Show you Canadian pride by helping to paint giant flag

Written By BRIAN LOCKHART

The cancellation of Canada Day events doesn't mean you won't be able to celebrate your heritage and your country this year.

A local group will be hosting an event to paint a giant Canadian flag created from the hand prints of local residents.

The idea came from a meeting of the Town's Canada Day Committee when they were looking for something special for this year's Canada Day celebrations.

As Canada Day celebrations across the country have been cancelled, several people have decided to take that idea and show their pride by building a large flag made from barn board.

Andrew James, of the Streams Community Hub, Kyle Fegan of Impact Creative, and Brian McBride, from Shelburne Memorials are all sponsoring and supplying the materials to make the project happen.

“We've got barn board and we've already built the frame,” Mr. Fegan explained. “We'll be putting the barn board onto the frame. It's going to be 10 feet by 20 feet.”

People will be invited to dip their hands in the red paint and make a hand print on the barn board to fill in the flag.

“We're going to have different shades of red so when you take a look at the flag you will actually see the different hand prints,” Mr. Fegan said. “When Andrew presented the idea us at the Canada Day Committee we thought it was a great community initiative and we were going to do it for Canada Day this year. When that fell through, after COVID first hit, and I saw everyone was downtrodden and depressed, I thought the Town needs some kind of morale boost. So I called up Andrew and said, ‘what do you think about still doing the flag initiative, just you, Brian, and myself.' The town needs something that's uplifting. He loved the idea, so does Brian. So we decided to take the idea and run with it.”

Participants will be asked to dip their hands in the paint and make a hand print to create the flag.

To be safe, there will be social distancing protocols in effect.

Once completed, the flag will be displayed at Fiddle Park.

The initiative has been dubbed “One Community, One Hope.”

The event will take place on Saturday, June 20, at Jack Downing Park in Shelburne, across the street from Shelburne Town Hall, beginning at noon.