Harper ‘demanded’ reference to Nunavut in official portrait, artist says

A photograph of Canadian Forces Station Alert tucked into former prime minister Stephen Harper’s portrait is a deliberate nod to the North, the artist behind the painting says.

“He demanded that we have a reference to Alert in the painting somewhere,” said Phil Richards, the painter behind the portrait, in an interview.

“One of the reasons I put it on the top shelf was to allude to the fact that it is the northernmost [permanently inhabited] settlement. Directionally, it made sense as well.”

Unveiled last week, Harper’s official portrait is on display in the Sir John A. Macdonald Building on Parliament Hill in Ottawa.

Richards said he heard Harper reference the North many times during a recent Royal Canadian Geographical Society event where the former prime minister received the society’s gold medal in recognition of his career in public service.

“Stephen Harper spoke at length about Canadian unity but whenever he speaks about Canada, he always mentions that the North was kind of an obsession with him when he was prime minister,” said Richards, who is based in Ontario.

Canadian artist Phil Richards’ official portrait of former prime minister Stephen Harper is hanging in the Sir John A. Macdonald Building on Parliament Hill in Ottawa. (Photo by Michael Cullen)

Harper visited Nunavut at least 13 times and oversaw projects such as the Canadian High Arctic Research Station in Cambridge Bay, the Inuvik–Tuktoyaktuk Highway and Iqaluit’s deepsea port.

As for the northern Easter egg itself, it’s not a Harper memento.

“I sourced it off the internet,” Richards said. “I wanted to find photographs that suited the painting and the position that it holds within it.”

The artist described a collaborative process in creating Harper’s portrait, which involved multiple discussions with Harper at his home in Calgary about his pose, the setting and symbolic elements.

The portrait took a year to complete and was finished in 2023.