Wednesday marks 150 years since the first city council meeting in Nanaimo and the city is celebrating with a winter arts festival called Luminous Paths that will open at Maffeo Sutton Park on Wednesday, Jan. 22 and run until Family Day on Feb. 17.
“We’re not, to my knowledge, spending a lot of money, but we are recognizing that [it has been] 150 years since the city was incorporated, which was an important step,” Nanaimo’s Mayor Leonard Krog told The Discourse. “The city was already established in a practical sense, through the Hudson’s Bay Company and the first colonists, and had been for several decades, but the formal incorporation is what started us down the road to where we are in terms of a community.”
Krog said that he is looking forward to seeing the art that is being installed by artists such as Monkey C Interactive, Muaro Dalle Costa, bailey macabre, David Martinello and Jenny Smith.
“I haven’t done a sneak preview, I like surprises,” Krog said. “I’m still a kid. I don’t like to open presents on Christmas Eve. I want to save them for Christmas morning. So we’ll do a tour on Wednesday and get to see it with everybody else.”
Some of the artists are part of the city’s urban design roster that had proposed projects that fit well with the festival.
“The intent was, as we reach 150 years of incorporation as a city, looking at the ways arts and culture are lighting the way forward. And so we’re really trying to highlight our cultural landscape in Nanaimo with this event,” Jaime-Brett Sine, the City of Nanaimo’s cultural coordinator, told The Discourse.
A time to reflect
The City of Nanaimo is on the treaty territory of the Snuneymuxw First Nation. The Snuneymuxw have stewarded the lands for millennia and continue to do so to this day.
While he noted that this is a celebration of how far the City of Nanaimo has come, Mayor Krog acknowledged that resource extraction industries — such as coal, fishing and logging — also encouraged colonization.
“It’s a great time to reflect,” Krog said.
While Snuneymuxw First Nation doesn’t have any formal involvement in the city’s 150th celebrations, Krog said they have been invited to attend. He said he continues to advocate for an Indigenous cultural centre in the community that would attract tourists, preserve and enhance Snuneymuxw culture and provide a window into the past before colonization.
“There’s a lot of history behind us, and there’s a lot of history to make,” Krog said.
Art installations to ring Maffeo Sutton Park
The opening event on Wednesday will feature six art installations along a path that starts near Spirit Square and goes around the waterfront and Sway-A-Lana Lagoon. There will also be live music, food trucks, interactive booths and activities for children including performers in LED lights that Sine said will “delight the kids.”
Nanaimo’s poet laureate Neil Surkan and a group of poets will be creating “concrete poems” that glow in the dark along the pa
The closing event on Family Day will be oriented to children with family-friendly performers and arts and crafts.
HMCS Nanaimo will also be in town for the celebration and will offer evening tours of the ship at a future date.
“I believe they’re intending to somewhat illuminate the boat as well,” Sine said.
Public safety in the park
To help ensure that members of the public feel safe in the park at night the city will have community safety officers and RCMP on site during opening night and there will be ongoing overnight security to monitor the artwork and have “extra eyes” on the park at night.
“We’re absolutely doing what we can to make sure people are comfortable and feel safe,” Sine said.
Sine said there are plans for a permanent public art piece connected to the city’s 150th anniversary but she can’t say more about it as it’s still being developed.
“I think in a troubled time, it’s pretty wonderful to look around and consider how fortunate we all are to be living in Nanaimo,” Krog said.
