Vitality Coast Salish Family Sculpture

Vitality (2010) is part of the City of Burnaby’s contribution to the Necklace Project, a regional public art initiative leading up to the 2010 Vancouver/Whistler Olympic Winter Games. Each municipality created a work responding to a shared theme through a local cultural lens.

Created by Coast Salish sculptor Thomas Cannell, Vitality features a traditional Coast Salish family surrounded by four basalt forms. The figures and stones are arranged in a circular formation, representing the cycle of life and the interconnection between people, land and ancestry.

A companion piece titled State of Nature extends the artwork into the landscape with abstract butterflies, deer, fish, birds and local plant forms integrated into iron grates over waterways—symbolizing how life continues to move through and beneath urban spaces.