Where water meets rock
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A year ago, Dr. Rev. Byung Sub Van, then 83, underwent major heart surgery and spent seven long days in intensive care.
One recurring thought got him through the next three weeks as he lay recovering in his hospital bed: The rock.
Several weeks later, the retired Korean church minister was driven up to a quarry on Sumas Mountain to choose a boulder for his project.
The light-grey, 40,000-lb. granite block looked like any other in the area to family members with him, but Rev. Van knew he was pointing at the right one from his car window.
His son-in-law Ken Gauthier got help from another relative, Ted Carlson, to drag it out.
On a soggy fall day last year, the stone was deposited in the Bear Creek Park gardens.
It quickly sank several feet into the soft earth.
“It’s a huge chunk of granite,” says Surrey Public Art Coordinator Sandra Dent. “It’s like an iceberg. There’s more underneath than there is on top.”
It was the halfway point for the Surrey public art project.
Over the next several months, Rev. Van and his family would chose, edit and translate a poem from one of his several books and have it etched into the stone.
The title: Mere Water Am I.
“Water is the mother of all sources,” says the poet. “It’s the basis of life.”
This would be his second poem published on a rock – the first at Vancouver’s VanDusen Gardens. That poetry rock was placed near the Korean pagoda in 1995.
At Bear Creek Park east of the pool, the new rock, bigger than a basement freezer, is surrounded by lush landscaping complete with Rose of Sharon bushes – the national flower of Korea – which are expected to bloom this fall.
Rev. Van was a Navy chaplain during the Korean War. He emigrated to Chicago in 1968 after studying for his Masters in Theology in Japan.
He emigrated to Canada in 1970 and became a minister at the Korean United Church in Vancouver. Rev. Van moved to Surrey in 1992 and continued to give sermons at local Korean churches.
Although his English is serviceable, Rev. Van favours his native Korean, and has published several books containing poetry, sermons, essays and hymns.
“Because my dad loves Korean literature, it was his vision to have poetry in the park ... to share it with people,” says his daughter Grace Van Gauthier during a visit to the stone.
“This was his dream and vision to make it happen.”
The process of bringing the stone to the park, and then having it etched with the Korean poem was a two-year process that involved discussions with city officials and the arts community, including the Public Art Advisory Committee.
Out of the many poems in his books, Rev. Van chose the water theme to make the statement as universal as possible.
Both Korean and English verses are etched into the same side of the rock, facing a garden path.
“The English side of it is a mixture of quite a few talented ‘poets’ all taking a crack at it,” says the poet’s son-in-law. “I think it had to be at least four or five of them.”
“There’s no such thing as a perfect translation,” adds his daughter. “It was revised, revised, revised... right up to engraving day.”
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Grace Van Gauthier tells a story of a chance meeting and how the poem touched someone.
“The other day, after the engraving was completed, we came by here to see the finished product. There was this older gentleman from India. He was from Punjab and was an agricultural professor there.
“He came here previously to take pictures of this poem, but didn’t know my father wrote it.
“He was very thrilled about it. He said that water means so much in his religion and holy books.”
The man offered to translated it into Punjabi and e-mailed it and his thoughts back to her.
“This poem is already impacting people,” she explains. “We wanted it to appeal universally, not to just one culture.”
It did.
The dedication ceremony for the poetry rock will take place Sept. 9 at 4 p.m. at the Bear Creek Park gardens. The gardens can be accessed from the path next to the swimming pool at the main parking lot, or via the east parking lot on 140 Street.
bjoseph@surreyleader.com
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