A country can't exist without people, and to celebrate Canada's 150th birthday in 2017, photographer Tim Van Horn has embarked on a project to bring together as many people as he can. The Canadian Mosaic project began in October of 2008, and its goal is to collect 36,000 images of people from across the country - or .1 per cent of the population - to put in a 30x100 foot flag mosaic to display at a major museum. He was in Yorkton to find people to be part of the project.
"I'm trying to bring the whole country together in one single image, in one single visual that talks about life and every aspect of life. Every demographic, every socioeconomic group is represented, all the arts, all the sports, all the occupations, brought together in one single visual for Canada's birthday in 2017," Van Horn says.
In the four years so far, Van Horn has collected 17,000 images from communities of every size throughout the nation. Each day for nine months of the year Van Horn travels to a different community and approaches people on the street and asks to take their photo for the mosaic. He says that when he approaches people, he gets about a 75 per cent success rate, and that this speaks to the qualities of the people overall.
"We're still a trusting people, we can still believe in a complete stranger and want to help him out in 2012. That, to me, speaks volumes about the integrity of our society and being Canadian. I'm honored that many people have said yes and agreed."
The plan for the portrait is to have it publicly available for free viewing in Ottawa, as well as putting it on a bus to take back to the communities where the portraits were taken as part of the celebration of Canada's 100th year. Van Horn also plans to do a coffee table book.
"There's never been a portrait done on Canada as big as this, ever. We've never had a massive portrait done on the country, where there's been thousands of people," Van Horn says.
The goal is to get a complete picture of the nation, and Van Horn says he wants to get to the smaller communities and get "into the little nooks and crannies," and bring together thousands of communities throughout the nation. He says that this is the only way to get a complete portrait of the nation as it stands right now.
"I think we're still a new country and most of us don't know what we look like as a country. That's the underlying question, who are we and what do we look like? So a lot of people are happy someone is doing this."
More on the Canadian Mosaic can be found on Van Horn's website, at www.canadianmosaic.ca.
