Dartmouth Park to Be Renamed in Navy Diver’s Honour

Priscilla Blake sits with her two sons Kain and Tie at the Dartmouth park soon to be renamed in honour of her husband Craig, a Canadian naval clearance diver, who was killed while serving Afganistan in 2010.
Tie Blake would always glide back into his dad’s strong palm on the swings at Montebello Park in Dartmouth, a memory imprinted on the nine-year-old boy who wanted the city to rename a piece of land to honour Craig Blake, his father and the first Canadian sailor killed in the Afghanistan conflict.
Petty Officer 2nd Class Blake died in an explosion from a roadside bomb outside Kandahar on May 3, 2010. He was 37; his sons were 14 and six at the time.
Tie returned from school one day two years ago and told his mother he had learned the municipality will name parks and other landmarks in honour of extraordinary people. He felt his dad — a navy clearance diver and minor hockey coach of the year — should be one of them, said Priscilla, Blake’s widow.
“When they were talking about it in school, Tie thought of his dad right away,” Priscilla said. “He came home and said we should get something named for Craig.”
The family worked on the application together, going through memories of Blake’s time as a soldier — he had enlisted at 18 — and as the hockey coach the kids in the neighbourhood admired.
Blake’s career had been spent as a navy clearance diver, but he found himself on land in Afghanistan because of his experience in bomb disposal.
Council approved putting Blake’s name among the candidates for future naming sites last August, but it wasn’t until this week that they voted to rename Montebello Park in Dartmouth in his memory.
The park cradles countless memories for the family, Priscilla said. It’s there that Blake first let go of Cain’s bicycle seat, watching his son pedal away, where the hockey coach and triathlete would throw the football around with his boys and kids in the neighbourhood, and where he would watch his youngest on the playground.
“I think when we go there and we walk through it and Tie swings on the swings or Cain goes with his buddies and plays tennis, I think there’s always that memory in the back of our mind of doing stuff with Craig there,” Priscilla said.
“It’s one of those places where it’s just nice to be and remember.”
Priscilla, her sons and their councillor, Darren Fisher, talked about different spots and how they related to her late husband.
When they hit on Montebello Park, Fisher said the response from the community was nearly unanimous. Hundreds of emails flooded his inbox since the site was put forward last winter.
“The minute I put it on Facebook, it just went crazy,” the Harbourview-Burnside-Dartmouth East councillor said.
“I was receiving emails and messages from people that were just so excited about the possibility, people that knew him and people who didn’t know him. This guy was a coach of the year for the Dartmouth Whalers. This guy was a triathlete. This guy was somebody the community looked up to.”
The community’s support of the name change to Craig Blake Memorial Park acts as an extension of the care shown to the family in the past three years.
The first Christmas on their own, the Blakes opened the door and found gifts on the front step. No one ever took credit.
“Craig had been a hockey coach and he knew everyone from school and from hockey, and it was quite shocking to everyone, I think, when Craig passed away,” Priscilla said. “It’s been overwhelming, the support.”
(lfraser@herald.ca)