Painted Over: What Canadian Law Says About Destroying Someone Else's Art
- Canafete
- 2 days ago
- 5 min read
In May 2026, a familiar piece of downtown Dallas disappeared.
For nearly thirty years, Robert Wyland's Whaling Wall #82 "Ocean Life," an 82-foot mural of breaching whales, had been part of the Dallas cityscape. Then it was painted over to make way for FIFA World Cup promotional artwork.
Wyland says he learned about it after the fact and responded with a $25 million lawsuit under the Visual Artists Rights Act (VARA), a 1990 American law that protects artists of "recognized stature" from having their work destroyed without cause. In Dallas, the chain of accountability quickly broke down. The building owner, city managers, and FIFA organizers each contended that "someone else" made the decision to paint over the mural.
Four of Wyland’s high-profile Whaling Wall murals are on display in Canada too: #4 “The Gray Whale Family” in White Rock, BC, 13 “A-5 Pod” in Victoria, BC, #70 “Heavenly Waters” in Toronto, ON, and # 77 "Eye of the Whale" at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) in Toronto. Wyland’s difficulties in Dallas raise an unexpectedly philosophical question about his work, or anyone's, here in Canada. Does Canada have similar protections for art of "recognized stature"? Could the ROM paste advertisements for its latest exhibit over Wyland's mural? Once a piece of art becomes part of a place, who gets to decide if, when, or how it disappears?
Does Canada have anything like VARA?
Yes. Canada's art protections live inside the Copyright Act, R.S.C. 1985, c. C-42, under what are called moral rights.
But unlike VARA that applies only to visual art by artists of "recognized stature," Canadian moral rights apply automatically to any copyrighted work by any author or artist, recognized or otherwise, the moment it's created. There is no fame threshold to clear, and no committee deciding whose work counts.
Canadian creators retain certain rights in their work for the same duration as copyright itself, even after selling the physical object. Copyright in Canada expires a set number of years after an artist dies – 50 years for artists who died before 1972, or 70 years for artists who died in 1972 or later.
In other words, as the purchaser, you can own the canvas without owning authority over what happens to the art on it – until the copyright expires. After that, the legality of moral rights ceases to be your guiding principle, and the murky waters of personal moral obligation flood in.
Moral rights, as a principle, became famous in a dispute involving geese.
In 1981, artist Michael Snow objected when Toronto's Eaton Centre tied Christmas ribbons around the necks of his suspended sculpture “Flight Stop”. The retailer and some in the public saw Snow’s argument over ribbons as petty and “playing the Grinch”. However, Snow and many creators saw it as a violation that could open the door to allow for further desecration by art (property) owners. The Ontario High Court sided with Snow: owning the sculpture did not give the Eaton Centre an unlimited right to alter how it was presented where the modification prejudiced the artist's honour or reputation. The court accepted evidence that the alteration did, indeed, undermine Snow’s judgement on how wild geese should be artistically presented.
The court decision paved the way for creator protections under the Copyright Act. Section 28.2(1) gives an artist the right to integrity, and for paintings, sculptures, and engravings, section 28.2(2) presumes that any distortion, mutilation, or modification is prejudicial, without requiring the artist to prove it, as Snow had to.
That sounds like solid protection for major public murals under Canada’s copyright protection. Or does it?
Property Development and Urban Renewal
A 2025 case, Bachand c. Mural, tested the balance between artists' rights and property owners' rights directly. An artist had painted a mural on a Montreal building, which was permanently obscured from view six years later when a new building went up next door. The court found the mural counted as a painting under the Copyright Act. Section 28.2(2), so the artist got the automatic presumption of harm, and that obscuring it did infringe their right to integrity. However, the property owner still wasn't held liable in damages because a contract existed that obliged the owner to protect the mural for only a one-year term.
There isn't a default duration built into the Copyright Act itself. Without any contract at all, the bare moral right would still apply, and on the reasoning in Bachand, a property owner blocking or destroying a mural could find themselves exposed to legal consequences. Perhaps a mural-without-contract case will someday test building owners’ obligations around moral rights directly.
Which brings us back to Wyland’s Murals in Canada
Robert Wyland has spent forty years painting murals on the sides of buildings he doesn't own, part of a body of work that spans 100 Whaling Wall murals across 17 countries. Seven of those murals were painted in Canada. As of 2026, four have survived (listed above). Three have been destroyed: #8 “Orcas” in Vancouver, BC, #55 “Orcas A-30 Subpod” at the Vancouver Aquarium, and #56 “Vancouver Island Orcas” in Vancouver.
Outdoor painting is a medium understood to be temporary by nature. Murals fade, get obscured, and get destroyed as part of ordinary building maintenance and urban renewal. Wyland has never sued a building owner or city government over any of these three Canadian losses, though he would have had the same moral rights claim here as Michael Snow did for his geese. As a general matter, he seems to have accepted impermanence as a condition of his chosen art form.
What seems to have shifted with the Dallas mural wasn't the impermanence. It was the manner of the destruction. No notice, no consultation, no chance to object or even say goodbye, all in service of an advertising campaign for a tournament passing through town for only six weeks in 2026. For Wyland, that distinction runs deep: "These walls are like my kids," he said. "This is really, really personal."
I wish Mr. Wyland luck with his court case.
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Further Reading
Wyland Foundation, status records for individual Whaling Wall murals, including #13 "A-5 Pod" (Victoria), #77 "Eye of the Whale" (ROM, Toronto), and #55 "Orcas A-30 Subpod" (Vancouver Aquarium) – wylandfoundation.org
Scout Magazine, "Whale Wall," a survey of Wyland's Vancouver-area murals and their fates – scoutmagazine.ca/whale-wall
Global News and Daily Hive coverage of the 2015 demolition of the Continental Hotel and Wyland Whaling Wall #8 "Orcas" – globalnews.ca and dailyhive.com
City of Vancouver Public Art Registry, entry for Whaling Wall #8 – covapp.vancouver.ca/PublicArtRegistry
Bachand c. Mural, 2025 QCCQ 3060, Court of Quebec, Small Claims Division – summarized by McMillan LLP and Smart & Biggar (smartbiggar.ca, mcmillan.ca)
Snow v. Eaton Centre Ltd. (1982), 70 C.P.R. (2d) 105, Ontario High Court of Justice – summarized by the Art Canada Institute (aci-iac.ca) and CIPIL (cipil.law.cam.ac.uk)
Copyright Act, R.S.C. 1985, c. C-42, sections 14.1 and 28.2 – laws-lois.justice.gc.ca
Coverage of the Wyland v. FIFA lawsuit over Whaling Wall #82 "Ocean Life" (Dallas), June 2026 – AP, NBC News, ARTnews, and the Guardian
1 - “2021 - Vancouver - White Rock - The Grey Whale Family by Robert Wyland” by Ted McGrath, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0. Cropped for layout.
2 - “Geese in the Eton Centre in Toronto” by Neil Howard, CC BY-NC 2.0. Cropped for layout.
3 - "Wyland paints a monk seal" by Pete Leary/U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Headquarters. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0.
