Excerpt from cbc.ca:
Mary Wiens · CBC News · Posted: Jul 20, 2017 11:00 AM ET | Last Updated: July 20, 2017
Few passengers boarding the subway at Old Mill where it crosses over Humber Park realize that the massive concrete pylons supporting the station have become a series of concrete canvases in the park below.
But walk past the station, down Old Mill Road and turn right into Humber Park, and you'll find Indigenous artist Philip Cote, perched on a scaffold, working on any one of ten murals that transform the pylons into teaching tools for Indigenous history.
Cote's circular murals depicting the Anishinaabe creation story are a public art commission for the Pan Am Path, the 80-kilometre path that will eventually link walking and cycling paths across the city.
For Cote, the murals are a chance to share Indigenous history and science, informed by a spiritual understanding — typical of Indigenous thought.
"The whole idea of this mural is a small seed that's going to get planted and it's going to go somewhere," said Cote. "It's the creation story of the Anishinaabe people, so we're talking about a different way of looking at the world."
"This mural is man's arrival on the land. He's connecting with all the animals," said Cote. "I wanted to show that Indigenous thinking, that everything's connected and we're all on the same path."
The subway bridge was built almost 50 years ago but Cote's murals depict a history preserved through an oral tradition that survived the Ice Age.
Ten murals capture different epochs of Indigenous history, going back more than 13,500 years, like one mural depicting animals that became extinct during the Ice Age. It includes an image of a man called Oh-kwa-ming I-nini-wug, the Anishinaabe word for 'ancient people,' passed down through an oral tradition that western science is only now beginning to accord more respect.
Cote's murals for the Pan Am Path are a partnership with two graffitti artists, Jarus and Kwest.
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