Catch of the Day

Location: near 5640 Cowrie St. (Bank of Montreal building)

Title, Date: Catch of the Day, 1997

Artist: Gordon Halloran

Medium: Acrylic and latex paints

Artist Gordon Halloran based this painting on a historical photograph from the Sechelt Community Archives. The photograph was commissioned and staged as a publicity shot by settler and entrepreneur Herbert Whitaker. The image features men displaying a catch of salmon on the wharf in Trail Bay, c. 1912. The photograph was sent for display at Canada House in London, England in hopes of attracting tourists and potential land buyers to the Sunshine Coast. The names of the shíshálh men were not recorded at the time the photo was taken. 

In 2020/21, the District of Sechelt worked with the shíshálh Nation and elders to learn the names of the other men in the photograph. Pictured from left to right: Unknown youth; Caspar (Caspal) John; Unknown man; Thomas Patrick O’Kelly; s-kwakweim Joe LeDaly; ʔantwal Jim Alec; and Bert Hurst.

ʔulnumshchalap / thank you to xwash Feschuk, híwus Craigan, tetalus Santiago, and Kimberley Latimer for their assistance with this project.

The artist, Gordon Halloran, started his career as an illustrator, and in 1979 held his first solo show of paintings at the Toronto Gallery (formally known as the Nancy Poole Studio). Halloran taught classes at the Ontario College of Art and Design before moving to BC in 1989. In recent years, Halloran has become known to an international audience as the creator of Paintings Below Zero, monumental public art installations assembled from painted sheets of ice.