project to foster understanding and friendship between native and non-native people.

Stonesbury’s “labour of love” would later lead to the community making him an honourary member.

This plaque is dedicated to Rev. Earl Stotesbury, the United Church minister at Saugeen First Nation who caused the community’s amphitheatre to be built. It sits beside the rebuilt “Princess Staircase” in this photo taken Saturday, May 30, 2020 at Saugeen First Nation. (Scott Dunn/The Sun Times/Owen Sound)

His son, Dennis Stonesbury, and other family members have attended community meetings about amphitheatre project, are supporters of it and will be visiting the site Thursday, Kewageshig noted.

Mason’s daughter, Gayle Mason-Stark, sits on Saugeen council.

Richard Nancarrow, a civil engineer who is the project manager, said in a phone interview that the rest of the west stone wall will be built, as will a new, dry-stone-wall wedding pavilion on the church grounds by year’s end.

It will be open for weddings next spring, which will begin generating revenue. He intends to bring summer theatre to the site and have a music festival in summer too.

Nancarrow has musical interests and he used to play with the Owen Sound-based Georgian Bay Symphony and has served as its president.

An amphitheatre grand opening, which was to have been in September, is now proposed for spring, due to the ongoing though gradually diminishing COVID-19 pandemic restrictions.

The scope of the project could grow bigger, if the money is found, “to make it into an international tourist destination is the goal,” Nancarrow said. That vision was shared with the community in February.

“Tourism’s a huge business. I think we can have, like a hundred people employed at the reserve on the tourism side in the next few years. So that’s the big picture.”

International tourists already were interested in the original site, he and Kewageshig said.

Concept plans include “a big visitor centre with a huge space for (cultural) interpretation, wedding receptions,” he said.

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