Bringing the Peace arch back.
One day, as I was going home after working in the Peace Garden the whole morning, someone approached me and asked: ‘Where is the arch in the Peace Garden? I did not see it recently. What happened to it?’ I had to explain to him that the Peace Arch had been destroyed not once but twice. Concerned by what happened he told me: ‘You have to put it back, will you?’ I said, ‘Yes we will’.
After the Peace Arch had been destroyed, Paul Bruni who volunteers at the Peace Garden managed to fix it and we put it all back together again but 10 days later it was once again on the ground. I must say I was quite upset at this senseless act of vandalism. The arch meant a lot to me, and I thought for the town as well. In 2003, the Peace arch was used to conduct sisterhood ceremonies between women from the Christian and Muslim community and later between women from all backgrounds. In 2017, as we did not use the arch anymore and as coordinator of the Watford Bridge of Peace, I decided to donate the arch to the Peace Garden. From that time on it stood at the entrance of the labyrinth and was chosen as a central point for gatherings on various occasions like in 2018 for the inauguration of the Peace Garden by Elected Mayor Baroness Dorothy Thornhill, as well as for vigils after terrorist attacks around the world and for more.
This summer, we had two groups of young people from NCS who volunteered for a week at the Peace Garden. They did a tremendous job and from their own initiative decided to raise funds for the Garden. Cllr Rabi Martins who had facilitated for them to come suggested that the money raised by the volunteers should be used to bring the Peace Arch back. I must say I was moved by the generosity of the young people and by Rabi’s support. But that was not all. As I was sharing at one of our WIFA meetings about the situation with the arch, one of our committee members Sri Mohan offered to build a much stronger arch. Sri Mohan and his friend Bob came to the Peace Garden a while ago and took all the measurements to build the new arch and discussed how they would go about it.
We created a WhatsApp group ‘Peace Garden Arch Project’ and over Christmas Bob sent us already some photos showing us what he managed to do at this stage.
We are getting there. Everyone is keen to see the result and bring the arch back.
Thanks everyone for all your help, soon our Peace arch will be back standing at the entrance of the Peace Garden, a symbol of the friendship between all the communities of Watford.
Françoise Murphy
07/01/2022
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