Dateline: 08/20/99

      Over the past half-dozen years, murals have been appearing on more and more buildings in downtown Whitehorse. The effect on the community has, I think, been significant. Although one of the largest is very dark and dreary, the rest are colourful enough to brighten up even the brilliant days of summer. In this week's feature, I'd like to show you some of my favourites. To enlarge the photos for a better look at the details, just click on them.

The most colourful of the murals is surely the huge one to the right. It was painted on the side of a former elementary school now called the Wood Street Annex, facing onto 4th Avenue. The beautiful gardens and picnic tables help to make it a very popular spot.

The parking lot behind the Hougen's retail complex on Main Street was painted to look like a frontier main street during the filming of a movie in 1993. The work of Haines Junction artist Lance Burton, this was the first of Whitehorse's murals.

The main Visitor Information Centre is the home of this 5-panel piece by Bill Oster and David Ashley. It includes a turning wheel to represent the introduction of machines into the Yukon during the Klondike gold rush.

This sternwheeler struggling through a river full of huge blocks of ice is on the side of a small apartment/retail building on 4th Avenue.

NorthwesTel's main office parking lot is the beneficiary of the grand piece to the right. It doesn't really appear to be finished yet, but it hasn't been worked on since last fall. It faces onto 2nd Avenue (a main street), so the addition of this work to the formerly blank wall has been widely commented on. This is one of 5 murals painted by Lance Burton and a crew of 10 talented young assistants in 1998.

This mural is outside the headquarters of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. It's a collage of historical scenes that the Mounties were at. It is the background to a replica of a Northwest Mounted Police log cabin.

      While public art can have a dramatic effect on a community, it is also expensive. Do you think that the money could be better spent in other ways? Or do you think it's worth whatever it costs?

The photographs are all ©1999 by Murray Lundberg