In 1997, Tom Ethans had just begun his position as Executive Director of Take Pride
Winnipeg. On his way to work one day, he encountered the almost completed artwork on
this wall that had been commissioned earlier by Take Pride. He was alarmed at what he
saw. Tom: "All of those helicopters were shooting gas and bullets at the monkey! And
all those cars and trucks at the bottom were shooting bullets! And the people on the
ground were all Devils! And the monkey had a large banana and he was an attacking the
helicopters! It was a very simplistic Mural but I didn't want violence."
"When I came aboard as Executive Director I said to myself I can't have a Mural that
represents that kind of thing because that's not what we are about. She did a great job,
but we said to her were going to have to change it. And we paid her more money to
change it. That fact got left out of the University of Manitoba story. I went to D-7
Properties (the other sponsor) and asked 'is this what you wanted' and they said 'no':
they were upset with her but they hadn't told her. So we made the changes and I think
it's kind of a funky Mural now."
The Mural today is an extremely upbeat quick look from a young person's perspective of
some of the terrific things about Winnipeg. There was a great flood in Winnipeg that
year, and the Flood Fighters had done such a great job that Ethans felt strongly that the
Wall also pay a tribute to them. There are numerous other elements that the viewer is
invited to discover. The artist included an ice cream truck to the artwork with a triple-
decker ice cream cone. Ethans explains: "This represents my philosophy of life. Each of
the ice cream scoops on the cone looks like a sideways 'D': Dedication, Determination
and Discipline. You need those in order to succeed. Right? But if you have all those
three things you still can fail without the cone, which is an upside down 'A' for Attitude."