Canadian Healing Quilt offers virtual tool to remember, honour passed loved ones

Elder Albert McLeod discusses the Canadian Healing Quilt — a free online space to honour loved ones, share memories, and find comfort in community.

A new national project is offering Canadians a digital tool to honour the memory of passed loved ones and connect through grief and remembrance.

The Canadian Healing Quilt allows families and friends to gather virtually and share stories, memories, photos and more to create a memorial quilt square.

The squares can appear as part of a national digital quilt or can remain private and visible only to invited family and friends.

Visitors can also light a virtual candle, leave messages and share memories of their own.

The online platform was created by the Canadian Virtual Hospice in collaboration with Elder Albert McLeod, a knowledge carrier and community leader who works with the organization.

“We have the star quilt, now very prominent in Indigenous culture across North America, and that is used in end-of-life services, funerals,” he said in an interview on Your Morning Winnipeg.

“The person’s body may be wrapped in a quilt at the funeral or the casket may be covered with a star quilt.”

The idea for a virtual quilt was born out of the pandemic, a time when folks were unable to gather, McLeod said. Some struggled with how to honour loved ones who had passed during that time. The online healing quilt is a way of doing just that.

“A lot of people passed away during COVID where there hasn’t been that end-of-life ritual, like a funeral. In our society, we need those things to understand this person has passed on,” he explained.

The Canadian Healing Quilt launched Friday. It is free to access and contribute to, McLeod said.

He hopes it will bring people together to grieve, honour and remember.

“Now families are so spread apart in Canada that this is a way we can come together and talk about, ‘What do we want to put on there? What photographs are important to us to remember this person?’”

- With files from CTV’s Rachel Lagacé