New View of Confederation

It hangs breathtakingly in the foyer of the Holman Grand Hotel in downtown Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island — twenty-three Fathers of Confederation depicted in a stunning 3.2-by-4.5-metre oil painting.

It would be easy to mistake it for an older, classic portrait of the framers of Canada’s Constitution. But it’s not. The painting, completed in 2000 but unveiled just last year, is a newer and entirely original illustration of the September 1864 Charlottetown Conference. It took some time for this exquisite piece to find a home.

“It’s a pretty big painting to put anywhere,” said John Bradford MacCallum, a native Islander who began work on the painting in 1997. “I just wasn’t finding the right spot for it.”

So he stored it in his uncle’s barn in Winsloe, P.E.I. — just outside the capital city — for thirteen years, awaiting a location large enough to display what he hopes will one day become a Canadian classic.

It wasn’t until management at the Holman got wind of the portrait in 2013 that they invited MacCallum to hang it in the hotel’s busy lobby, right across the street from Province House, the provincial legislature where the famous meetings took place. As fate would have it, Charlottetown — indeed, all of Canada — is celebrating the 150th anniversary of the Charlottetown Conference this year, a fitting time for MacCallum to introduce his masterpiece to Canadians.

MacCallum, a self-taught painter, says the portrait — which draws long gazes and inquisitive chatter from passersby — couldn’t be in a better place right now.

“It’s right there for the people, you know — you walk right into it,” he said. “That’s what I like about it — you can just walk right there to the painting, eye to eye.”

This article originally appeared in the October-November 2014 issue of Canada's History.