The wild elk shot in Centretown a month ago will have a lasting presence in the Odawa Native Friendship Centre, according to Rebecca Jones, a youth worker at the Centre.
The elk’s antlers were to be mounted on a plaque and placed in the centre but the base of the antlers were cut incorrectly and fragmented into several pieces. The fragments were given to Terry McKay, one of the community’s elders who then incorporated them into a quilt.
“I made the pieces into buttons and sewed them onto the quilt,” McKay said.
The quilt has been donated to the centre’s Building for Future Generations Art Auction.
The Odawa Centre is a non-profit organization dedicated to improving the quality of life for Ottawa’s aboriginal population and provides various programs and services to meet their needs, according to Odawa’s website.
The art auction is a major fundraiser for the centre. This year’s proceeds will go towards a building that will host Makonsag Head Start programming and Ottawa’s first Aboriginal high school, according to the event page.
The centre is located at 250 City Centre Avenue, nearby Bayview Station where the elk was holding up traffic and eventually shot.
Jones, who is Saulteaux-Cree and runs the centre’s Wasa-Nabin program for at-risk youth, was at the centre on Oct. 8 with a few other staff.
“We guessed it would be kind of cool if we got the body and then waited until after the elk was shot about half an hour afterwards, and eventually the area cleared out and the body was recovered,” she said.
A police car remained behind on the scene. One of the centre staff members went over to the officer in the car and asked how to acquire the carcass. The police put the centre in touch with Christine Hartig, the city official who was in charge of removing the carcass.
According to the press release, the Odawa Centre staff was able to retrieve the elk’s antlers, teeth, and hindquarters.
“The majority of the body was spoiled, unfortunately, because when you hunt you’re supposed to string up an animal right after it dies,” Jones said.
The hindquarter meat was served at a feast celebrating the centre’s successful relocation on Oct. 23.