Looking at the outside of the plain two-storey building at Victoria Drive and Truimph Street, you’d never guess that Fraser Wilson’s mural runs the full length of a 25-metre wall. The building is the home of the Maritime Labour Centre, and Fraser Wilson painted the mural in 1947.
Story from Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History
Cartoonist:
Wilson was a bit of a rabble rouser. He was an illustrator and cartoonist for the Vancouver Sun, who was fired from his job of 10 years after speaking out against management at the start of a brutal newspaper strike that went for over three years. In 1991, Wilson told a reporter that he was read a statement that said he was being dismissed for disloyalty to the paper and had an hour to leave the premises.
In 1947, Wilson was the 42-year-old president of the Newspaper Guild, and probably because of that, he was hired to paint a mural honouring BC workers and their contributions to industry onto the walls of the Boilermakers Hall on West Pender.
Pender Auditorium:
For the next four decades, the Pender Auditorium as it was known, became the venue for a number of bands including a Grateful Dead concert in 1966. When the building sold in 1985, the new owner wanted to divide the main hall into offices. It would have been the end of the mural which had been painted right onto the Gyprock. Instead, a deal was struck to move the mural to the new union building on Triumph Street.
With funding through the Vancouver Centennial Commission, West Vancouver art restorer Ferdinand Petrov was tasked with taking the mural down in sheets, scraping off the plaster backing and glueing it to heavy canvas and then on to birch plywood and, finally, cutting it into small panels. Later it would be assembled in its new home much like a giant jigsaw puzzle.
Rehomed:
Fred Svensson, a retired shipwright and joiner, is one of the few members of MWBIU Local 1 who remembers the mural in its original setting. Unfortunately, the wall in the new building was more than 4.5 metres shorter than the old wall. “They took out the section right in the middle,” he told me. “There are two trees in the centre of it now. It looks a little odd, but it doesn’t take away from the picture.”
He’s right—the mural is stunning. Wilson, was 83 when the mural was moved to the Maritime Labour Centre, and he was still running his graphic design business. He returned to paint the transition scenes, and the lost panels were likely discarded, says Fred.
Lucky it was moved, because the Pender Auditorium burned down in 2003. The mural has so far survived a couple of fires in the new building and an attempt to sell the building that the membership has so far managed to stave off.
For more about Fraser Wilson check out Jason Vanderhill’s Illustrated Vancouver blog
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10 comments on “Fraser Wilson and the (mostly) Working Man’s Mural”
Thanks so much for this – very interesting! I’m familiar with the mural (backdrop to meetings!) but didn’t know it had been modified to fit its new home. I learn something new from every one of your posts!
That’s great to hear – thanks so much!
Keep up the good work! Even those of us who were born here, are learning from your blogs!
Thanks Ruth!
For several years I have volunteered with the Transit Museum Society to take a full bus load of people from the Kettle Society to the annual January Christmas / New Year’s dinner and party. The first time I drove the bus we went to the Maritime Labour Centre, and I was amazed to see this huge mural in a rather plain building. Now I know all about the artist. The Kettle Society moved its event to the Croatian Centre – not nearly as interesting.
Thanks to Jack Nichol of the UFAWU and Gordie Westrand of Longshore my wedding reception in 1996 was in the room that holds this mural. I was the Director Treaty Negotiations, Industrial Adjustment, and Worker Retraining at the BC Fed
Of Labour…..working most closely with the IWA and Fish. My reception photos show the mural in all its glory. Thanks for this post Eve!
That’s amazing – thanks for stopping to comment!
Fascinating story, and what a great mural! Love it! So heroic.
Thanks so much for stopping by Brenda, so pleased you liked the story!
I spent the last two months working on a giant mural for an outdoor gallery in Eveleigh, Sydney. The mural is about the size of a tennis court and is painted directly onto the concrete site wall. It depicts a traditional view of workers in a foundry, and is painted in the style of the late nineteenth-century French Realist painters such as Courbet and Millet.