The Williams Lake and District Chamber of Commerce plans to celebrate Canada’s 150th with several events, including hosting the Canadian Mosaic Project mobile pavilion.
Since October 2008, photographer Tim Van Horn of Red Deer, Alberta has travelled across the country taking photographs of people, inspired to do something for Canada.
“I grew up in a military family, so I grew up with a sense of duty and felt I needed to do something equivalent to my grandparents, parents and my brother to serve the country and the people,” Van Horn told the Tribune Thursday from Hope where his project is doing a trial run. “However, I am not really fit for military duty so I came up with my own creative tour-of-duty to do something good for the country and the people.”
Van Horn said he married that sense of duty with his art, his photography, and set out to put a face to the Canadian identity.
And so far he has taken photos of 54,000 different people.
“The Canadian mosaic is this elusive concept and notion but we don’t really have a concrete genuine authentic portrayal of what that looks like,” he said. “The only way to really do that is to accumulate thousands of portraits from across the country that cover geographical regions, the multiculturalism, the demographics and socio-economicslevels and indicators and weave that all together from a grass roots point of view.
His is not a corporate or government program point a view, but a “heart-felt” mission from a man who wants to do something good for the people.
Each person is a critical piece of the fabric that tells the story of the “amazing country” Canada.
Van Horn has been standing on street corners in 1,200 communities across the country extending his hands to the public and asking them to please be part of the project and share their story with Canada.
“I am not a nationalist, I am a humanitarian trying to inspire the nation and all of us to believe in ourselves and our communities,” he said.
The mobile pavilion will be in Williams Lake on Tuesday, June 20, at the Tourism Discovery Centre, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
He encourages people to come down and have their portraits taken that day.
“There will be a table where you can select a clipboard with a slogan for you to complete with an erasable felt pen phrases such as ‘I am a …, My Canada is …, I’m building a better Canada by …,’ and pose for a photo,” he said, noting they will be taking some videos of people as well.
The plan is to create a montage during 2017.
On May 26, 2017 the mobile pavilion will launch in Red Deer and be available online for people to see at anewcanada.me.
The chamber and visitor centre has been selected as one of the mobile pavillion’s 100 stops across Canada.