The Edmonton General Continuing Care Centre is a bit more colourful thanks to a new mural in one of the units. The long-term care centre houses residents as young as 40 to those in their 80s, 90s and even 100s. Anne Missouri is one of those residents at 103 years old. She’s been at the Edmonton General for four years and since she came, the walls have steadily become more colourful. “When she first came into the unit, I thought, ‘Wow, it’s nice and clean. The staff was very friendly, very capable, offered really great care,’ but I did notice that it looked really white in here and institutional, the walls were bare,” said Linda Thiessen, Anne’s daughter. “So I just thought, well, we’ll start with donating a few things from my mom’s house because we had to sell it when she moved in here, and then I just watched for things here and there.” Slowly, the unit amassed quite the art collection, something residents and staff appreciated. “Having some family members that are part of our unit donate some of these special pieces makes the unit feel more like home for our residents,” said Shazeen Ramji, the unit manager. “It’s really just brightened up our unit. (They have) been conversation starters for some families, some residents, some staff, even.” The mural was planned by Thiessen, her siblings and Edmonton artist Jeanette Spencer. “We’ve been talking about it for months and then it just kind of materialised, just in June,” Spencer said. “The family was great. They put some input on what represented Anne’s life, where she grew up. The prairies meets the mountains is kind of her Alberta.” The piece shows the rolling plains, farmland, crops, a river and the Rocky Mountains. Anne grew up east of Edmonton on a farm near Innisfail and would travel to Banff often, which inspired the elements of the piece. “One of the things that I was told is they wanted to have Mount Norquay in there,” Spencer said. “They wanted to have the prairies … and in the end, they decided that faith was important to her as well, and so they wanted a little tiny church there and some cows.” The mural is 5.7 m (19′) by 1.06 m (42″), covering the upper half of a wall in the unit. It took two weeks to paint the mural, with Spencer working until 11 p.m. some nights. Spencer joked that if she becomes a famous artist, one day the mural might be cut out of the wall like a Banksy. With files from CTV News Edmonton’s Noah Rishaug
