Ottawa Council has approved a motion to allocate $60,000 from the 2025 capital budget to for a mural at a Strandherd Drive underpass near Clarke Fields in West Barrhaven.
The investment in the mural comes following reports of hateful graffiti in the area. Barrhaven West Coun. David Hill said he believes that the mural could deter more vandalism in an area that is getting a major overhaul.
“There’s going to be a lot of foot traffic, a lot of active transit, and folks going around in that area,” Hill said in an interview with Capital Current. “The last thing we want them to see is repugnant and hateful graffiti, which unfortunately, my community was subjected to about a month ago.”
Councillor Hill says that on a Saturday evening in early May, he received a report from a concerned resident that showed screenshots of social media chats discussing the vandalism.
“As soon as I saw it, it was so grotesque that I needed to physically validate that this actually existed,” Hill said. “So I physically went to the site, I observed it myself, confirmed that it did in fact exist, and then I reached out immediately to both the police and public works.”
Police and public works were on the scene the next day. The graffiti was removed and an investigation was launched. Hill says that so far, no information about the investigation has been released.
‘There’s going to be a lot of foot traffic, a lot of active transit, and folks going around in that area. The last thing we want them to see is repugnant and hateful graffiti, which unfortunately, my community was subjected to about a month ago.”
— Coun. David Hill, Barrhaven West
“There were a number of things breaching the whole spectrum from nasty stuff to just extremely inappropriate things,” Hill said when asked what he saw when he visited the site.
“There were words, there were images, and it was beyond unacceptable.”
In a Facebook post responding to the incident, Hill stated that the images and messages in the graffiti were “both insulting and intimidating to our local Jewish friends and neighbours.”
The Ottawa area has recently seen other incidents involving hateful vandalism. In Arnprior, a teen was recently charged with three counts of mischief for graffiti with racial slurs and hate symbols.
Hill said he looked into solutions for trying to prevent such incidents.
“I talked to city staff about strategies to prevent this from happening going forward,” Hill said. “They said very clearly that one of the best counter-measures to graffiti is having mural art installed on-site.”
A growing community space
The West Barrhaven Community Association will spearhead the mural project in collaboration with Hill.
“We like to see nice things in the community,” WBCA president James Terhune said about the association’s decision to help lead the project.
Additionally, the non-profit Artists of Stonebridge, a group of Barrhaven-based visual artists, will be involved in the mural initiative.
Terhune said there will likely be an open house for the mural, where artists will get to share their ideas and showcase examples of their work.
The new mural will go on the east side of the underpass, which will be visible to anyone who takes the walking trail, which is currently being built by a construction crew.
The underpass trail will connect Clarke Fields Park, which houses a BMX facility and several sports fields, to the new Gregory Casey dog park. Terhune suspects that there will also be housing developments in the area behind the dog park in the future.
Clarke Fields, in particular, attracts many people to the area, as it hosts the annual Barrhaven Canada Day celebration, including a midway and outdoor country music concerts.
With events like these being held in the area, plenty of people will get to see the mural when it’s completed.
“I think it’s a great opportunity for the community to come together and turn something awful into something that is beautiful and amazing,” Hill said.
