Sixty fibreglass geese that survived a mall's own Christmas decorations
Flight Stop
Michael Snow's 1979 sculpture of sixty flying Canada geese has hung above the Eaton Centre's galleria for decades, and briefly became a legal case when the mall tried to dress them in ribbons for the holidays.
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Flight Stop, a sculpture by celebrated Canadian artist Michael Snow, has hung suspended above the galleria of the Eaton Centre since 1979, consisting of sixty fibreglass Canada geese cast in flying poses and arranged to suggest a flock in mid-flight through the mall's glass-roofed atrium. Snow was commissioned to create a major artwork for the newly built shopping centre, and the geese quickly became one of the most recognizable pieces of public art in the city.
A legal fight over ribbons
In 1982, Eaton Centre management decorated the geese with red ribbons for the Christmas season without Snow's consent, prompting the artist to sue under Canada's Copyright Act, arguing the addition distorted his work and damaged his reputation as an artist. An Ontario court ruled in Snow's favour, ordering the ribbons removed, in a case that became an important early precedent in Canadian moral rights law regarding artists' control over how their work is displayed and altered. Flight Stop has remained undecorated and intact above the Eaton Centre ever since, one of the most viewed pieces of public art in the country.
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