Connected to the land, rooted in tradition

Cree-Métis elder spread knowledge through gardening

By: Ben Waldman

Most people met Audrey Logan in the garden.

Anna Sigrithur first saw her carrying a pitchfork down Broadway in 2011. She was preparing to carve through two feet of late winter snow to get at a crop of what Logan referred to as “sunroots,” which others call Jerusalem artichokes.

“I remember the feeling. Zap — I must know more about this person,” says Sigrithur, a literacy worker, perfumist and artist who was on her way with a friend to start their March seedlings.

In October 2018, Evan McIntosh felt drawn to join Audrey in the trenches of urban permaculture at the Deer Spirit Garden, a community-run project created by Logan in 2014 with support from Klinic Community Health and the West Broadway Community Organization.

“Knowledge sharing is something that has to be done because we always, in the past, we had to hide our knowledge,” Logan told Global News in a 2022 profile. “A pandemic is a perfect time for people to learn about food security and how much insecurity they have.”

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Logan took on McIntosh as an apprentice at Spirit Park, a permaculture zone she helped establish in the early 2000s between Young and Langside streets, just north of Pal’s Supermarket on Broadway.

Early lessons were sage: pinch and grow, watch and learn, listen and remember. “One man’s weed is another man’s feed,” she told Global.

Logan, who died in January at the age of 61, was a Cree-Métis garden steward, mother, grandmother and dear friend.

She was born in Edmonton and removed from her family when she was three years old, during the Sixties Scoop. Logan left the foster care system in her mid-teens to live independently and work around Alberta. At 16, Logan worked at the city racetrack in Edmonton. A few years later, she drove long-haul down the coast of California, where she met Robert Henman, a handyman and member of the U.S. Navy from Roseville, Calif.

At 20, the couple’s daughter Tessa was born in Edmonton, while Henman was on active duty. The two remained close friends until Henman’s death at age 57 in Roseville in October 2021.

Logan settled in Sacramento in 1994 and completed her dental assistant certificate. After the birth or her daughter, Logan felt drawn to reconnect with her birth family in Treaty 6 territory. Her maternal grandmother Mary Rose Powder was still living near Fort MacMurray, Alta., as was her aunt Katie Sanderson.

From these matriarchal figures, Logan learned the traditional knowledge she’d eventually share with anybody who would meet her in the garden: the art of the trap, the need of the pollinator, the readiness of a berry, the flavour of the earth.

She moved to Winnipeg in 1998 and co-founded Spirit Park, a green space maintained by and for the neighbourhood, in the early 2000s.

In its bloom, the garden features Logan’s imprint: an abundance of milkweed, hyssop, comfrey and a vine of grapes overhanging the fence. Logan treasured her fruitful time in the garden with her grandchildren Abbigale, Melanie and Isaac.

“She turned so many people into gardeners,” her daughter, Tessa Dueck, says. “It’s an honour to know I got to be raised by such an incredible woman who overcame so much, especially in her younger years. I’m very proud of her.”

A co-founder of the West Broadway Community Organization’s Good Food Club, Logan was an ardent proponent of community-led, subsidized and supported food security projects.

A memorial celebration in her honour is planned at the Broadway Neighbourhood Centre on June 14, with a community feast and a program of sharing. The celebration will conclude with a visit to the Spirit Park community garden, where a seedling planted by Logan is now a pine tree that climbs three storeys high.

In lieu of flowers, plant one.

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