Canada 150 Mosaic launched at Red Deer Museum and Art Gallery

Nine years and 54,000 photographs later, a local man’s work of art honouring his country is complete.

Red Deerian Tim Van Horn launched his visually stunning Canada 150 Mosaic at the Red Deer Museum and Art Gallery over the weekend.

A send-off party dubbed ‘From Red Deer With Love’ served as the goodbye to Tim as he sets out on his ‘To Canada With Love’ tour, taking his mosaic from coast to coast.

“Canada is this most amazing diverse nation, however when I started this project back in 2008, there wasn’t a contemporary portrait that accurately reflected who we were,” says Van Horn. “So I set out across the country to unite us with this visual story. We’re all different, we all have a story that needs to be shared, heard and learned from. To date, I have photographed over 50,000 people from 1,250 communities making it the largest portrait ever created in Canadian history.”

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Van Horn, a self-described humanist, says we should acknowledge that life is a gift and that our time must be used to its fullest potential.

“The message is more universal than just being Canadian. I think we have such an amazing chemistry that’s going on here with one another. We have freedoms, we have opportunity, and we are the envy of the world right now,” he says. “Everyone is looking to us around the globe and going ‘How do you do it Canada? How do you have this peaceful, harmonious and successful country?’”

Lorna Johnson, Red Deer MAG Executive Director, says what’s incredible about Tim’s creation is the ambition of it. She calls the volume of photographs overwhelming.

“He just has such a gift for engaging people and capturing the essence of the person with his camera, and then he has this expansive wonderful vision of Canada,” she says.

“If you just look at the magnificent diversity of the people in his photographs and the way he’s looked at them in so many different ways. I think that’s really the inspiration. The other inspiration, like it says on his van, is to follow your dreams.”

A word of advice from Van Horn on Canada’s 150th birthday, he says, “I think all of us should really be grateful that this is this amazing country and we need to keep it amazing. By extending yourself to the public and your family and just doing your best, we can make this an even better country.”

The Canada 150 Mosaic is on at the Red Deer Museum and Art Gallery through the end of August.

For more information, visit CanadianMosaic.ca or RedDeerMuseum.com.