The Esquimalt United Church mural team decided that a rainbow would look great in their mural and show visual value, as the mural is literally on the Victoria Rainbow Kitchen Society which fills the belly and feeds the soul. Hand painting a rainbow creek was an honour for me as an Esquimalt mural artist to showcase inclusion, diversity and a bit of symbolic illusionary magic in public wall art.

The Bickford Tower is a lighthouse at CFB Esquimalt on Grant Knoll that overlooks the Eaquimalt Harbour. It can only be seen from the water by residents not in the Navy. We added this little known lighthouse to the mural so we could give exposure to the only existing Canadian coastal defence signaling tower that greatly adds to the character of Esquimalt.

I painted my version of the amazingly wonderful "Emergence of the Lifebringers" by artist Marianne Nicolson, which everyone should see in person. I love frequenting this mural and it was cool to paint a mural within a mural representation.

A chinook or king salmon jumps out of the rainbow creek towards viewers of the exterior wall mural. Where I originally imagined a rainbow being a flat colour graphic, we made the blue band flowing water with added wildlife and movement to bring realism and life to the rainbow metaphor.

The Esquimalt Munucipal Hall was chosen as the only building in this Esquimalt mural with preference given to showcasing nature. It was fun to paint my home town's town hall and I blended it with Art Nouveau and Art Deco lines and shapes of linear movement.

Not only does the rainbow in this mural serve as a symbol for inclusion and diversity but it also acts as a musical stave or staff with a treble clef, bar lines and musical notes receding from the left foreground into the distance as sheet music. The song chosen for this musical mural was Joyful, Joyful.

An urban Vancouver Island black tailed deer wades into the mural to drink from the elixir waters of the rainbow creek. As deer are very common in Eaquimalt we thought to include one. The deer clearly strayed from the Sturdee street deer gang where the mural was painted on panels in my studio.

Conan the Barbarian happily tends gardens outside of the Esquimalt Municipal Hall in this mural. These days Conan has mellowed out but he would still much rather be a warrior in a garden than a gardener in a war.

After this mural was installed a Songhees Nation woman asked if I would add a dugout canoe full of people paddling down the rainbow river. Being an Esquimalt mural artist I thought this was a great idea as Lekwungen people were by the mural site from time immemorial and a rainbow canoe journey is just cool.