Ruth Abernethy

OTTAWA, ONTARIO, CANADA - The bronze fingers will not fly nimbly across the ivories, but the image of jazz icon Oscar Peterson will preside steps from Parliament Hill on Canada Day and from then on.

It's his country's tribute to an artist Louis Armstrong dubbed "the man with four hands" and Duke Ellington called "the maharajah of the keyboard."

"It's a complicated process that takes more than a year," says sculptor Ruth Abernethy, who has made a specialty of creating life-size bronze statues of Canadian giants, including that other genius of the piano, Glenn Gould, whose statue is a fixture at the CBC Broadcast Centre in Toronto.

The Oscar Peterson statue will be unveiled June 30 just outside the National Arts Centre, steps from Parliament Hill and the Canadian War Memorial, as part of Canada Day celebrations.

This week, a group of leading Canadians and Oscar fans, including those other noted pianists, Stephen Harper and Bob Rae, kicked off a $210,000 fundraising campaign to pay for the statue.

Orchestrating the whole venture are Peter Herrndorf, CEO of the arts centre, and Brian Robertson, the veteran producer who collaborated with Herrndorf and others on organizing the memorable tribute to Peterson at Roy Thomson Hall shortly after Peterson's death at 82 in late December 2007.

"Oscar Peterson is a quintessential Canadian success story," says Harper. "He came from humble roots to become a legendary performer who inspired countless artists all over the world. He deserves to be honoured in this prominent location of our nation's capital."

Born in 1925, the son of a train porter, Peterson grew up in a working-class area of Montreal. He became a local celebrity in the 1940s when he played at the Alberta Lounge and was heard live on radio.

His big breakthrough was being discovered by the top jazz impresario, Norman Granz, who took Oscar to Carnegie Hall. After that, in a career that lasted more than 60 years, he collaborated with all the jazz greats of the period and toured the world. As a black artist, he often felt the sting of discrimination and humiliation.

For the last half of his life, Peterson's home was in Mississauga, where his family endured his lengthy absences with a degree of pain that was poignantly captured in the 1992 documentary film In the Key of Oscar, by his niece Sylvia Sweeney. Married four times, he had six children.

The statue will not be complete for a couple of months, but, according to Abernethy, it will look exactly the same as the temporary wax version now in the process of being transformed into bronze.

Abernethy, who began her career in the Stratford Shakespeare Festival's props department, has also created bronze sculptures of Toronto actor Al Waxman, in Bellevue Square Park in Kensington Market, and Manitoba Theatre Centre co-founders John Hirsch and Tom Hendry, in Winnipeg.

In her sculpture, Peterson is seated on a bench by a grand piano. Following the same concept used in her Glenn Gould statue, the Oscar sculpture invites passersby to sit with the pianist and play a duet.

As for the funding campaign, Bob Rae says: "Our national committee members hope to engage jazz lovers and Canadians everywhere to contribute to this wonderful tribute to one of our country's national treasures.

Among the first donors were Stephen and Laureen Harper.

Both the Prime Minister and Rae, a senior figure in the Opposition, have played the piano at the NAC.

Members of the national co

Ruth Abernethy, a totally accomplished figural sculptor - her work is exemplary!