The Words Don't Fit the Picture: Vancouver's Neon History

Though it may appear to be anti-Olympics, the oversized neon signboard parked in front of the Vancouver Public Library isn't intended as a protest. Instead, its glaring message, "Words Don't Fit the Picture," is meant to conjure up Vancouver days of yore, when neon signs coloured the city's skyline.

Vancouver was once so populated with neon that the glow made the city recognizable from airplanes flying above.

These days, it's impossible to walk down West Broadway without noticing the large-scale eye sore that is the Toys R Us logo covering up the remnants of the famous BowMac sign. The Bowell McLean car dealership billboard was once recognized as North America's largest freestanding sign, but when the neon craze died down after the '50s, many other signs were demolished thanks to stricter bylaws. In 1997 the BoMac sign was deemed a heritage site, but the cultural preservation wasn't enough to keep away the ridiculous Toys R Us addition.

Artist Ron Terada created "Words Don't Fit the Picture" as an homage to the neon era. Signs were seen as celebratory, grand and iconic - in effect, as landmarks in their own right," he says. "[Signs were] a kind of symbolic architecture." Now, positioned in front of the Vancouver Public Library, the sign's message takes on an additional meaning. "The work touches up the use of word and language as boundless and imaginative, as a catalyst for a multiplicity of meanings."

You can see Ron Terada's ambiguous work outside the Vancouver Central Library at the South Plaze on 350 West Georgia Street.