Six Strings. Thousands of Stories.

The Six String Nation is a movement to connect people from all regions of Canada through music and by sharing our icons, images and stories. Fundamental to the mission of the project is the belief that the symbols we share nationally are only as valuable as the ones we declare locally. It is an effort to communicate our individual and regional senses of Canada to one another by means of an invitation to listen.

The Six String Nation guitar is at the heart of the movement. The guitar is made from 63 pieces contributed from different cultures, communities and characters from across the country. One additional piece is found on the guitar strap and 3 others are found in the lining of the guitar case.

On February 14th, 2008 - at a press conference at Fort Gibraltar in St. Boniface at the launch of the Festival du Voyageur, the official nickname of the guitar was announced. The announcement was the culmination of an 18-month-long contest to nickname the guitar. The winning entry was chosen from among more than a thousand entries from the public. The winner, Lt. Col. Susan Beharriell, was flown to Winnipeg courtesy of Air Canada and stayed as a guest of the Festival du Voyageur. She was on hand at the press conference to help announce the official nickname: VOYAGEUR.

So far, we've taken nearly 60,000 portraits of almost 6,000 people holding the guitar at festivals, concerts, schools and other events across the country. Our most recent portrait event was the Tremblant International Blues Festival in Mt. Tremblant QC. We recently distributed all the photos from the Ottawa Dragon Boat Race Festival and are now working to get out the photos from Alianait in Iqaluit, Canada Day on Parliament Hill followed by Tremblant. We're doing these in order and expect to have all the portraits distributed by the last week of July. If you have not received your photos by then, please contact us to make sure we've got your email address right. To see samples from all of our festival sessions, visit our Flickr site.