Aurora mayor looks to honour front-line coronavirus workers with murals

Local artists would paint retaining walls along Yonge Street in downtown core

Yorkregion.com
May 22, 2020
Lisa Queen 

Aurora Mayor Tom Mrakas is hoping to beautify the downtown core while paying tribute to essential front-line workers during the coronavirus at the same time.

At the May 26 council meeting, he will ask council to look at having local artists paint murals on retaining walls along Yonge Street between Aurora Heights Drive and Kennedy Street.

Staff would determine which walls would be painted and how artists would be chosen.

The idea of painting murals on the walls has been floating around since the 2014 to 2018 term of council as the town moved to revamp the downtown with projects such as Library Square, said Mrakas, who had discussions about the initiative with former councillor Jeff Thom.

“We looked at them and said they really look awful. They’re just concrete, plain. We thought it would be great to look at commissioning local artists to come in and do artwork on these concrete walls and, in essence, beautify our downtown core at the same time,” he said.

He had planned to introduce a motion in early March but backed off when COVID-19 hit.

But delays in getting the idea before council mean now at least one of the walls can honour front-line workers such as health care workers, grocery workers and truckers.

“They deserve our thanks and I think this is an excellent way that we can have a mural in our downtown core that a) beautifies our downtown core, b) has local artists do the drawings and do the work in our town and have that sense of pride in our community and c) say thank you to all those front-line workers that have done so much for us,” Mrakas said.

He can think of at least three possible locations--outside Our Lady of Grace Church at 15347 Yonge and outside and opposite Chartwell Park Place Retirement Residence at 15055 Yonge--but staff may identify others.

It will be up to council to decide if one or more will be dedicated to front-line workers, Mrakas said.

“If it was up to me, I would say let’s do all three of them in some way or other that would be a tribute to front-line workers,” he said.