Monday Mural

 I'm linking up at Monday Mural

August 2024 - Toronto ON

I set out to find this mural last week. 

Eighteen-year-old Terry Fox of Port Coquitlam, BC never saw himself as remarkable. Granted, he displayed an unusual determination to achieve the goals he set for himself but his orbit was local – family, school, sports and friends. But Terry’s cancer diagnosis of osteogenic sarcoma just above the knee, the subsequent amputation of his leg and experience in the cancer wards changed all that. A newly nurtured reservoir of compassion, combined with a fierce determination to bring an end to the suffering cancer causes, set Terry on a path that, quite simply, changed the world.

Click here to read about the Terry Fox Foundation.

And then a funny, serendipitous thing happened on FB.

My BFF's daughter posted this on Friday! John golfs with her husband, this retired police officer is his weekly golf partner.

And yes I've known them for more than 44 years!!!!!

44 years ago. My Dad was a fairly novice police officer for Halton police. A young man named Terry Fox ventured out on a cross country run of Canada to raise awareness for cancer. A young police officer got a call through dispatch to meet and escort Terry Fox through Oakville, little did this police officer know what this call truly meant to Canada.

My Dad met him, and provided security through his run, driving the car behind him.

A photographer named Peter Martin was able to capture this moment in time, preserving my dad's and Terry Fox's moment in history. The light in the darkness was perfect, the emotion was felt, history was built in this moment. I remember seeing this news clipping, and it was forever ingrained in my brain,

 I searched for the photo, and it wasn’t until Pam Damoff, the MP of Oakville, posted this photo on Twitter and captioned Peter Martin that I was able to track it down, and from there the circle was closed. Dad was reunited with his photo, Peter was able to put a face to the car behind Terry, and the story was complete. I am truly grateful for the power of social media to bring these memories together. Thank you to Peter Martin and Pam Damoff for your help on completing this story.

Click here to read about Terry Fox at Canoe Landing Park.

Monday Mural

 I'm linking up at Monday Mural

March 2023 - Toronto ON

I captured this while on the bus, stuck in traffic.

Honouring the site's significance, Canoe Landing Campus integrates Indigenous art as part of its architecture. Anishinaabe artist Que Rock and artist Alexander Bacon, based in Toronto, were commissioned to create a 90-metre-long mural on the south wall of the Jean Lumb Public and Bishop MacDonnell Catholic schools as a visual acknowledgment and reminder of Indigenous culture and history of the land. Featuring symbols such as the medicine wheel and the symbolic wisdom of all creatures, the artwork is funded as part of the City’s StreetARToronto (StART) Partnership Program.

Wondering who Jean Lumb is? Click here.

Situated in downtown Toronto’s sprawling CityPlace residential district, Canoe Landing Campus is a mixed-use complex that brings life and a spot of color to a 3.3-acre lot that had sat empty for years. The $65 million, 158,893-square-foot compound introduces a vertical community in a drastically different manner than the tall, blue-gray towers that have dominated the neighborhood since the late-1980s.

Following the line of sight to the top of the campus’s trio of two- and three-story buildings, its layered program is simply communicated: public space and amenities on the street level become dense vegetation while a basketball court covers the roofs of one building. The designers at ZAS Architects + Interiors—a Canadian firm with offices in Toronto, Vancouver, and Dubai—worked closely with residents and city officials to meet the many requirements demanded of a major public building. The site boasts two schools, a childcare center, public and private parks, fitness facilities, and a public art plaza.

Photo from Facades magazine.

This photo is from Canadian Architect.

Click here to visit Canoe Landing Park.

Can you see the red canoe on the left bottom? Click here to learn about that art piece.

Monday Mural

 Linking up at Monday Mural

September 2020 - Toronto ON

Descriptions from Toronto Life

Emmanuel Jarus, an artist and muralist, has redone this same wall near Graffiti Alley three times over the past six years. He completed his latest reinvention during Covid-19, and realized it perfectly fit StreetARToronto’s front-line heroes program. The original idea came to him while he was contemplating what to paint on the wall and happened to run into an old friend in a nearby parkette. She was taking a break from working at a cannabis store. He thought her mood and stance perfectly reflected the exhaustion and uncertainty of the current moment. “I like to observe things—I call my work ‘painting journalism’—and my murals happen organically,” Jarus says. So, he snapped a bunch of photos of his impromptu model, created an image on his iPad and selected his colour palette from whatever was available at the discount warehouse down the road. The result is a striking image which Jarus hopes passersby find relatable and honest.

Alexander Bacon is an internationally recognized artist who’s been painting since he was a teenager in the 1990s. His vibrant, large-scale pieces, featuring portraits and historical references, can be spotted all over Toronto, including Kensington Market and the Entertainment District. This massive mural near Adelaide and Portland features a hand clad in a blue medical glove holding a wilting flower. The idea came to him when he was submitting ideas for a virtual art festival in Puerto Rico. The flower is meant to represent the fragility of life, and the gloved hand represents the strength of our front-line workers. The scene is also supposed to show the sacrifices everyone is making for the most vulnerable in our society. “We basically shut the world down for people who aren’t strong enough to fight this virus,” says Alex. “I think it’s beautiful humanity is willing to do that.” The piece took Alex three days to paint, and he finds people still interpret it in different ways. Some simply find it aesthetically pleasing, but when he showed it to his uncle, who is a local doctor, he immediately recognized it as a tribute to their work—and brought all his colleagues down for a group viewing.

This was hard to photograph as it is in Graffiti Alley behind a locked fence.

Quentin Commanda (a.k.a. Que Rock) took over a wall that faces east onto Graffiti Alley and wanted to create something to honour front-line workers from his perspective as an Indigenous artist. He’s Nipissing First Nation, and both his parents are traditional healers. He decided to create a visual healing experience, based on the concept of the 13 full moons of the lunar calendar (the calendar his people followed before converting to Western ways). Each blue box represents a different full moon, and inside are messages that pay tribute to a matriarchal society. “There are more female front-line workers than men, so I wanted the piece to not only honour the polarities and dualities of life, but the power of femininity as well,” says Quentin. He also added more layers of Indigenous teachings, like sacred geometry patterns and medicine wheel symbols and chose to spell out “thank you” in graffiti-style lettering at the bottom to pay homage to the mural’s location in Graffiti Alley.

MURAL UPDATE

As mentioned above Jarus has painted on this Graffiti Alley wall previously.

2018