TISDALE — A new mural has been installed in Tisdale by the Tisdale Mural Council. Each part of the mural has a unique purpose.
Michael Gaudet was the artist behind the mural. On Oct. 27 there will be a public ribbon cutting for the mural with Gaudet present.
He worked on the mural while having dialysis three times a week.
“I did have a kidney transplant for 34 years and I’ve been back on dialysis for four years, now I’m hoping and praying for a second transplant which will accelerate my creative energy,” Gaudet said.
The sky
Viewers of the painting may notice the transition of the sky.
“The committee said they’d like to see the northern lights included,” Gaudet said. “I guess because they’re such a beautiful thing, right?”
He considered doing multiple horizons, one above the other, similar to his mural in Young that drew him a lot of positive attention. This was stopped by a big obstacle; the Tisdale mural would be only 12 feet high.
With the height limitation he decided to get creative and do a light transition.
“When I was working on it I kind of blended the sky to go from daylight to dusk to dark, as one transition. I thought that was kind of cool.”
Wildflowers
Wildflowers are present throughout the painting. There will be a legend containing some of the symbolism, but the wildflowers won’t be part of it.
“It features certain wildflowers that are common around Tisdale, those poor guys aren’t included on the legend,” Gaudet said. “The wildflowers. But I think they’re nice, they add a nice little splash of colour to the whole thing.”
The purpose of the flowers is to add colour to the mural, so that it isn’t just monochromatic.
“There’s the sky, there’s the land, there’s the buildings and people and stuff so I thought, ‘let’s introduce some nice fun colours into it.’
Flowers included are lilies and giant canola blossoms.
Railways
On the left side of the painting there is an unmistakable railway.
“The railways in Tisdale go east, west, north, south,” Gaudet said. “It’s like a juncture and a crossway of railways and that is pretty significant in Tisdale for the access to market, and I guess passengers. So we put one of the original old steam engines.”
It pulling into the train station represents the influx of settlers in the early 1900s.
Below it the viewer can see a beekeeper with his honey boxes, representing the town’s connection to honey.
“He looks like an astronaut but he is a beekeeper.”
Behind the train station is burning hay.
A famous moment in Tisdale’s history is the last big shootout in eastern Saskatchewan. In the painting you can see an officer on one knee shooting into hay, a representation of the shootout where train robbers hide in hay, which the police lit on fire and shot into.
St. Peter’s Anglican Church
The St. Peter’s Anglican Church was built in 1908 at Ridgedale and moved to the Tisdale and District Museum in 1988.
Originally the mural was not going to have the church, but Gaudet liked the building, so he recommended it to the Mural Committee.
“I asked the committee if we could include the St. Peter’s Church. Just because it’s so adorable, it’s on the museum grounds,” Gaudet said.
They liked the idea of the inclusion of the building and it was added.
Figures
To the right in the painting, standing in front of the historic Falkon theatre and rink are John Barron, Kay Montgomery, Brent Butt and Kirby Burningham.
The mural was funded in part through the trust funds of both John Barron and Kay Montgomery.
“John Barron was the undertaker in Tisdale for many years and he actually died a bachelor and he actually donated his fortune to the Town of Tisdale for a trust fund for beautification,” Gaudet said.
Kay Montgomery owned a tavern in Tisdale.
“Her claim to fame is she never served minors,” Gaudet said. “She actually insisted people have to have ID and people have to be of age to enjoy the alcoholic beverages in her establishment, so that’s kind of cool.”
Brent Butt was the local creator behind the show “Corner Gas”.
Kirby Burningham was in the mural committee himself before he passed away last winter.
“Kirby was a prominent lawyer in town,” Gaudet said.
“[Mural Committee] members appealed to me to request him in the mural to immortalize him, so I immediately agreed.”
Standing in front of the hotel on the left side of the painting the viewer can also see Frederick W. Tisdale, the man the town was named after, an employee of the railway.
The Downtown
The streetlights in the downtown section are his personal favorite part of the painting.
“You see the blue light under the streetlight? That’s kind of cool, I like that,” Gaudet said.
On Facebook he has been getting responses from people on a photo of the downtown section of the painting.
“I got a lot of interesting comments from people from Tisdale or have a Tisdale connection. People keep commenting with their stories and their anecdotes of Tisdale which is really cool. I’m learning a lot from comments from the public.”
One comment he got was how the water tower was a “dead giveaway” that this was Tisdale.
Agriculture
On the right end of the painting viewers can see farming equipment under the northern lights are harvesting wheat in front of a field of canola. The canola itself has a distinctive shade of yellow.
“They’re the big cash crops,” Gaudet said.
“When the farmers are happy, everyone is happy. I think the farmers are really going to appreciate the prominent features of the combine, grain cart and terminals.”
Gaudet found the terminals to be “big boring blobs of cement” until he took a closer look.
“It was interesting painting the terminals because they were big boring blobs of cement,” Gaudet said.
“So I really took a good careful look at the terminals and saw you can really see the handmade effect of the grain of the cement, like they have been made by humans right? So you can see they’re not just boring blobs, they actually have the sweeping inconsistencies in the cement based on how they were brushed on. Like you can see the streaks on them, and that’s the human touch.”
On the left are old grain elevators as another nod to the farming community.
