A public artwork set up paying homage to one among Canada’s most well-known historic painters, created by one among Canada’s best-known up to date artists, burned down final week in Toronto in what police investigators imagine was an arson assault.
Douglas Coupland’s bright-red Tom Thomson’s Canoe (2008), an homage to the Group of Seven artist Tom Thomson, who died in a canoeing accident at age 39 in 1917, was destroyed within the early hours of two April.
In response to a Toronto police report posted on social media: “At roughly 2:42 a.m., officers responded to a fireplace at Canoe Touchdown Park close to Fort York Boulevard and Dan Leckie Manner. The long-lasting pink canoe was discovered engulfed in flames and, sadly, was destroyed.”
In an accompanying video, a police spokesperson stated the division is treating the fireplace as a suspected arson assault. “That space is surrounded by high-rises and condos,” the spokesperson stated, “so we’re asking anybody that has any data, together with footage from safety cameras or when you noticed or heard anythingto please contact @tps14div at 416-808-1400.”
Coupland tells The Artwork Newspaper: “In the meanwhile, we all know it was arson, however we don’t know its motive. Artwork is at all times a lightning rod. Was it political? Who’s to say.”
He added that one other of his public artwork tasks is displayed close by, and was not focused: “Very shut by, there’s my Monument to the Battle of 1812, which I did in 2008. An English soldier standing above a toppled US soldier. Possibly that’s subsequent?”
Nonetheless, the artist says he has been touched by the outpouring of public assist and is optimistic his Canoe can be re-created. “Individuals have been very considerate to me because the canoe acquired torched,” he says. “We’re certain will probably be rebuilt, however possibly out of metal.” (Pictures from the scene present solely the sculpture’s metal body, with the vast majority of its resin physique fully incinerated by the fireplace.)
Coupland, a Vancouver-based conceptual artist and creator—who, amongst quite a few different achievements, helped popularise the time period “Era X” together with his 1991 novel of the identical identify—works throughout a spread of media from work, textual content artwork and monumental sculptures to know-how and set up.
Canoe Touchdown Park, a privately funded city park in downtown Toronto, was constructed on former railway lands within the historic Fort York space and opened in 2009. It was designed by the Vancouver-based panorama architects PFS Studio in collaboration with the Toronto-based agency the Planning Partnership of Toronto, the general public artwork marketing consultant Karen Mills and Coupland. Along with Tom Thomson’s Canoe—which which was giant sufficient for individuals to face in and a preferred setting for selfies and searching over the Gardiner Expressway to Lake Ontario—the neighbourhood’s public artwork installations embrace a vibrant show of enormous fishing bobbers and a sculptural beaver dam.
In response to the Toronto Downtown West Enterprise Enchancment Affiliation web site, Coupland’s now-destroyed set up was a civic landmark.
“Seen by tens of millions of motorists travelling the Gardiner Expressway and strolling in and round Canoe Touchdown Park, Douglas Coupland’s startling pink canoe serves as a symbolic entrance marker to the center of downtown Toronto,” the positioning reads. “Constructed as a part of a complete program of art work for the park, this canoe is perched over the sting of a landscaped berm that was constructed utilizing excavated supplies from the development of Harmony CityPlace.”
