Designed as part of a team that is led by Canadian office Fathom Studio in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, and includes Two Row Architect from Six Nations of the Grand River, the Lens represents a striking new addition to the collection of monuments that encircle Ottawa’s Confederation Boulevard. The concept celebrates the act of resilience generated through community: carving space from a hostile environment, standing proud from the landscape, and sending reverberations of this power into the landscape and beyond.

The LGBT Purge was a discriminatory federal government campaign that emerged during the Cold War and extended to the early 1990s. Homosexuals in public service, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and the Canadian Armed Forces were subject to intensive and personally invasive investigation, and fired if discovered. Following a class-action lawsuit, in 2017 Canada publicly acknowledged its wrongdoings, with the ambition to address systemic racism and homophobia still evident in its federal institutions today.

The landscape answers to the “impact” point of the monument with a series of ripples, rolling berms of planting that bloom in alignment with significant moments in the Queer, Indigenous, and Ottawa calendar. The planting uses native species, requiring less maintenance while restoring local biodiversity and reclaiming the health of a previously polluted site. Granite walls and seating between the berms provide space for quiet reflection and bear interpretive installations, supported by a thematic framework of the Algonquin-Anishinaabe’s seven grandparent teachings. Through its function as a monument and its use of landscape, the Lens makes a significant contribution to the UN Sustainable Development Goals, adding biodiversity (SDG 15) reducing inequality (SDG 11), contributing to justice and strong institutions (SDG 16), and assisting in quality education (SDG 4).