The Red Deer Museum + Art Gallery Executive Director Lorna Johnson gave an update to council on Canada 150 celebrations in the City last month.

A number of groups have received funding from Canadian Heritage.

The Discovery Canyon Water Park received a $500,000 grant for upgrades.

Canadian Heritage also approved funding for several other projects including ReThink Red Deer who got $23,000 for its Piper Creek Restoration Project; the MAG received $40,000 to commission Tim Van Horn’s Canadian mosaic; and the Red Deer Native Friendship Society received $48,000 for events celebrating Canada’s Indigenous culture.

The Red Deer and District Community Foundation is also accepting applications for grant funding.

Several Red Deer applicants were successful under the first – the Red Deer Symphony for its Great Canadian Songbook project, the Red Deer Native Friendship Society’s cultural conversations about 150, the Red Deer Watershed Alliance’s Earth Day event and Treehouse Youth Theatre’s new play The New Recruits.

Other groups to receive funding included the Golden Circle and the Mountain View Adult Learning Society.

The applications are due April 3rd.

Last month, the MAG launched its Canada 150 event web site, where community groups can submit their events commemorating the sesquicentennial.

“That will be an ongoing web site. People can send in their Canada 150 events and we will put them on the calendar,” Johnson said. “There’s just a lot of events so it’s to see who’s doing what and when or if there’s something you’d like to go to.”

Finally, local artist and photographer Van Horn spent Family Day shooting portraits in Red Deer. His pictures will be used in a photo mosaic that will be permanently installed on the south side of the museum building.

“For the last couple of years he’s been driving back and forth across Canada taking portraits of Canadians. He’s really passionate about the diversity of Canada. Then he’s been compiling these portraits into one of those mosaic murals,” Johnson said.

Each individual portrait is like a pixel of the larger image.

“His aim is to have 3,000 portraits of Red Deerians to go on the mural in addition to all of the thousands of portraits he’s got from all over the country,” Johnson said.

The mural will be unveiled the long August weekend on Heritage Day.

joseph.ho@reddeerexpress.com