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Burnaby man has big dreams for his little city

Plumber builds Highway of Life as tribute to his new homeland
Highway of Life
Sheldon Wang, Hamid Farahani, Benjamin Akhtary and Anthony Joseph joined forces to create a miniature city Highway of Life conceived by Farahani.

Hamid Farahani has hundreds of cars in his garage. And he has none.

The cars are all toys he’s using in his latest miniature city project that will go on display Sunday. A full-size car? Check the street in front of his North Burnaby home. That’s where you’ll find his plumbing truck.

Farahani first gained notoriety 14 years ago when he built Farahzad, a 70-square foot mini-city in his basement. The display celebrated six faiths, including his own, Baha’i, and marked the four seasons. It had 900 people and more than 200 animals and was featured in a NOWstory.

“This is one of my peaceful land. Everyone is working in harmony here,” said Farahani, who left his Iranian homeland after a missile hit his plumbing business during the Iran-Iraq war, as he shows off his original mini city.

Although he spent more than $100,000 to make it, Farahani says he tried to sell it to the federal government for a dollar but was rebuffed because of all the different religious connotations to it. He’s made a few smaller ones since then that can be found dotted throughout his home.  

“I have so many ideas,” says Farahani, 58.

When his daughters were small he’d take them to the toy store. He’d buy Barbies for them and little cars and toys for himself.

“I bring my age to them. I raise myself with my kids,” he says with a smile.

One of those inspirational ideas hit when the calendar turned a few months ago. He decided to build the Highway of Life through an imaginary Hard Rock City during the time between the Canadian new year and the Persian new year (March 20).

Hard Rock City is built on a 4x8 sheet of plywood.

It’s encased on the outside by wood featuring the work of Indigenous artist Anthony Joseph.

Farahani points to one where the driver takes off down the Highway of Life in a vehicle from the Hard Rock City dealership. Along the way there’s a flashing sign displaying two messages: Drive Safe and Life is Short. The highway heads toward an underground parking entrance that resembles those at Metropolis at Metrotown with a multi-coloured facade. “Everybody has a different colour,” he says.

But before they get there, there’s a traffic light where drivers can turn and get off to enjoy life in so many ways before heading to the salvage yard, where the old toy vehicles go to die. (“The junkyard cars are more expensive than the dealership cars because some of them are antique.”) The yard even includes a piece that looks a lot like the Trans Am Totem, a Vancouver Biennale artwork on Quebec Street in Vancouver near Science World that has five crushed cars piled atop a tree stump.

“You have to have a hobby, otherwise you go cuckoo,” says Farahani.

It might keep him from going “cuckoo,” but the painstaking process he meticulously puts into each and every minute detail would drive most people crazy. 

The elaborate display has a river, a couple of ponds (which Farahani wants to stock with live fish), mobile homes, totem poles and three teepees painted by Joseph. He has about 100 light standards and another 100 or so lights lining the sides of the display as well as running lights along the highway. There’s an off-road motocross rider climbing a hill and a family fishing. There’s even a little hippie van with two flower people on the roof sunning themselves au naturel while strumming a guitar.

While Farahani talks, underneath the display are Benjamin Akhtary and Sheldon Wang stringing together the labyrinth of wires connecting the lights as they put together the finishing touches.

The people, lamps and vehicles might be tiny, but the cost isn’t. Each streetlight, for example, is about $20 to $25, as are the packs of five or six figurines.

He hasn’t added up the cost of this project yet. All of his receipts are stuffed into a plastic shopping bag on a shelf in his garage. He’ll do the calculations later, he says: after it’s finished and his Highway of Life goes on display at a market at Ambleside Park in West Vancouver on Sunday.

Farahani’s hoping it will eventually be displayed on a rotational basis between the city halls of West Vancouver, City of North Vancouver, District of North Vancouver and the Tsleil-Waututh First Nation band office. He wants people to see it, whether it be at an airport, a park, city hall or a library.

“I didn’t build it for myself,” says Farahani. “It’s a present to the people.”

A present for what the country he came to has meant to him. A country where he’s spent more time living in than he did in Iran.

“This is my homeland now. I didn’t go back. This country gave me everything, so much opportunity. My country didn’t do nothing for me. I ran away from there.”