Jody Terhaar carefully reached inside a clear envelope, gently pinching the wings of a Monarch Butterfly housed inside.
And, with a flick of her wrist, the colourful insect was set free into the morning sky above the pavilion at King Edward Park in Brighton on a clear and windy day on Sept. 1.
The butterfly was one of 100 monarchs set free in a Butterfly Release event to honour the death of loved ones through illness, COVID-19 or Aboriginal children that morning. It was hosted by the Good Grief Support Groups that operate within the Fellowship Christian Reformed Church (CRC) in Brighton.
Terhaar represented the First Nations community in Northumberland who, like others across Canada, are mourning the loss of its children whose graves have been discovered at Residential School sites across the country.
Go Northumberland spoke with Darlene Bunn, an organizer of the event.
Bunn mourned the lost of her mother in the early weeks of the pandemic. With the release of her butterfly, Bunn, her eyes welling with tears, said a final goodbye to her mother as the Monarch flitted away, soon to be headed on its winter migration to an area in central Mexico.
Everyone in attendance at the event received an envelope containing a Monarch Butterfly to release.
The event occurred last year solely for those within the support groups due to COVID-19 restrictions in the province. This year, however, it was opened up to the entire community, said organizer Winnie Visser, who’s the congregational life director within the Brighton church. The event was well-attended, including Brighton Mayor Brian Ostrander who spoke briefly before the butterfly release.
This year, said Visser, the event has especially resonated, with the continued loss of life due to the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the discovery of a large number of unmarked graves of Aboriginal children who attended residential schools in Canada.
“There has been so much loss this year, with COVID victims, so much loss with respect to the Aboriginal community and the children and individual losses around our community and we want to honour those who have died. We also want to stand beside those that want to journey in their grief and need some support and, quite frankly, we all need support when we’re grieving,” said Visser.
Visser explains the butterfly and its life cycle is symbolic of all the series of steps taken by those navigating the grief process.
“Butterflies have a symbolic lifespan. They are a caterpillar, they go into a chrysalis, a cocoon, and then they transform into a butterfly. The grief process is a form of that, you are in this dark space and you slowly walk out of that into something new and different and beautiful,” she said.
Don Davis, a self-described ‘citizen scientist’, rounded up and tagged each of the butterflies used in the Good Grief Support Groups release on Wednesday.
The Colborne resident has been involved in research on Monarchs since 1967, has been an international speaker on the colourful insect, and has previously led Presqu’ile Provincial Park’s annual Monarchs & Migrants weekend, which has been postponed due to the pandemic.
Davis says all the butterflies used in the Brighton release were tagged with a small round tag that contains a website address as well as number for each individual butterfly.
“Right now these Monarchs which are true migrants, they’re not ready to reproduce, their goal is to reach Mexico and spend the winter there. And they are migrating westward along the lakeshore and crossing the lake when conditions are good. Each year I tag a number of them and usually have some recoveries in the eastern United States and in Mexico,” said Davis.
If you are in the grieving process over the loss of a loved one, there is support available in the Brighton community. An eight-week Grief Support Group is beginning at the Fellowship CRC, 204 Main St., Brighton on Sept. 27 at 7 p.m. Registration is required. For more information, call 613-475-3401.
