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New mural unveiled in downtown Alliston

August 29, 2024   ·   0 Comments

By Brian Lockhart

Visitors of downtown Alliston will now be greeted by a large mural depicting scenes through history.

The mural is located on the side of a building at Victoria Street and Centre Street and is easily visible to anyone travelling west into town.

The mural was sponsored by the Alliston BIA as a way to bring some art, colour, and attention to the downtown core.

Representing four eras, the first panel depicts a horse and buggy, with T.P. Loblaw, Sir Frederick Banting, and a young girl in the buggy wearing a red scarf. The second panel moves forward a few decades to a downtown Alliston street, lined with classic automobiles. The girl in the red scarf is now a young woman.

The third panel reveals the entrance to Stevenson Memorial Hospital with a red car travelling from the second panel to the third.

The final panel depicts a refurbished Stevenson Memorial Hospital with the girl in the red scarf, now a senior citizen walking with her granddaughter.

“This mural is sponsored by the BIA,” explained Lachlan McGurk, chair of the Alliston BIA. “We’ve wanted to put something on this building for years because it’s central to downtown. It’s a great first impression for anyone coming downtown. It’s a welcome to the downtown area. There is a QR code that you can scan and it tells you all about it.”

Artist Shannon Milne was commissioned to design the piece.

“We all sat down and went over the original art, and we started discussing what we wanted to see in each of the pictures,” Shannon explained about the start of her work. “I started out with the rough draft on my iPad. I’d go over it with everyone about the finer details. I used some digital painting tools to add in textures, and used some reference images that were supplied by the BIA.”

The final images were placed in a vector file that allows it to be enlarged without pixelating or distorting the image.

“For the idea of the red scarf, I mentioned that we should have a character, who starts as a child, then in the end panel, she has her granddaughter with her,” Shannon said. “It symbolizes the next generation.”

The mural now is in full view of anyone travelling down Victoria Street and it adds some fun and imagination to the town landscape. 

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