Taking Comfort

It was the sweltering summer of 1951 when artist Charles Comfort spent 58 days creating a 20-meter mural on the back wall of a Toronto Dominion Bank branch in Vancouver. The resulting artwork stayed in place for half a century, and became known as one of British Columbia’s most important works of public art. “When the bank branch closed in 2002 and the space was taken over by a pharmacy, the bank was determined to find a way for it to stay in the province. It wasn’t such an easy task. The size of the mural was certainly an issue. And the restoration needed to remove layers of tobacco smoke and grime was extensive. More troubling, however, was the controversial history of Comfort’s murals in Vancouver.”