Wall of Inspiration to undergo major update

By Katie Jacobs

The Wall of Inspiration, a high-profile display at City Hall featuring the names of more than 800 Ottawa community builders, will undergo a major makeover in the coming months.

The United Way had been planning on updating the wall since the end of March, and has announced plans to unveil a 250-sq.-ft. city map made out of local cherrywood. The map is being created by the Ottawa-based artistic design company N-Product to symbolize the capital’s history as a lumber town.

Taline Jirian, the senior manager of experience marketing with the United Way, said that the purpose of the wall is to show how regular people in the community do great things, and that the 800 names will be incorporated in the new design — etched on plaques made of see-through plexiglas.

Jirian said that the map will eventually be made of 330 pieces measuring 8 X 8 inches each, but the United Way decided to unveil the first 150 pieces at a recent city hall event called This is Ottawa.

“We didn’t want to do it on our own, we wanted to involve the public,” said Jirian. “It seemed like a good marriage of creating this huge map … and what a good way to start this process by offering up the first 150 pieces to the public.”

The United Way is the city’s leading charitable organization and fundraises for services such as senior citizen care and after school programs. Jirian added the map will communicate to the public about the charity’s work and relationships in Ottawa with other charities, businesses and individuals.

“Knowing and understanding the community is at the core of what we do,” said Jirian. “It’s at the core of the research that’s done internally … that we access or connect with or bring people to the table for. And at that core is the map of Ottawa, and we use that as a centrepiece to everything we do.”

On Sept. 28, the blueprint showing the new design was spread out in front of the current Wall of Inspiration, at which 400 sponsors, community partners and organizations — each registering for a piece of the giant wooden puzzle that will ultimately form the depiction of the city’s 23 wards — attended at Jean Pigott Place.

Speeches were made by United Way president Michael Allen and Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson, who explained how the 150 pieces of the map symbolized the number of years since Canada’s Confederation.

Henry Akanko, a registrant at the event and the director of Hire Immigrants Ottawa, said the map pieces are like “building blocks” that honour people who contribute to their city.

“Building communities is a collective effort. It’s not a job that can be done by one individual or one agency. So when we all put our hands on the wall as a community, we are able to make a change … as we want it,” said Akanko.

Frank Bilodeau, the Vice President of Scotiabank, the United Way’s lead sponsor for the new Wall of Inspiration as well as when it was first unveiled in 2000, said that the map “brings awareness” to the size and variety of Ottawa.

“If it was a straight map without the pieces …it’s not as (exciting) but the fact that all the pieces are coming together to make Ottawa great is nice symbolism.”

Bilodeau, who attended the Wall of Inspiration’s original unveiling, too, said his personal relationship with the United Way began 15 years ago when he was working for Scotiabank in Gatineau and realized the “severe” needs of the community.

“By giving out an award one evening …I saw homelessness, I saw hunger, I saw children that weren’t well supported,” said Bilodeau. “When you realize how much need there is …and you start thinking about United Way’s goal … it becomes very logical to become very aligned with them.”

The United Way tapped sponsors — not the donors who support the agency’s charitable partners — for the expected $22,000 cost of the Wall of Inspiration revamp. The first 150 wooden map pieces and the enlarged depiction of the city’s wards that will be used as a blueprint for the map’s installation will reside with the United Way until construction begins.