"The Last Winter"

• This mural by Dulk in Churchill, Canada depicts desperate and damaged polar bears and whales carrying pieces of their environment essential to their survival over a landscape punctuated by cars.
• The use of metaphors is abundant in this mural including relating polar bears and whales to unicorns, showing the damage to the species as damage to individuals, cars as a destructive and polluting force, fires on the animals for a warming climate, and targets on the animals to show they're under attack.

Positives

• Students bring their own ideas and interpretations to the artwork that develop critical thinking.
• There is an opportunity to discuss the difference between the whimsical style of the mural and the dire subject matter.

Additional Prerequisites

• Exploring the map that is included on the webpage will prompt students to connect the visual metaphors the artist uses with the fauna of Churchill, Canada.

Differentiation

• An entire lesson could revolve around finding as many visual metaphors as possible and discussing their meanings.
• The types of human impact depicted are limited to the car and its pollution, but the results of how climate changes are happening are the bulk of the subject matter.

• Other resources related to these topics include this mural about marine animals' anger towards human's impact on the environment and this lesson about polar climates.