{"id":18268,"date":"2017-09-06T16:21:23","date_gmt":"2017-09-06T20:21:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=18268"},"modified":"2017-09-06T16:21:23","modified_gmt":"2017-09-06T20:21:23","slug":"canada-150-legacy-taking-shape-one-square-at-a-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/canada-150-legacy-taking-shape-one-square-at-a-time\/","title":{"rendered":"Canada 150 legacy taking shape \u2013 one square at a time"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n

Flex that creative muscle this week by adding your own unique square to Aurora\u2019s Canada 150 legacy project.
\nThe first tiles, which will come together to form Aurora\u2019s Canada 150 Mosaic mural, will be ready to paint beginning this Friday, September 8 from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Aurora Town Hall and the whole community is invited to take part.
\nA second painting session will take place the following day, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Town Park (inside the Armoury) in conjunction with Aurora\u2019s Multicultural Festival.
\nIn all, 600 tiles will need to be filled in to create the 8 foot by 12 foot mural, which is being spearheaded by local artists Claire D\u2019Aurore, Eva Folks, Judy Sherman, and Christine Valentini, along with Eric McCartney, and Aurora\u2019s Canada 150 Ad Hoc Committee.
\nOnce completed, the mural will feature landmarks such as the Hillary House National Historic Site, the Aurora GO Station, trumpeter swans, which were restored into Ontario by Aurora resident Harry Lumsden, and reminders of Aurora\u2019s legacy as Canada\u2019s Birthday Town.
\n\u201cThe Committee worked together with a very passionate group of local artists and each of them put together their thoughts, their rationales and their justification for what they thought were important landmarks to feature within the mosaic,\u201d says Shelley Ware, Special Events Coordinator for the Town of Aurora. \u201cAll of those were put together and ultimately the Canada 150 committee blended in the themes that would best serve the end product. The trumpeter swans is one project that Auroran Harry Lumsden actually helped save. The Hillary House is a national historic landmark. The train station has always been a popular landmark in Aurora and then, of course, Aurora\u2019s Canada Birthday Town incorporated into it.
\n\u201cWith something like this, there could have been 100 things included but with the structure of the mural we had to come up with one core concept and only a couple of secondary images to fill it in. We were slightly limited in the creative process, but it was done in collaboration.\u201d
\nThe artists have been working hard to make this happen since first proposing their idea to Council this past winter. Intended to be part of a Canada-wide network of mosaics, each serving to be a focal point of public art in their respective communities, it is an ambitious legacy project and one which, at least in Aurora, almost didn\u2019t happen.
\nWhether or not it could go forward was contingent on funding and, at first, this funding was not available. However, a planned Military Tattoo to commemorate the Canada 150 Commemorations ultimately fell through for various reasons and the money allocated to that project allowed for an $18,000 infusion into the Mosaic project.
\nThe project was first brought to local attention by artist Christine Valentini who, after a chance encounter with a niece just returning from a mural painting project, delved deeper into the vision.
\n\u201cI thought it was a perfect match for what we were talking about,\u201d said Ms. Valentini, once the project was approved. \u201cWe were thinking about doing a mural of our own at one point and this, I thought, was a good way of getting people involved, children involved, and have a legacy in Aurora that people can participate in.\u201d
\nFrom those initial seeds of inspiration, a garden of ideas \u2013 and enthusiastic advocates \u2013 began to take root. The number of interested artists snowballed, and realtor Eric McCartney got involved to help then navigate through the proper channels of bureaucracy.
\nNow, those waters are calmed and it is time to crack out the paint brushes.
\nAurora aims to get 300 tiles painted on Friday, with the balance painted on Saturday.
\nOnce completed, the hard part will be deciding where it will ultimately be displayed.
\nSome of the participating artists, including Ms. Sherman, have suggested the perfect place would be whatever is ultimately created in Library Square, but it will be contingent on the look, weight, and, in the end, Council\u2019s decision.
\n\u201cOur locations might rotate between facilities, but it will be a piece that requires an installation,\u201d says Ms. Ware.
\nRegistration to paint a tile at either of the sessions is not required, but registration will ensure you do indeed receive a tile. Register by visiting aurora.ca\/mosaic150.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Flex that creative muscle this week by adding your own unique square to Aurora\u2019s Canada 150 legacy project.
\nThe first tiles, which will come together to form Aurora\u2019s Canada 150 Mosaic mural, will be ready to paint beginning this Friday, September 8 from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Aurora Town Hall and the whole community is invited to take part.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":18236,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/2017-09-07-01.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-4KE","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-23 17:17:16","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18268","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18268"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18268\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18236"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}