He’s a man on a mission. Tim Van Horn left his home in Red Deer, Alta., in 2008 to go on a journey in which he would photograph the people of Canada and mount an exhibition in time for the country’s 150th anniversary in 2017. Three RVs, two dogs and one wife later, he’s still on the road and still taking pictures.
The digital pilgrim, along with his dog Scout, has been on the Sunshine Coast for the winter and he’s taken about 200 to 300 photos of us. He’s been hanging loose in Madeira Park lately, has snapped the shopkeepers and working people of Sechelt, visited Molly’s Reach in Gibsons and met the folks of Roberts Creek.
“I stand on street corners,” Van Horn said, “or pick a wall and I ask every person who passes by [if I can take their photo]. I have a format – I always ask the closest person walking towards me. There are no judgments about who I pick.” He also might go to a landmark that is representative of the town – for example, a lumberyard that represents the socio-economic heart of the community. “It’s a heartfelt look at their lives,” he said.
Across Canada he’s seen approximately 44,000 people and has a massive collection of photos. You can’t miss his 25-foot RV that he calls Big Maple – many of the photos adhere to the sides of the vehicle and they are formed in the pattern of a giant maple leaf. At this time he is continuously living in the RV. There are no corporate logos posted – he doesn’t want them – although he is keen to meet kind people who give him cash that goes towards gas and food.
On his website, Canadianmosaic.ca, he asks that individuals sponsor a kilometre, a small part of his journey. He is essentially homeless but it doesn’t bother him.
“Poverty keeps you humble,” he points out, and he hopes that the universe will always provide. So far the universe is co-operating; though the photos are free, people have dipped into their pockets for him.
Raised in a military family, Van Horn was accustomed to travelling and he always wanted to journey across Canada. After working as a commercial photographer in Calgary for six years, he decided to branch out in 1998 and began taking photos for coffee table books, primarily for Alberta’s centennial. “Coffee table books of photos are often landscapes,” he said. “The people are overlooked.”
He decided to marry a sense of duty towards capturing images of the people with his art and set out on his journey in 2008. He’s crossed Canada five times and he points out that even with the enormous number of photos, he will cover only a small percentage of Canada’s population. Many have a story to tell and he encourages them to comment on their photos or tell him about their lives.
His plan for the Canadian sesquicentennial in 2017 is to drive a travelling pavilion on wheels across the country, stopping at festivals, schools and communities to show the giant mural of faces, a kind of chronicling of the national identity. This will, he hopes, start a dialogue about what kind of country we want to live in and who we are as a people.
If Van Horn has taken your photo, you can find it on his website www.canadianmosaic.ca. Go to “gallery,” click the green bar at the top and search for “find my photo” where you can search by province and town. Follow his journey on facebook/Canadianmosaic as well.
