Dundas Roncesvalles Peace Garden

And it's Prairie Smoke season.

The pink bud spikes are evolving into their signature feather-like wands.

Queen bees find an important spring food in the buds.

Low to the ground. There's a clump along the Dundas Street side.

Happening at the Peace Garden now. A community of Toronto's Sweat Bees are sipping and flitting throughout a dense crop of allium.

These bees nested over the long winter underground.

See the little one atop a purple floral round? Follow the short video to catch their quick darts.

Visit the Peace Garden for a close-up experience of the feast and group pollination. The bees won't bother you. They are busy at work.

In 1982, Winona LaDuke made a decision that went against everything people call success.
She was 22, fresh out of Harvard with a degree in rural economics, and instead of chasing the polished, corporate future people expected, she went to the White Earth Reservation in rural Minnesota — a place she had never actually lived, and a place where many people were not immediately sure what to make of her.
Her father was Ojibwe from White Earth. Her mother was Jewish from the Bronx. She had been raised in Oregon, didn't speak Ojibwe, and arrived carrying the weight of an Ivy League education — something that, on the reservation, could easily make her look like another outsider coming to explain things instead of learning them.
She became a high school principal at Pine Point, and more importantly, she paid attention.
What she found was the quiet machinery of a theft that had been running for generations. An 1867 treaty had set aside White Earth as a permanent homeland for the Anishinaabe — more than 860,000 acres of prairie, wetlands, and sacred wild rice territory. It was meant to remain theirs forever. But government policies allowed lumber companies and other non-Native groups to take over more than 90 percent of the land by 1934 Wikipedia— taken through paperwork instead of open violence: fraudulent land transfers, tax seizures imposed on people without a cash-based economy, and legal documents written in English for people who spoke only Ojibwe.
In 1985, she joined a legal effort to reclaim that stolen land. When the courts threw the case out, saying too much time had passed, most people would have accepted the defeat and walked away.
She didn't. She stayed.
In 1989, using the proceeds of a Reebok Human Rights Award, she founded the White Earth Land Recovery Project — with a goal that sounded simple but was brutally difficult: buy the land back, one parcel at a time. WikipediaNo giant spectacle. No flashy campaign. Just steady, determined recovery.
The process was painfully slow. But while land was being reclaimed, something deeper was being restored too. She helped start Ojibwe language programs so children could learn words their grandparents had once been punished for speaking. She brought buffalo back to the region. She pushed wind power long before renewable energy became mainstream. And she helped revive manoomin — wild rice — the sacred food that had nourished her people for generations.
Wikipedia
By 2000, the project had recovered 1,200 acres. WikipediaCompared to what had been taken, it was only a sliver. But it was enough for ceremonies to return. Enough for cultural memory to breathe again. Enough to prove that restoration was possible.
Then the pipeline fights arrived.
When Enbridge moved forward with the Line 3 tar sands pipeline through treaty-protected waters, LaDuke's long, quiet work turned into open resistance. She helped lead court challenges, took part in direct actions, and stood shoulder to shoulder with Water Protectors in brutal cold. She was arrested more than once. More than 600 people were arrested during the Line 3 protests. The pipeline was ultimately finished in 2021 — but the fight pushed treaty rights into mainstream debate in ways that still matter in cases today.
LaDuke also carried that fight onto the national stage. She ran for vice president on the Green Party ticket in 1996 and again in 2000 — not because winning was realistic, but because Indigenous issues deserved a place in national political conversation. In 2016, she received an Electoral College vote — the first person from the Green Party ever to do so.
SavingPlaces
Now in her mid-sixties, Winona LaDuke is farming h**p on the White Earth Reservation Wikipediaand calling for what she describes as a New Green Revolution — one that replaces petroleum with plant-based alternatives. And through all of it, her message has stayed consistent: progress is not the enemy, but progress without consent is just theft dressed up in better language.
She did not choose an easy life. She chose a necessary one.
She took outrage and turned it into institutions. She took grief and turned it into restored land. She proved that sometimes the most revolutionary thing you can do is not destroy a broken system — but build something stronger that survives it.

We raised a new red dress up into the Red Oak tree at the Peace Garden, to replace one that disappeared in winter.

To respect the tree, we secured the dress in place with stretchable velcro straps. They will be adjusted next year, for the health of the tree.

It's spring 2026. Indigenous women, girls, two-spirited people, and others continue to be murdered and go missing. All are tragedies. All, and all their relations, call for justice, and healing.

The Native Women's Association of Canada presents resource kits for education and to encourage participation in Red Dress Day, May 5th. Learn to make a faceless doll to help represent the 4,000 estimated MMIWG2S+. Access some facts, and literature.

See the first Comment for a link to NWAC's advocacy and resources pages.

The monks entered Washington DC today.

Tomorrow, Wednesday Feb 11, everyone in the world is invited to join in a commemorative Mindfulness Meditation. live stream through Facebook or their website, between the hours of 4:30 - 7:30 pm EST.

Links to connect are in the first comments below.

Here is the monks' invitation:

📌 Join with Us - Global Loving-Kindness Meditation - Feb 11, 2026
We warmly invite everyone from across the nation and the world to join us for a special loving-kindness meditation session with the venerable monks and Venerable Bhikkhu Pannakara.

📅 Date: Wednesday, February 11, 2026 (Our Day 109)
⏰ Time: 4:30 PM – 7:30 PM EST
📍 Location: George Washington University Smith Center
🔴 Online: Livestream available

This session will be livestreamed on our page and website so everyone can participate at the same time, no matter where you are in the world.

When thousands of hearts meditate together in the same moment, our collective loving-kindness ripples outward, touching hearts, healing wounds, and planting seeds of peace everywhere. Your presence matters. Your meditation matters. Your loving-kindness matters.

Please mark your calendars and invite your friends, family, and community. Together, we will join in meditation and send loving-kindness to all beings.

Livestream available on:
• Facebook: Walk for Peace
• Website: (Link in the comment section of this post and always pinned at the top of our page)
May everyone and all beings be well, happy in Walk for Peace

FLOWERS AND PEACE

Every day on the Walk for Peace, visitors line the path roads of their journey. People give flowers to the monks. A monk receives a flower, then hands it to another person down the road. Flower petals may be laid for the monks to walk upon.

Few words are exchanged. The flowers say so much:

Kindness, respect, gratitude, support, compassion, joy, wisdom, recognition of beauty, and understanding of a mutual commitment to peace in all of its meanings.

As a Buddhist symbol, flowers are a "silent teacher" of the transitory nature of life, living mindfully in the moment. They emerge with tender and stunning beauty. They grow, thrive, and fade, returning to enrich the earth. When laid for monks on a peace journey, they are a sign that peace is already blossoming in the community.

The Garden in Winter is nurturing tulips under the snow.

We could call it a necessary beauty sleep.

When tulip bulbs were planted during Remembrance Week, in soil cooler than 13°, a process of converting their starches into glucose began. The glucose protects a bulb from harsh temperatures throughout winter, then feeds the bulb when warmth penetrates the soil in early spring.

The production of glucose takes time. This is why tulips need a long winter of 8-12 cold weeks.

We could say, "good things come from hibernation".

Thanks to Daniele Stoddart for the photo.

WALKING FOR PEACE

19 orange-robed monks began a 3,700 km Walk for Peace on October 23 2025 from their home in Fort Worth, Texas, the Huong Dao Vipassana Bhavana Center.

People soon began lining the roadways to see them, to hear soft-spoken messages of peace, to give flowers, to express gratitude, and, increasingly, to walk with them.

As they pass, they give blessings to people who are suffering, or offer a simple friendship bracelet of coloured threads with kind words.

At days end, they often stop while their Walk leader, Bhikkhu Pannakara, speaks of loving kindness, and compassion. He calls everyone to find the peace that is their birthright. A gathered crowd listens. Many shed tears.

Hunger for peace in the USA is real.

Their goal is to reach Washington DC by mid-February. That's about an average of 30 kms a day.

Wouldn't it be lovely if the monks and their followers could continue walking with their beacons of love and light all around the USA.

We will follow them on social media.

Join in, friends and neighbours. Community Planting of Tulips for Peace Day on Saturday Nov 8th, at the Dundas Roncesvalles Peace Garden. Drop in anytime between 10am - 1pm.

Plant a bulb. Plant several. Honour veterans. See, and teach your child who defended Canada with their life, and how closely nearby they lived in our neighbourhoods, on our streets, like Fern, Geoffrey, Parkside, Indian Road, Bloor Street and many others. Perhaps in your house.

An exhibition, "They Walked These Streets" is mounted with placard memorials for local Canadians who died in the world wars. Bring your smart phone to see more photos, their names, where they went to school, their stories. You will be moved and understand what they lost for the peace we treasure today.

We do have some trowels. You may prefer to bring your own.

Cookies and a hot drink are provided.

With many thanks to Roncesvalles Village BIA for providing dozens of tulip bulbs.

STREET ADDRESS IS: 2201 Dundas Street West M6R 1X6