[PHOTO] Welcome to Toronto colouring book, $C 20 each

[rfmcdonald]

When I went into the Aga Khan Museum yesterday evening, I saw the Welcome to Toronto colouring book . The Toronto Star's Louise Brown described the project in February.

What colour is Toronto?

Syrian refugee children will have the chance to decide, with a new colouring book created to let them shade in images of the city they now call home.

With captions in Arabic and English, the collection of drawings — some intricate, some whimsical — feature points of interest from the Royal Ontario Museum to the Toronto Islands, Grenadier Pond to the Toronto Zoo, from Lake Ontario to Canada’s Wonderland, all ready to be brought to living colour by young newcomer hands.

The sketches were donated by some 30 Toronto artists as a way to give Syrian refugee families a visual introduction to the city, said Rafi Ghanaghounian, one of three arts supporters who spearheaded the “Welcome to Toronto” colouring book project.

“The idea is that while kids are colouring, they’re exploring the images and learning about the city and also getting a little English as well,” said Ghanaghounian, who organized the book with fellow art supporters Andrea Pearce and Nicole Baillargeon, following the lead of a Windsor high school teacher who created a similar colouring book for that city’s Syrian refugees. He and his partners call their arts group Keep 6 (named for the five senses, plus a person’s own experience of art.)