Hockey and the 50 Years of Our Flag Painting -Wrapping the Maple Leaf Flag in Canadian Sport

Just what does Canada’s National sport have to do with the 50 Years of Our Flag Painting? As of 1994 lacrosse was the summer national sport for Canada leaving hockey as the winter national past-time. Sport is a part of the fabric of Canada so it needs to find its way into the pigment as well. Let me explain how this happened …

First one needs some background information. The painting comprises 3456 square inches on the face and 480 square inches on the sides. This totals 3936 square inches of paint. For those who have fully converted to metric the area of the painting is 22,297 square cm and 3097 square cm on the sides thus totaling 25,394 square centimeters.

Starting in early December, I painted virtually every day. It is not work if you love what you are doing! Some days were shorter paint days and some where long if I was really in the “zone”. I finished on May 21st, 2013 – probably painting close to 1200 hours as a round estimate. This number approaches the number of hockey games played in a typical season. Exactly 1230 games of hockey are played during the regular hockey season. The time I spent painting on this 50 Years of Our Flag Painting is the same as the number of hours of regular season hockey – not counting overtime. Uncanny!

If we just count the number of twenty minute hockey periods that total is 3690 which is within the lucky number seven of the number of square inches painted (3936) – a coincidence? I think not!

Further, the area of the painting in square centimetres times “pi” (3.1415926) is exactly the number of minutes of hockey played each year including the regular season and playoffs. That number is 79,777.6 minutes for those of you without a calculator. You math whizzes will immediately realize that “pi” is the name given to the ratio of the circumference of a hockey puck to its diameter. The links of hockey to the 50 Years of Our Flag painting just never stop!

Finally the official regulation National Hockey League net measures four by six feet at the mouth. This is exactly the same size as the 50 Years of Our Flag Painting… he shoots, he scores…  Surely this can’t be just happenstance!

Time will be the true test whether the 50 Years of Our Flag painting was successful or not. The messages, colours and textures need to resonate with each viewer. If it does like I sincerely hope that it will, we have indeed wrapped the Maple Leaf Flag with Canada – sports, weather, science, art and humour…. Life is good!