The idea for this project started when we moved into this very downtown neighbourhood in East Bayfront, Toronto, and there was a family of bunnies living underneath the dumpster in the construction site just north of our new building.
And of course since there were bunnies living there, eventually a fox was seen in the area as well, poking around underneath the dumpster, trying her luck.
But soon enough the construction got into full swing, and all bunnies and foxes vanished.
But where did they go?
The whole neighbourhood is basically a construction site – it’s an “emerging neighbourhood” which means there’s all kinds of great ideas of what it could be, or will be in a decade or so, but in the actual moment, it’s mostly a lot of cranes in the sky and cement trucks on the ground. A most inhospitable area for little critters.
Plus, we are just meters away from that infamous arterial highway, the Gardiner …
Which for years now has been undergoing its own “rehabilitation”.
What is a fox or a bunny to do?
And so, the Downtown Critters project came out of a kind of concern for all our furrier friends who might live amongst us, a celebration of their existence, a meditation on their displacement, and a reminder of all those critters further afield who would be here in this urban space if we humans were not.
Plus… they are cute!
And coming across a large drawing of an animal or a bird in some of the most inhospitable stretches of a city is a delightful surprise.
On one of our first nights out with our poster-sized images, buckets of glue and paint-brushes, a young couple saw us doing our thing, stopped to watch, took some photos and asked shyly, “Is it Art?”
“Why yes”, we answered, “Yes it is!”
Downtown Critters 