The fragile fabric of Confederation has been torn — and not by politicians. A massive century-old oil painting called The Fathers of Confederation hanging over the grand staircase at Queen’s Park was ripped when a work crew tearing down scaffolding from a paint job banged a sharp edge into the canvas.Unless you’d rather believe that one of the fathers — Edward Whelan of Prince Edward Island — suddenly sprung to life and kicked a hole two or three fingers wide. Read more:Do restorations always improve aging or damaged works of art?The oblong tear is just off the toe of Whelan’s boot in the lower left corner of the 6-by-3.5-metre piece unveiled by artist Fredrick S. Challener in 1919 after two years of work. “It’s just a shame,” said Alicia Coutts of Toronto Art Restoration Inc., who was travelling in Germany on holiday when she got a query from the Archives of Ontario about doing repairs.Reached by the Star in Bremen, Coutts could not estimate how much the project could cost until she returns to Canada in two weeks.“Art conservation is expensive. It has to be perfect. It has to last forever,” she said Wednesday.Forever has proven tough for the painting, which depicts the Quebec Conference of 1864 and features such historic notables as John A. Macdonald, later Canada’s first prime minister, and George Brown, founder of the Globe and Mail.The damaged piece is a carefully crafted copy of the original by famous portrait artist Robert Harris, who was commissioned to paint it by the Canadian government in 1883 and 1884. But, tragically, it burned in the 1916 fire that destroyed Parliament in Ottawa. Challener worked from Harris’s preparatory drawings to complete the copy viewed by thousands of tourists a year on tours of the Legislature.The painting — which hangs two storeys up and is located across the hall from the Legislative chamber where MPPs meet — will have t ...
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