Cambridge picks up half the tab for Canada 150 mural
Better late than never: City makes sure piece with Indigenous symbol is ready for Canada Day
CAMBRIDGE — The Canada 150 mural, with painted visions of Galt’s Indigenous past and digital library future, will stretch 50 feet wide and reach 12 feet tall.
But this tardy birthday gift is only 90 per cent done, D3Artworks says.
To finish the project in time for Canada Day, when the nation turns 151, the Ainslie Street art and design company sought city council’s help.
It asked for $23,375, which is half the tab for the project.
“It’s never an easy sell,” company co-owner Rick Murphy said on Tuesday night, after council’s general committee voted 9-0 in favour of spending the money and partnering on the project with D3Artworks.
“I really think the vision council showed here tonight is fantastic.”
The hooks were too enticing for councillors to turn down, even on a “last-minute ask” for a project with a looming deadline and eight weeks of work to be finished.
The public art will go on the
Tarl Duplessis, centre, Michelle O'Quinn, foreground, and Debbie Humphries work on a mural at D3Artworks.
“eyesore” side of a building on Ainslie Street that stands across from the city transit terminal and is owned by D3. The company also developed public art pieces like the large Cambridge Hornets hockey mural at Galt Arena.
Indigenous and non-Indigenous youth will collaborate on completing the piece by developing a First Nations symbol — perhaps a wampum belt or medicine wheel — to put into the empty left-hand side of the work. Four youth, two Indigenous and two non-Indigenous, will be hired.
The need for such a symbol, chosen with input from young people, only became apparent as 2018 began, D3 said. And the company was “out of the loop” for federal funding. So the city was approached.
“Canada Day is coming,” Murphy said. “We are late for dinner.”
A canoe for that section of the mural was being added on Wednesday.
“It just can’t be more timely,” said Amy Smoke, an Indigenous mentor for D3 from the Mohawk Nation of the Six Nations of the Grand River.
“With the Truth and Reconciliation Commission two years ago, Canada 150, the input and knowledge of Indigenous folks needs to be shown and celebrated and displayed,” Smoke said.
The report from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission included “calls to action” for Indigenous and non-Indigenous Canadians to work together to repair harm caused by residential schools. Now, Cambridge can say it has responded.
More public art projects in which the city partners with D3 could follow.
“This company has done a lot of good work throughout the community and throughout the region,” Coun. Shannon Adshade said.
“I think it’s great that we’re looking at a partnership in the future to maybe look at other (art) we could also put up to beautify the city. I think this is a really great first step.”