Local peace activist Ross Hunt helps unfurl a sign from the Comox Valley Peace Group at a peace rally in Courtenay on October 27, 2007.

The image was inspired by Picasso's famous Guernica painting depicting the Nazi German bombing of Guernica, Spain, by twenty-four bombers, on April 26, 1937 during the Spanish Civil War, in which a number of people variously estimated between 250 and 1,600 were killed and many more were injured.

A huge mural had already been commissioned from Picasso by the Spanish Republican government to decorate the Spanish Pavilion at the Paris International Exposition (the 1937 World's Fair in Paris). The painting had been ready for several years before the events in Guernica, although in a somewhat different version; it portrayed simply a bullfight, and was rechristened and adapted in April 26th, 1937, in order to portray the horror of the bombing, thus satisfying both Picasso's own desires to protest against Franco's actions and the political and ideological beliefs of the artistical élite of the time.