Esquimalt woman transforms electrical pole into meaningful work of art

Whenever Licette finds herself facing a problem, she’ll pull out her paint.

At the start of the pandemic, Licette painted a sign on a tree in her front yard saying, "Be kind. Be calm. Be safe."

After she visited her next-door neighbour and noticed how boring their view of her house was, Licette painted a large, faux stained-glass window on her wall for them to look at.

To help visitors navigate around her century-old house’s counter-intuitive architecture, Licette painted a series of whimsical signs saying, "This is the back door. The front door is around the back."

"It just helps people around our funny old house," Licette laughs, before revealing the story behind her unconventional electrical pole.

Before the new pole was standing across from their front yard’s back door, Licette’s husband, Graham, noticed the old pole was "rotten."

"Definitely looking like it was going to fall down on the house," Licette adds.

The couple also discovered that they would have to pay thousands of dollars for a replacement pole.

"If we would have let it fall down it would have been much more expensive," Graham says.

"I screamed blue murder!" Licette recalls.

But then the man who arrived to install the new pole, noticed how Licette had used her creativity to turn her house into a home, and made a priceless proposal.

Seeing as they owned the new pole, he suggested, why not paint it.

"I suddenly saw it could happen," Licette recalls with a smile. "And it would be a wonderful thing to do."

So instead of raising the new pole up, they laid it down in the front yard, and Lisette started planning how to transform it.

"It was a joy to see the look on her face," Graham smiles.

After dividing the pole into sections, and painting images and quotations that were meaningful to her and Graham, Licette began inviting friends, family, and neighbours over to add their contributions.

"When I had my grandchildren come and paint their bits on it, I knew I’d done the right thing," Licette smiles.

"It was nice," Graham beams about the collaborative process. "It was really nice."

Now the painted pole is standing tall in their front yard, covered with colour.

"It’s a credit to Licette’s talent," Graham smiles.

It’s also proving to be a testament to the couple’s motto, Whilst We Can.

"It’s a promise to make good use of the time we still have available to us," Licette says.

No matter how "rotten" the circumstances may seem, Licette and Graham seem to spend their time finding creative solutions, and appreciating outcomes that often end up being even better than they could have imagined.

"I never looked back," Licette says. "It was one of the nicest, happiest things I’ve ever done."