LETTER: Sad to see murals fade, when visitors love them

MidlandToday received the following letter to the editor ([email protected]) from reader Wilf Argue in response to our story EDCNS tours ‘good, bad, ugly’ of Midland core.

I moved to Midland a little over six years ago, shortly after I retired and began walking on a daily basis. My walks almost always included a good stretch of King Street.

I walked through the "big dig". I've watched businesses come and go and change ownership; seen the street empty during the COVID restrictions and packed beyond capacity during the butter tart festivals.

I even watched with a mixture of confusion, humor and alarm as "Rusty the Reindeer" was erected at the base of King Street.

One of the things that first struck me about downtown Midland though were the wall murals, and to be honest, my first impression was that they were a bit "hokey".

But quite quickly I began to realize that they were in fact very well done and intended to tell, in brief, a story of the town. They were not randomly located based on available space as I had at first assumed but in fact designed to illustrate the history of their actual locations.

Far more important, however, than my random musings on these murals was the reaction I saw from visitors. Walking the downtown on a daily basis inevitably results in meeting and chatting with lots of people, many of them visitors, and time after time the one topic that came up were those murals (well that and the damn parking meters).

Almost without exception visitors loved the murals (and hated the meters) and wanted to know more about them; actually spent time tracking them down to admire and photograph.

Unfortunately, however, I quickly began noticing something else. Almost no one in Midland seemed to care.

Over the past six years the murals have deteriorated significantly and some have been lost. Only twice have I seen anyone make an effort to repair them and on one occasion that was a woman who told me that while she had been given permission to do so, she was not being paid or even reimbursed for her supplies.

Now I can't verify my next statement but my understanding is that neither the Town nor the BIA is prepared to take responsibility for the murals and therefore, nothing happens.

Restoration and maintenance will have a cost and I am as watchful of the Town's budget as anyone, but if we lose these murals - and we are losing them - it will also have a real cost.

Moving to Midland was (and is) one of the best decisions I've ever made. I love it here and don't like to be critical. It's not easy managing a Town; decisions must be made and mistakes get made. But as we saw with the recent election, solutions can be found.

I may be alone in this belief, but as much as I support the idea of public art, I would gladly trade off the cost of another “Rusty Reindeer" to save the murals.

Then again, others probably have better solutions and if so, let's hope we hear them.

Wilf Argue