Artist pays tribute to fallen police officers
Wayne Ashley wants to make sure those killed while protecting us are never forgotten.
The Edmonton-based artist spent three weeks working to a create a mixed-medium memorial to honour the lives of two British police officers killed in the line of duty.
Originally meant to be a tribute to Edmonton Police Service Const. Daniel Woodall, who was shot dead in west Edmonton in June 2015, Ashley modified the piece after another officer was killed in London, England, in March of this year.
Constable Keith Palmer, who was unarmed at the time, was killed outside the Houses of Parliament on March 22 by a terrorist armed with a knife.
Ashley presented his memorial to Edmonton Police Service in a private ceremony Wednesday.
“I can’t figure out why terrorists have such a grip on people,” the 50-year-old said.
“It says in the Holy Bible and the Koran ... you can’t spill innocent blood or murder innocent people, yet they can convince people to go out and murder innocent people all over the world. It’s wrong ... How can you convince somebody to kill another person in the name of a god?”
Ashley’s previous works have included tributes to those who died in the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the mass school shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut.
“The only way I can help is to honour them by not letting their memories fade away,” he said. “This is about letting the families and the people that know them they are not forgotten. It’s important we remember the people that died in the line of service.”
The only way I can help is to honour them by not letting their memories fade away.
After Wednesday’s presentation, Ashley drove to Red Deer to give another monument to RCMP officers who responded to the death of six-year-old Callie Campbell in Red Deer in early May.
Campbell and her father, Robert Lesslie Malcolm Campbell, 39, were found dead in what is being treated as a murder-suicide.
“All of these things, they add up to where we are in society,” he continued.
“We should be a little bit more involved when tragedies happen because this could happen to any one of us, at any time and we are left with the question: Why?”