Walking art tours in and around the downtown over the noon hour seem to be a hit with office workers.
The weekly tours hosted by Art Tour #YEG started in July and have sold out every time.
“Until we embarked on this project, I didn’t realize how much art we actually have,” said Mary Ann Debrinksi, the city’s director of urban renewal.
Each tour includes more than a dozen pieces of art, including the spectacular and famous mosaic Tsa Tsa Ke K’e (Iron Foot Place) by Indigenous artist Alex Janvier.
But there are other, lesser-known pieces that are highlighted. And tour guides provide the history behind them.
“Paskwamostos,” by artist Joe Fafard, is part of the Art Tour #YEG, where participants view public art around downtown and learn the history behind each piece. (CBC/John Robertson)
For example, hundreds of people drive or walk by the Inukshuk on the south side of Jasper Avenue near 97th Street every day.
But how many people know the piece was erected to honour a teenager named David Kooktuk?
He lived in Yellowknife, Debrinski explained, and when he contracted appendicitis in 1972, he was sent on a plane to Edmonton for treatment.
“Three hundred kilometres outside of Yellowknife, the plane crashed, killing the nurse and the other patient on board. David and the pilot survived. He had appendicitis, but he still … took care of the injured pilot for 23 days before he passed away. And the pilot was rescued eight days later,” Debrinski said.
“He was a very heroic 14-year-old.”
Some of the three-dimensional bird silhouettes now greeting visitors to Edmonton’s Beaver Hills House Park. (John Robertson/CBC)
Edmonton’s first Indigenous city councillor, David Ward — also known as Kiviak — started raising funds for the Inukshuk in the 1980s after hearing of the story. The piece is by Wayne MacKenzie.
There are currently three tours, with one focused on Jasper Avenue, another on the Quarters, and the third on Churchill Square.
The tours run every Wednesday.