The Millenium Trail in Terrace is about to get fishy.
In celebration of the Skeena Salmon Art Festival, approximately 45 painted fish made of wood will be hung on the fence along the Hwy 16 pathway to brighten up the city.
‘The Millenium Migration Project’ was initiated by resident Angie Healey who says she approached festival organizer Dave Gordon with the idea.
“The idea is that with the fish, they’re all facing one direction, they’re all swimming up the river,” says Healey. “We wanted to do it so the fish were realistic to size and proportion for the species, you could look at them and kind of have an idea of which different species you’re looking at.”
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Healey says the fish were painted by Grade 3 and 4 classes at Uplands Elementary, as it’s part of their curriculum at the school to learn about salmon and thought it would be a great way to bring their studies to life. She encouraged the students to paint items that represented either the Northwest or local First Nations on the wooden fish.
She adds they decided on wood as they wanted to avoid using plastic and found an eco-friendly paint that wouldn’t damage the environment over time. Although it’s not expected they’ll last forever on the trail, Healey hopes this can become an annual project for the students and would like to introduce it to other groups in the community, like the seniors at Skeenaview.
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“The idea is that we keep putting new art up there with new groups [and] this keeps going for a long time, [so] different groups get to go by… and be like ‘That’s my fish’ on the trail and go show their friends or family to talk about it,” Healey says.
“Eventually, we’re going to have some smaller fish on there and have them all the small swimming downstream, returning back to the ocean… we wanted to do something for people to get excited by during their walks.”
The Skeena Salmon Festival art show will hold its grand opening at the Terrace Art Gallery on Aug. 2.
natalia@terracestandard.com
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The Terrace Standard will be running a series for the next two weeks featuring a Skeena Salmon Art Festival project in Terrace.
