If every work of art tells a story, then the tale told by a new mural that hangs outside BCA Studios on Burlington’s Pine Street spans centuries. It begins before the arrival of European settlers, when wildlife dwelled in a lush landscape beneath a clear, starry sky. It depicts the clear-cut forests of Canada that fed Burlington’s waterfront timber mills throughout the 1800s. And it captures the coal slag that powered the city but poisoned its wetlands, leaving behind a toxic legacy for future generations.
Ultimately, the symbolism in the colorful and dreamlike mural conveys a message of hope: Given enough time and love, nature will heal itself.
“Let It Be: A Cautionary Tale of the Pine Street Barge Canal” is a new, 8-by-20-foot mural created by eight student artists in only a month’s time. As part of Burlington City Arts’ Artist Apprenticeship Program, the 16- to 22-year-olds worked with professional muralists from Juniper Creative Arts of Brandon to research the industrial canal’s complex history, then synthesize it into a cohesive work of art. Unveiled on September 5 at the South End Art Hop, the mural looks as though it were created by a single artist — a signature feature of Juniper Creative’s many collaborative projects.
“It’s a really layered story,” said Juniper Creative’s Jennifer Herrera Condry, who oversaw the project with her husband, Will Kasso Condry, and their daughter, Alexa Herrera Condry. Together, the Condrys have created more than 40 public murals throughout Vermont and hundreds more nationwide.
Before the students picked up a paintbrush, they spent two weeks getting to know each other, learning about the collaborative process and researching the canal’s history with “knowledge keepers” from the community, said Ellie Traxler-Menz, a University of Vermont senior and one of the artists. The painting itself took 30 hours, with final touch-ups added just hours before its unveiling.
“Let It Be” also pays tribute to notable Black trailblazers in Burlington’s history, including Harold Holloway, an early 20th-century entrepreneur who helped develop Battery Street.
The Barge Canal is an artificial waterway created in 1868 by Lawrence Barnes, a businessman who operated mills on Burlington’s waterfront. From the 1850s through the 1890s, the city received Canadian timber carried by boat via the Richelieu River, which was milled into boards and then shipped out by trains, according to the Vermont Historical Society. The Barge Canal helped make Burlington one of the country’s largest timber ports of the 19th century.
However, by 1900 most of the Canadian old-growth timber had been logged, and the Barge Canal fell into disuse. Around the same time, Burlington began converting Appalachian coal into gas, which was pumped throughout the city for cooking, lighting and heating.
“The problem with coal gasification is that you end up with a lot of toxic by-products,” said Steve Perkins, executive director of the Vermont Historical Society. Between 1906 and 1966, when Burlington’s coal gasification plant finally closed, tons of toxic waste were dumped into the Barge Canal wetlands.
In 1983 the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency listed the canal as a federal Superfund site due to the presence of 56 “contaminants of concern” in the soil and water, many of which cause cancer. By the 1990s the EPA had excavated and removed 500 cubic yards of coal tar, capped the contamination, covered it with topsoil and reseeded it. The land, a longtime obstacle for all manner of development, has since remained fenced off and largely unused.
In the intervening years, those 38 acres have begun to recover, as evidenced by the return of turtles, rabbits, beavers and water lilies that filter out the heavy metals. The mural portrays eight water lilies, each one representing the student who created it.
As artist Calvin Millham-Berry, a Colchester High School sophomore, put it: “This mural reflects the complex history of the Pine Street Barge Canal, its native impact on the natural environment and the healing that can happen when we let nature be.”
This article appears in Sept 24-30 2025.
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