Mural to be ready for unveiling

Barring a few touch-ups or highlights, the mural of Edward Wellington Backus should be completed in time for Friday’s unveiling ceremony at 11 a.m.
Julian Morelli, a member of the BIA’s “Paint the Town Committee” which spearheaded the mural project, said artist Brian Romagnoli has been burning the midnight oil under the tarp on the west wall of the CIBC to make sure everything will be ready.
“He’s actually going to finish on the day before,” Morelli said, adding, “We hope that a bunch of people will come out [for the unveiling].”
The mural originally was scheduled to be completed Oct. 15 although Morelli said the delay was no fault of the artist.
“No one anticipated the weather,” he stressed. “If you were to go back and look at September and October, he lost at least four weeks due to weather.
“So we closed him in and put heat in there.
“It was amazing,” Morelli laughed. “We put up the hoarding and the weather cleared up and got warm.”
As reported in last week’s Times, Deputy Prime Minister Herb Gray is scheduled to be on hand for the unveiling along with local MP Robert Nault, and local dignitaries from both sides of the border.
But the true guests of honour will be several descendants of Edward Backus himself, including Betty Backus Chumming, one of the paper mill tycoon’s granddaughters.
“These people are coming from all over the U.S.,” Morelli noted.
BIA chairperson Dan Cousineau said it didn’t take much coaxing to get the Backus family to come up here. All they had to do was hear about it.
“They’re really excited about this,” he noted. “Of all the things he accomplished in his life, they feel this is the first public recognition he’s been given.”
Backus was a pulp and paper tycoon around the turn of the century, and responsible for establishing the mill here and in International Falls, among other things, before he went bankrupt in the stock market crash of 1929..
“Without [Backus] doing what he did, this whole area would not have been developed until years later,” Cousineau said.
“Without him building the mill here and the mill in the Falls, and the bridge, and the dam, and the mill in Kenora and the mill in Thunder Bay, imagine what it would mean today?”
Meanwhile, Morelli hoped this mural project would be the first of many. The committee is looking at some other historical figures–such as J.A. Mathieu and Lady Frances Simpson–as subjects for the next one although no final decision has been made.
The key to getting another mural off the ground, Morelli stressed, will be to maintain the partnerships formed with other groups, such as the Fort Frances Chamber of Commerce, Abitibi-Consolidated, Rainy River Future Development Corp., and the town
“When we pool the money together, it does work,” he said.
“Without all their help, it wouldn’t have flown [this time],” Cousineau agreed.