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Winners announced for Delta’s 2017 heritage banner design contest

North Delta photographer Marlene Graham’s entry titled Our Future, Our Past was among the winners
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(From left) Marlene Graham, Riley Bouchey and Dorothy Hobbs were named by Mayor Lois Jackson as the winners of Delta’s 2017 heritage banner design contest. Graham and Hobbs were selected to represent North Delta and South Delta, respectively, while Bouchey was picked as the grand prize and child/youth category winner. (James Smith photo)

Birds and the Fraser River are common themes in this year’s winning entries for Delta’s heritage banner design contest.

At the start of Monday night’s council meeting, Mayor Lois Jackson announced the winners of the 2017 heritage banner design contest, as selected by a panel of judges from Delta’s heritage advisory commission, Watershed Artworks Society and South Delta Artists’ Guild.

“This is the fourth year that we’ve hosted the street banner design competition in an effort to spread awareness around Delta’s storied heritage,” Mayor Lois Jackson said Monday night. “The contest also provides us an incredible opportunity to showcase and promote the talented artists in our community.”

“On behalf of Delta council, I would like to congratulate each of you for all of your hard work, and you are really immensely talented, as everyone can see. Thank you for presenting Delta’s heritage in a diverse, a very complex and a very unique way.”

Photographer Marlene Graham was chosen as North Delta’s winner for her submission titled Our Future, Our Past. In the photo, a cormorant is silhouetted by the setting sun while sitting atop a piling at Brunswick Point, some of the last crumbling remnants of Delta’s once-thriving canning industry.

As described on the city’s website, Graham’s entry “recalls the importance of the Fraser River on Delta’s past, while also signifying the vitality it brings to our future.”

Graham, whose photos adorn some of the electrical boxes in the community, said she was shocked to learn her entry had been chosen as one of this year’s winners.

“I was shocked, you know, because I’ve actually entered for four years in a row and so I didn’t think I was going to win,” Graham told the North Delta Reporter. “So it came as a real surprise.”

She said her photo combines three elements that make Delta what it is today.

“The whole of the Fraser River in Delta was just full of canneries and now they’re all gone,” she explained. “[And] Delta has the most amazing sunsets, right, so when you put the heritage and the sunsets and then also the birds, because we’re on the flyway … to me it’s just all the elements of who we are and our heritage. It’s like our past and our future all combined together.”

Also chosen as this years winners are Dorothy Hobbs, representing South Delta, and Riley Bouchey, this year’s child/youth category and grand prize winner.

Bouchey, a student at Delta Secondary School, is the first grand prize winner to be chosen from the child/youth category. Her piece, We Are All Connected, “wonderfully represents the dependency of our farmer and fisherman on nature and wildlife,” according to the description on the city’s website. “Flushed with shades of blue accompanied by splashes of colour, Riley’s works features many elements that highlight the relationship between our community and surroundings.”

As the grand prize winner, Bouchey’s We Are All Connected will be displayed throughout Delta from now through May.

Hobbs’ View of Mount Baker from Centennial Beach is described as “a multi-layered work that acknowledges the diversity within the three communities of Delta. The three shades of blue that make up the sky signify Tsawwassen, Ladner, and North Delta, while the rainbow-coloured wings of the eagle and heron identify the multiculturalism in our region.”

As contest winners, Bouchey, Hobbs and Graham each received a $350 honorarium and a street banner featuring their design. All three banners are also on display in council chambers at Delta city hall.



editor@northdeltareporter.com

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10307915_web1_180123-NDR-M-2017-Delta-heritage-banner-contest-winning-submissions
(from left) Our Future, Our Past by Marlene Graham; We Are All Connected by Riley Bouchey; and View of Mount Baker from Centennial Beach by Dorothy Hobbs. (Images provided by the City of Delta)


James Smith

About the Author: James Smith

James Smith is the founding editor of the North Delta Reporter.
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