Chemainus
It was time for another exploratory road trip.
Recently, while back in Edmonton, Terry and I watched another episode of a sweet show we like called, “Still Standing”.
It’s a series that follows Comedian Jonny Harris as he explores small towns on the ropes, performs stand-up shows for the locals who've stuck it out, and honours the folks in these towns by talking about their lives/jobs and does it all with a light, inoffensive sense of humour. It’s a bit of a love letter to our Canadian small towns that are….still standing …today.
We watched one of Jonny’s shows about “Chemainus” in British Columbia, known for its many many murals. So when we randomly pulled into the town the other evening and I took a photo of the first mural , we suddenly looked at each other and realized that we were at the very town we had just seen the show about! We remembered that they spoke about painting hundreds of yellow footsteps all through the town to lead you to the murals. (Check out the footsteps on the second photo above…)
Jonny Harris is a Newfoundland comedian and he came up with this idea to travel to all of these small towns and the people in the towns that are interviewed just love it! He tells us about the town and why it hit hard times and why they are still standing.
We had some fun driving through and trying to take photos of some of the murals that were painted to bring life back into this very small town after it was in danger of becoming an actual ghost town. If I recall correctly, this one local couple visited Europe and when they saw all of the murals there, they decided this was exactly what their small town in Canada needed to revitalize the place….and it worked!
If you’re ever heading north on #17 heading to Nanaimo…look for the wee town of Chemainus on the water. It’s like visiting a giant art gallery!