Infinity loop a path to healing
Family opens walkway to honour dream and spirit of late cyclist
Almost three years after her sudden death, Jenna Morrison is helping her family heal. With teary eyes and bare feet, friends and family burned sage and walked along Morrison’s dream “reflexology footpath” — a kind of therapeutic foot massage — at the ribbon-cutting ceremony in Dufferin Grove Park on Saturday. The footpath is a memorial to the yoga instructor killed in a 2011cycling accident, and her husband, Florian Schuck, her son Lucas and her mother Darlene Burke were among the first to walk the “infinity loop” in her memory. “I’ve been very blessed and privileged to have Jenna as a daughter, and as a friend,” said Burke, her voice cracking. “This memorial truly represents my daughter. The infinity loop connects us to her, it connects us to ourselves, and it connects us to each other, with no beginning and with no end.”
Shaped in a large figure-eight loop, the public reflexology footpath is a dream project of Morrison’s that she never got to execute. In November 2011, she was clipped by a giant Freightliner truck while riding her bicycle to pick up Lucas, then 5, at school. She was five months pregnant with her second child.
“The project never came to be realized during her lifetime,” said Schuck. He took it upon himself to make the footpath a reality, to “mark Jenna’s life with the realization of one of her dreams that perfectly reflected her principles of compassion, stimulation, engagement, contemplation and spirituality.”
The pathway, which loops around two gardens, is embedded with cobblestones of various sizes.
As users walk along the path in bare feet or socks, the stones massage their feet.
“There’s a lot more to it than just walking on rocks,” said Sandra Fox of the Reflexology Association of Canada, who consulted with the memorial team. The foot has 7,200 nerve endings, she said, and reflexology stimulates the organs connected to the nerve endings.
In 2002, Morrison visited her mother in South Korea, where she was living while on a teaching assignment. After they visited a reflexology footpath there, Morrison came back to Toronto with the dream of bringing one to Canada.
The footpath is the first of its kind in a public park in Ontario.
“I find comfort knowing that her love of life, her beautiful light and her positivity will live on,” said Burke. “She continues to give to the community, and she continues to make me proud.”
A four-tonne “accent stone” is a prominent feature in the memorial. On Saturday, a large framed photograph of Morrison was propped against it as family and friends remembered her. After the ribbon-cutting, her son, Lucas, placed a vase of flowers next to the frame and walked the path with his grandmother and his father.
“As diversely as Jenna stimulated all aspects of my life during our path together, I believe this footpath will stimulate its visitors in many ways,” said Schuck.
“Thank you, Jenna, for this gift to the people of Toronto.”
The moving ceremony, which was attended by mayoral candidates Olivia Chow and Karen Stintz, was also a time for talk of road safety.
“We live in a city where we have pedestrians, cyclists, and drivers,” said councillor Ana Bailao. “We have to share the road and we have to be conscious and alerted of our surroundings, because we can change someone’s life in a second.”
She credited Olivia Chow for her work as an MP in raising awareness of the need for side guards on trucks.
Had there been a side guard on the truck that struck Morrison, Chow says, she might have been bruised but not killed. The U.S. transportation safety board recently recommended side guards on trucks, Chow noted.
Ontario’s chief coroner also called for side guards last year. “It’s only a matter of time” before the recommendations of so many professions are executed in Canada, she said.
After walking the infinity loop with the family, Chow felt inspired. “It’s uplifting,” she said. “It’s the best of what government can do. It gives you the inspiration that we can make things happen together.”