You can’t miss the coach on this corner. Blue, either. Or the famous shirt collars and the beautiful poppy, too.
It’s Hwy. 1, the Trans Canada, at Mortlach, Sask., 40 kilometres west of Moose Jaw, where a 4.
6-metre wooden sculpture, complete with a 1.5-metre replica of his beloved white dog, stand for all to cherish. It’s nice to see Grapes back in the spotlight where he should be.
“When I was putting on the finishing touches, all I could hear from the highway was honking horns,” said artist Darren Jones. “Everybody knows who Don Cherry is, and people love him.” Don’t look now, but banished Rob Ford has been let out of the penalty box, with Toronto deciding to rename a football stadium after him — and Don Cherry is bigger than life on a highway out west.
Could Sir John A. Macdonald be next? “Why not!” said Iron Mike Beaudoin, who heads up this amazing patriotic effort in this tiny hamlet of 350 people. “This is all about artistic freedom.
His idea is to gather artists of differing political stripes and from all walks of life and set up a Morlach Bohemian Marketplace along the highway. “We were looking to put something up that people would notice and maybe turn into to see the great artists’ works and support them, too,” said Beaudoin. “We knew it was his 90 th birthday, and we thought Don Cherry and Blue would be perfect.
” Was he ever right. “We are not even near set up the way we hope to be soon, and already a couple of hundred people a da.
