Tony Urquhart was born in Niagara Falls, Ontario in 1934. He studied at the Albright Art School in New York, the University of Buffalo (BFA) and Yale University Summer School (fellowship, 1958). Urquhart then travelled and studied throughout Europe for two years.

His memberships include the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts, the Canadian Society of Painters in Water Colour and the Ontario Society of Artists.

Urquhart was a resident artist at the University of Western Ontario for four years and a lecturer at McMaster University from 1966-67. He is currently an adjunct professor of fine art at the University of Waterloo. His works in paint, print media and sculpture have been exhibited across Canada and internationally, including in the Carnegie and Guggenheim International Exhibitions.

The collage displayed here is a synthesis of various techniques. As Urquhart explained, the mural depicts, “A group of death-defying individuals who went over the falls in various pieces of apparatus, including a steel barrel (Anne Taylor, Bobby Leach), a rubber ball (Jean Lussier), a group of inner tubes bound by a fish net (‘Red’ Hill Jr.—he was killed) and including the famous tight-rope walker, Blondin, with his manager on his back.”