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Downtown mural in B.C.’s Cariboo to go ahead despite mayor calling it ‘ugly’

The business improvement association in downtown Williams Lake, B.C., says it wanted to cheer up local residents, but didn’t expect the negative reception it received from the mayor.This proposed mural design for a building housing a laundromat in downtown Williams Lake, B.C., is ‘ugly,’ says Mayor Walt Cobb. (Submitted by Downtown Williams Lake Business Improvement Association)The business improvement…

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Published on September 22, 2020

The business improvement association in downtown Williams Lake, B.C., says it wanted to cheer up local residents, but didn't expect the negative reception it received from the mayor.

This proposed mural design for a building housing a laundromat in downtown Williams Lake, B.C., is ‘ugly,' says Mayor Walt Cobb. (Submitted by Downtown Williams Lake Business Improvement Association)

The business improvement association in Williams Lake, B.C., says a downtown mural will go ahead despite the negative reception it received from the mayor.

The mural is intended to cheer up local residents amid the COVID-19 pandemic and in the aftermath of a major wildfire in 2017.

But at a council meeting last week, Mayor Walt Cobb made no attempt to hide his opinion of the project.

“It's ugly,” Cobb said of the mural, proposed for the wall of a laundromat at Oliver Street and Fourth Avenue South.

Cobb said the mural, designed by five local female artists, doesn't fit the city's character.

Councillors unanimously decided to defer discussion of the business improvement association's $5,000 funding request until the city develops a formal policy on murals.

But the executive director of the BIA says the project will go ahead with or without the city's funding.

Jordan Davis said the Williams Lake First Nation has promised to provide $5,000 to fund the artwork and, with an additional $5,000 from the association's own pocket, she says the mural project can proceed without financial support from the city.

Davis said she was “shocked” and “overwhelmingly disappointed” by the mayor's comments.

Williams Lake Mayor Walt Cobb says any urban development needs to be consistent with the Cariboo Western theme as stated in the city's official community plan. (City of Williams Lake)

“Everybody's been under so much stress and so much strain,” Davis said to Doug Herbert, guest host of CBC's Daybreak Kamloops. “We just have to remember that our words and our actions impact people around us.”

In the funding request letter to city council in August, Davis said the mural “will show the tragedy of the fires, while showing the spectator the possibility and beauty of rising above this.”

More than 10,000 residents in Williams Lake and the surrounding areas were evacuated from their homes due to wildfires in the summer of 2017.

The proposed mural would be painted on the white wall of a building at Oliver Street and Fourth Avenue South in downtown Williams Lake, B.C. (Google Maps)

“We're not opposed to the murals. It was just, in this particular case, the question of how it tied in with a particular area of our official community plan,” Cobb told CBC. “It states that the [downtown] core will stay along the [Cariboo] Western theme.”

But Davis said the city doesn't yet have a policy specifically on murals, and the Indigenous community needs to be considered when it comes to cultural representation in the downtown area.