Mike Valcourt: "There is a lot of graffiti in the area and this garage had graffiti on it. The
idea the owner had was that she wanted some kind of nature wildlife thing."
"In certain areas of Winnipeg you will see dumpster divers in back lanes like this, and I
thought to myself, 'who are nature's dumpster divers': the bear! I initially thought of a
big black bear, but after looking at the scale of the wall I thought that would be too
intimidating so I went with a baby bear. So the same effect is still there without the
'confrontation' element of a large bear."
"We have the pole at the left edge, so I really didn't want to put anything with a lot of
detail, so that I wanted to open up the rest of the Mural when you're driving by. This is
where I put the bear proof dumpster."
"We have the bear going through the garbage which is strewn about. You'll notice that it
is all recyclable materials, so I wanted to emphasize that as well. I wanted to have that
ecological message in there as well. It's fitting that this Mural is right beside dumpsters
that people go through to pick out recyclable materials of value like cans and beer
bottles."
