A mural project celebrating the city's diversity is much bigger than expected.
Over the past year, colourful paintings sharing Indigenous teachings have been popping up across Timmins as part of the youth mural project.
Seven have been painted so far, with even more planned for 2020.
"Every time I talk to someone else I keep on adding another one,” said Kristin Murray, who's organizing the project.
Murray is a health promoter at Misiway Milopemahtesewin Community Health Centre and a Timmins councillor.
The art initiative started taking shape in 2018, before she was elected to municipal council.
At the time, the Special Investigations Unit (SIU) had been called in for two separate incidents — a police-involved shooting death, and death of a woman after her interaction with the police. The SIU has cleared Timmins Police in both cases.
The next month, Ontario Human Rights Commisioner Renu Mandhane said racism appeared to be normalized in the city after a visit.
Wanting to honour the Indigenous culture and teachings in the city, Murray said Katelyn Malo reached out about doing something.
“It was really an infusion of both of us kind of sitting together over coffee...at Christopher’s, and it grew from there,” she said.
In May 2018, Murray submitted a funding proposal for two murals to the Ontario Arts Council.
“They funded the full project, which I was a little surprised to get that much money," Murray recalled.
The premise of the project is to have elders share Indigenous teachings with youth, who depict those lessons in murals.
"And the reason why we did that is because there’s such rich culture that’s shared orally, but a lot of other people don’t know what teachings there are. If you’re not a part of the culture, you wouldn’t hear those oral teachings. We thought what better way to have that transfer of knowledge between elders and youth, and when you look at the medicine wheel it’s really reflective — elders need to share with youth and youth need to look to the elders. They sit across from each other in that medicine wheel,” she said.
Mique Michelle is the lead artist.
At first, Murray said Michelle turned down the offer.
“Because she did say she would prefer someone in the area, so I kept looking," Murray said.
"Then I approached her again and I said, 'I’ve looked for other people and I think your work would really align with the goal of the project' because she’s worked with youth, she really knows quite a few teachings."
The initiative has been taking off since the first mural was painted at the Timmins Victor M. Power Airport.
Pieces have gone up at Misiway, the Timmins Museum: National Exhibition Centre, Porcupine Advance, Timmins City Hall, and Timmins and District Hospital.
The themes of the two murals originally proposed are to tell the creation story, and water teachings.
Murray said the creation story is mainly featured at the Timmins museum, which was painted by artist Shaun Hedican, and is infused throughout all of the murals.
The water teachings piece will likely be painted under the Mattagami bridge.
"It’s really important because the Mattagami River was that meeting point where a lot of trade happened in this region, so I thought it was a neat place,” she said.
For Murray, the painting at Porcupine Advance downtown Timmins, which can be seen from Algonquin Boulevard, is when people really started paying attention.
After it was finished, she was nervous when the owner said there would be some changes to the wall.
“But what he did was he installed lighting because he wanted people to see. And I got emotional because I thought, ‘wow, he really loves it and he wants to share that piece of art with everybody’. It’s really a community initiative,” she said.
About nine murals are in the works for next year.
Trying to engage as many youth as possible, Murray said each will feature a different call out to participate.
"I really encourage all youth, whether they’re Indigenous or not, to take part because it’s really about that reconciliation piece of sharing our culture and allowing people to understand...a little bit about our culture, why we do the things we do and some of the items that are sort of influenced and hidden in these murals that you see,” she said.
