Passing by the Cochrane House Apartments on Ross Ave. (aka ‘The Bubble’) is a lot more interesting – and fun – now than it ever was before thanks to Will Hawkins, who has brought his own brand of joy to the neighbourhood.
Starting a couple of years ago, Hawkins decided it was time to spruce things up a bit on the lawn facing the street, so he added some potted flowers. Then came kites, wind chimes, flags, frogs, dragons, benches, and just about any kind of ornaments he could find.
Word soon spread, as seniors from the building across the way stopped by every day to enjoy what he had created. Cars stopped by for drivers to ask what it was all about, and the project grew from there.
Hawkins had just added a couple of dragon kites prior to an interview with The Eagle Friday, July 8.
“I have one of those in the ceiling above my bed, so it’s just like Batman swooping in,” he said with a laugh.
Hawkins says a lot of things with a laugh.
He is a world traveller who sees himself as more a citizen of Cochrane than one of Alberta.
He has lived in the French Quarter in New Orleans, and in Qing Dao, China for 15 years, before the government told him he had to leave. He was developing teaching tools for children.
He started out teaching teenagers but soon gravitated toward instructing younger students.
“The teenagers are like aliens – they terrified me to death,” he said.
He designed interactive learning programs for three- to seven-year-olds, based on personal experience rather than formal training.
“I’d never done it before in my life. They were learning by rote, and the kids would repeat a word like ‘dog’ 20 times.
“I’d show them a flower and they’d say, ‘dog’ so I thought, ‘this ain’t workin.’”
He designed a program based on motivation, stemming from his memories of how he learned as a kid, and it took off.
All was good until someone in the bureaucracy decided he had been in China too long on his visa.
“The Chinese government said I was too old to be teaching here, so, you don’t ask questions,” he chuckled.
Moving to Cochrane in 2018, he found he fit in right away.
“I’m really big on community. It’s important to me that everyone get along," Hawkins said.
“When I first moved here I kept hearing negative things about, ‘Oh you’re living in the Bubble’ and horror stories, and I thought this is like the United Nations – it’s a wonderful place.”
A prominent feature of the display is a series of flags representing almost all the nations of the world. The flags represent all the different cultures, which is perfect, according to Hawkins.
“Cultures all over the world are always celebrating and I thought why not make it fun this year, do something different and celebrate and do something silly?” he said.
It seems to have worked.
“Kids laugh, and they love it,” he said.
In the short time The Eagle visited, three different passersby called out greetings to Hawkins, as wind chimes tinkled in the background.
Solar powered lights extend the appeal of the presentation into the night.
The decorations have brought the apartment dwellers together in a sort of a 'community watch' and there is almost no crime now in the building.
The project has inspired other residents to start gardening as well.
Property Manager Heather Ludwig said Hawkins did come to her for permission to decorate the front of the building. She had to rein him in a bit.
“I didn’t say ‘knock yourself out’ – you should see the inside of his suite,” she said.
She teases him about how many keepsakes from around the world he has inside his apartment – he has 34 tribal carpets in his one-bedroom apartment – but the affection is obvious.
‘It’s my mausoleum,” he laughed.
Ludwig clearly is on-board with what has happened to the community spirit in the block.
When he's not beautifying the community, Hawkins does volunteer work for four or five organizations, and said he loves Cochrane.
“People go above and beyond here – and they smile and say hello,” he said.
