A MURAL FOR KEVIN
Boy killed by van saluted
Kevin Eh Say no longer spends his summer evenings playing in Bruce Avenue Park, but a new mural installation will ensure he’s never too far from the playground he loved.
The three-year-old was killed in a hit-and-run on July 3. The community rallied to identify the van that fled the scene and support the family with a fundraiser.
Nearly two months later, Windsor artists have come together to create a mural in Bruce Avenue Park depicting Eh Say and his favourite things: ice cream and Spider-Man.
It’s the first mural Grace Chaberska, a trained architect from Poland, has crafted. After seeing her sketches, Art Attack Windsor contacted Chaberska to create the mural in memory of Eh Say.
“The boy was living just across the street,” Chaberska said. “He was actually spending all his time here in the park, with his family and his brothers and sisters.
“The accident was just here as well, on Wyandotte. This is why we feel that this is just the perfect spot for that, because he was living here and that was his playground.”
The memorial mural, which Chaberska said would be completed by Monday, is on the south side of the park.
On July 3, Eh Say was hit by a green van travelling eastbound on Wyandotte Street. The day after the accident, Windsor police arrested and charged Kenneth Dawson with failure to stop at the scene of an accident causing death and criminal negligence causing death.
“When I heard about the accident … it was terrible news,” Chaberska said. “It seems to be natural that we want to do something in memory of this child. I was trying to think about the positive ways, trying to find the beauty.”
The Eh Say family said they escaped genocide in Burma and arrived in Windsor 11 years ago as refugees. Chaberska, who spent a month in Burma, considered depicting Burmese temples in the mural. She opted not to — given the family’s circumstances when fleeing the country — and focused on two things Eh Say loved.
In Eh Say’s obituary, his family called him “our photogenic little Spider-Man,” adding that Eh Say “would eat as much candy and ice cream as he possibly could.”
Eh Say was such a fan of SpiderMan, Chaberska said, that the boy was buried with his superhero toys.
“It was like (three) things that I knew needed to be on the mural: the ice cream, the boy and the Spider-Man,” Chaberska said. “And then I just started thinking of how I could put Spider-Man in.”
The mural depicts central buildings in Detroit and Windsor.
An architect and newcomer herself, Chaberska said she is “looking through Windsor and Detroit all the time, trying to find some nice buildings. And I just connect that. That’s why we have Detroit and that’s why we have Windsor, with the bridge between.
“And the Spider-Man,” she added, who dangles over the Ambassador Bridge.