Public Wifi Reaches Third Community Garden in East Vancouver

Public Wifi Reaches Third Community Garden in East Vancouver

January 23, 2025

221A is thrilled to announce that the Healing Garden on 117 East Hastings Street is now the third community garden with free community wifi. 

The Stolon Mesh Network is a community-led wifi network developed by artist Christina Battle during her 221A Fellowship in collaboration with a team of researchers, community liaisons and technologists. Composed of multiple “nodes” or multiple points of connections, the garden joins a growing network of community gardens across K’emk’em’elay or so-called East Vancouver. 

Existing network nodes include the x̱aw̓s shew̓áy̓ New Growth 新生林 garden located at 271 Union Street, which launched the Stolon Mesh Network, and the coFood Collaborative Garden in Mount Pleasant at 265 East 4th Ave.

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The Healing Garden’s orange-painted fence adorned with community signs and tags to honour Orange Shirt Day, taken in 2023 during #stopthesweeps campaign against displacement of DTES community members. Photo by Gentle Geographies.

Christina, whose work studies the emergent shape and strategies of disasters, says she’s particularly excited about how the location of the Healing Garden will offer free wifi to community members in the area.

“Stolon Mesh centres the understanding that access to the internet is a utility that should be shared, and the care and spirit surrounding the Healing Garden align strongly with the project’s goals,” says Christina. “I hope the addition of shared and accessible wifi will serve the community surrounding the garden in supportive ways.”

Visitors can access free wifi onsite by logging onto “stolonmesh” with the password “newgrowth”.

In collaboration with longstanding stewards at the Healing Garden Cait Gentle and Sarah Comyn from Holding Ground; Amy Evans, Sarah Blythe and Chris Ferguson of Overdose Prevention Society (OPS); Jacob Sayles of Cascadia Collaborative Design, and Dave Ison for technical support.