ART Route CANADA

Dust & Ledger – The art of mining community & connections

A Wayfinder Legacy Project by Michelle Loughery

Across this country runs a hidden route — a trail of art, labour, and legacy that connects coal towns, Indigenous communities, railway camps, immigrant kitchens, and youth murals painted under open skies.

This is Art Route Canada: Dust & Ledger – The Art of Mining — a national storytelling movement led by artist and community builder Michelle Loughery, creator of the Wayfinder model and founder of The Art of Mining Your Community handbook.

The project invites Canadians to share their stories of work, art, and belonging — from the hands that built to the hands that now paint, farm, heal, and teach. Together, these stories form a living ledger of who we are — a new kind of confederation based not on extraction, but on connection.

Dust represents the labour that built this land.
Ledger represents the stories and memories that sustain it.
Art Route Canada is the bridge that binds them again — through murals, archives, songs, and digital storytelling.

“We are all part of the same trail — the dust of yesterday, the promise of tomorrow.”
— Michelle Loughery