'A place for imagination': Vast MosaïCanada exhibit set to open on banks of Ottawa River...

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To enter the soon-to-be complete MosaïCanada 150/Gatineau 2017, visitors first walk into an exact replica of a 1920s Canadian Pacific Railway station – except that it’s sheathed in living plants instead of boards and shingles.

On the tracks, a gardener is carefully clipping the living roof of Engine No. 374.

A duplicate of the first CPR steam locomotive to take passengers across Canada, it waits to symbolically carry visitors through a vast spectacle celebrating the country’s sesquicentennial. It’s all executed in mosaïculture, three-dimensional sculptures made of living plants.

On the platform is a massive Anne of Green Gables, an inspiration for landscape architect Lise Cormier and her team’s vast installation set against the backdrop of the Ottawa River at Jacques Cartier Park.

In Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Canadian classic, the small orphan sits at the train station waiting for her new life to begin. The station master tells her to wait inside but Anne refuses because there was “more scope for imagination” out of doors.

“Canada is space and this is really a place for imagination,” Cormier said. “Our own imagination needs space.”

Cormier, a former director of the City of Montreal’s parks department and a mosaïculture pioneer, is staging her most ambitious creation yet on the banks of the Ottawa River.

Ahead of the June 30 opening, almost 100 gardeners – some from the Chinese cities of Shanghai and Beijing, which have sent pieces to celebrate Canada’s birthday – are at work installing what will total three million plants of 80 different varieties.


A train engine and passenger cars as we get a sneak peek tour of the MosaiCanada 150 gardens opening at the end of June in Jacques Cartier Park in Gatineau.


More than a million people are expected to take it the $10-million spectacle of 100 structures over 1.2 km of stone dust pathways by the time it winds up Oct. 15. Funded by three levels of government and private sponsors, admission is free.

“For me, it is the most spectacular exhibition – it’s for my country, it’s for Canada,” Cormier said.

“It’s my country and it inspires me.”

The plants, all annuals and most chosen for colourful, season-long foliage instead of flowers, grow in soil sandwiched between layers of a geotextile supported by a metal frame and watered by an internal irrigation system.

Around the same time that Canada was born in 1867, a French gardener (coincidentally named Jean Chrétien) created two-dimensional plantscapes of images like butterflies at Parc de la Tête d’Or in Lyons.

The labour-intensive practice became all the rage in Victorian times but fell out of favour in the 20th century.


A gardener at work as we get a sneak peek tour of the MosaiCanada 150 gardens opening at the end of June in Jacques Cartier Park in Gatineau.


Then Cormier discovered amazing three-dimensional living sculptures on a trip to the Chinese city of Harbin. She thought they’d be a season-spanning attraction unlike the traditional, and quick to melt, ice sculptures.

The result was the first Mosaïcultures Internationales in Montreal taken in by about three-quarters of a million visitors in the summer of 2000.

From the entrance at Laurier and Saint-Étienne streets, the path meanders through the station and down towards the river through a series of scenes representing each province and territory.

For Québec, three boats shaped like fleur-de-lis point to Jacques Cartier’s arrival in Canada, navigating waves from which a trio of horses emerges. They represent the Canadian horse, a tough breed descended from the first equines to arrive in New France in 1665. Their manes, shaggy carex grasses, rustle in the breeze.

Saskatchewan is a Brobdingnagian Mountie on a black steed — a nod to the RCMP’s Depot in Regina. Manitoba is represented by a towering Inukshuk with a howling wolf, the vivid colours of the northern lights coming from his jaws. British Columbia’s scene includes a copy of Haida sculptor Bill Reid’s famed killer whale.

At the end of the event, each of the province’s structures will be donated to the province for re-use and gardeners from each province have been trained how to plant them. Meanwhile, 300 trees installed on the site – which hosts Winterlude events each winter – will be moved to local parks.


A mountie on horseback as we get a sneak peek tour of the MosaiCanada 150 gardens opening at the end of June in Jacques Cartier Park in Gatineau.


Beijing’s entry shows twin dragons, male and female, dancing against the Rocky Mountains. Shanghai’s is a traditional lion dance with puppeteers operating nine massive puppets.

Local symbols include a bigger-than-life logger and legend Joseph Montferrand, who inspired the Redblacks mascot Big Joe, sitting overlooking the river that was the centre of the timber trade. A monumental canoe carrying Wisakedjak — a crane Manitou from First Nations’ lore — and the animals, including an otter, muskrat and beaver, was designed by Anishinaabe artist Dean Ottawa of Kitigan Zibi.

The final sculpture is a 15-metre tall tour-de-force whose impact belies her gentle smile.

Mother Earth has a sweet face of silvery grey santolina and long hair of tumbling sweet potato vine and purple petunias gardeners were busy planting this week, some atop a construction crane. When the event begins, water will pour from her car-sized palm, where a bird has alighted to drink, into a shimmering pool.

But the installation isn’t just a flower show, Cormier said, noting that each of the sculptures will be accompanied by text to explain its historical or symbolic significance to Canada.

“People must learn something,” she said.


A group of dragons as prepared by a group from China as we get a sneak peek tour of the MosaiCanada 150 gardens opening at the end of June in Jacques Cartier Park in Gatineau.

GALLERY:
Photos: Vast MosaïCanada exhibit set to open on banks of Ottawa River


  • A group of dragons and traditional Chinese icons as prepared by a group from China as we get a sneak peek tour of the MosaiCanada 150 gardens opening at the end of June in Jacques Cartier Park in Gatineau. Wayne Cuddington/Postmedia


  • A group of dragons as prepared by a group from China as we get a sneak peek tour of the MosaiCanada 150 gardens opening at the end of June in Jacques Cartier Park in Gatineau. Wayne Cuddington/Postmedia


  • A train engine and passenger cars as we get a sneak peek tour of the MosaiCanada 150 gardens opening at the end of June in Jacques Cartier Park in Gatineau. Wayne Cuddington/Postmedia


  • A polar bear is watered by horticulturist Valérie Bouladier as we get a sneak peek tour of the MosaiCanada 150 gardens opening at the end of June in Jacques Cartier Park in Gatineau. Wayne Cuddington/Postmedia


  • A mountie on horseback as we get a sneak peek tour of the MosaiCanada 150 gardens opening at the end of June in Jacques Cartier Park in Gatineau. Wayne Cuddington/Postmedia


  • A polar bear is watered by horticulturist Valérie Bouladier as we get a sneak peek tour of the MosaiCanada 150 gardens opening at the end of June in Jacques Cartier Park in Gatineau. Wayne Cuddington/Postmedia


  • An orca is watered by horticulturist Lisane Patry as we get a sneak peek tour of the MosaiCanada 150 gardens opening at the end of June in Jacques Cartier Park in Gatineau. Wayne Cuddington/Postmedia


  • A group of dragons and traditional Chinese icons as prepared by a group from China as we get a sneak peek tour of the MosaiCanada 150 gardens opening at the end of June in Jacques Cartier Park in Gatineau. Wayne Cuddington/Postmedia


  • A gardener at work as we get a sneak peek tour of the MosaiCanada 150 gardens opening at the end of June in Jacques Cartier Park in Gatineau. Wayne Cuddington/Postmedia


  • Gardeners at work as we get a sneak peek tour of the MosaiCanada 150 gardens opening at the end of June in Jacques Cartier Park in Gatineau. Wayne Cuddington/Postmedia


  • A gardener at work as we get a sneak peek tour of the MosaiCanada 150 gardens opening at the end of June in Jacques Cartier Park in Gatineau. Wayne Cuddington/Postmedia


  • Gardeners at work on Mother Earth as we get a sneak peek tour of the MosaiCanada 150 gardens opening at the end of June in Jacques Cartier Park in Gatineau. Wayne Cuddington/Postmedia Wayne Cuddington/Postmedia


  • Gardeners at work on Mother Earth as we get a sneak peek tour of the MosaiCanada 150 gardens opening at the end of June in Jacques Cartier Park in Gatineau. Wayne Cuddington/Postmedia


  • Gardeners at work on Mother Earth as we get a sneak peek tour of the MosaiCanada 150 gardens opening at the end of June in Jacques Cartier Park in Gatineau. Wayne Cuddington/Postmedia


  • Mother Earth being worked on as we get a sneak peek tour of the MosaiCanada 150 gardens opening at the end of June in Jacques Cartier Park in Gatineau. Wayne Cuddington/Postmedia


  • Mother Earth being worked on as we get a sneak peek tour of the MosaiCanada 150 gardens opening at the end of June in Jacques Cartier Park in Gatineau. Wayne Cuddington/Postmedia


  • Mother Earth being worked on as we get a sneak peek tour of the MosaiCanada 150 gardens opening at the end of June in Jacques Cartier Park in Gatineau. Wayne Cuddington/Postmedia

MosaïCanada 150/Gatineau 2017

Where: Jacques-Cartier Park, Laurier Street, Gatineau

When: Opens June 30 at 3 p.m., then daily rain or shine from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. until Oct. 15

How much: Free admission, guided tours, $10, are free for 13 and under

Information: mosaicanada.ca

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