Sarnia residents participated in a neat Canada 150 project at city hall Tuesday.
Canada 150 Mosaic producer Phil Alain says they had a great day creating Sarnia's mural, which depicts Chris Hadfield's exploits in space, Canada's second prime minister Alexander MacKenzie and references our rail, shipping and tourism industries.
"We started the project on Sunday," says Alain. "A bunch of tiles were created by various community people during the day through a festival and then we've been out painting today. We've had everyone from city employees, to people just walking up the street, to the little art club coming by here and a group of adults with special needs just popped in to create tiles. It's very much an inclusive community spirit when we create these projects."
He says people are always impressed by how it comes together.
"As were painting the tiles, we lay the mural out and as we go along we have to change colour pallets and basically let them paint whatever they like, as long as they work with the certain colours we designate for them," says Alain.
He says some people are assigned shapes too, so they have to work with a shape in order to bring another shape to life within the mural.
The project is part of a nation-wide initiative to create a gigantic mural mosaic representing all provinces and territories.
"We're going to be doing 150 murals all across Canada from coast to coast, from Vancouver all the way to Prince Edward Island," says Alain. "Every community paints a mural and in the end the mural completed is a designed mural that is a very stylized train car. So, the mural represents a train car for the community of Sarnia, which will be connected to other train cars going from coast to coast, making one gigantic train, connecting the whole country through thousands and thousands of paintings."
He says the finished product, comprised of over 80,000 paintings, would be over four football fields long (365 m) and 8 ft high if ever connected.
"We've had babies putting their footprints into the mural to world renowned artists, to NHL hockey players, to famous musicians, politicians, people of all backgrounds contributing, like Rick Mercer, Jann Arden, Sarah McLachlan and Roberta Bondar the first female astronaut," says Alain.
Sarnia's mural will reside here in the city as a reminder of the anniversary.
To see examples of mosaic murals already completed by other cities click here.