The Friday Files - news to inform and inspire
Our scholar of the week is Dr. Christopher Martin, who was awarded a Canada-UK travel grant while at the University of Aberdeen. His research focused on the personal narratives of a collection of Salish models and cultural belongings donated to the Literary and Antiquarian Society of Perth (in Scotland) by the Hudson's Bay Company in 1833.
Photo courtesy Dr. C. Martin
Our award allowed Christopher to bear witness in an unprecedented biographical event for two of the collection’s most valued objects: woven blankets created by Salish master weavers that had not returned to Canada in nearly 200 years.
These blankets returned to Vancouver as part of the University of British Columbia Museum of Anthropology (MOA) exhibit Fabric of Our Lands, a joint venture between MOA and the Xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) people bringing ten of the precious blankets back to their homeland for the benefit of contemporary Indigenous communities and museum visitors. This exhibit and its associated events, including a showing of contemporary weavings, and a fibre processing workshop, reinvigorated the relationships between Perth and Salish people, and revealed how objects continue to create and mediate intercultural understanding of the self and others.
Christopher says, "Supporting academics in pursuing research and strengthening international networks has ripple effects that build to far greater impact than individual projects, often unforeseen in the researcher’s original plans. Ensuring that interested, knowledgeable, and engaged people have the opportunity to speak with and learn from individuals and groups otherwise outside of their sphere of influence is essential for promoting diversity and inclusion. By enabling academics to meet with the global communities affected by and able to contribute to their work, the Canada-UK Foundation fosters the idea that knowledge should not be restricted to a select few".
Ensuring that interested, knowledgeable, and engaged people have the opportunity to speak with and learn from individuals and groups otherwise outside of their sphere of influence is essential for promoting diversity and inclusion.
For more information on this research, or about supporting further research, please be in touch.
Celebrating Canada's 100 Peak Moments in the Snow. We recently heard from Alpine Canada, who are polling Canadians with their 100 Peak Moments Campaign, celebrating their 100th anniversary through Canada's most iconic moments in Canadian ski history. No question, it's a tie between Nancy Greene and Steve Podborski for us! Who's your pick?
Although there's so much more to Canada than ice, snow, and gorgeous mountains, certainly our Canadian skiers are an iconic part of the Canadian psyche. Whether it's alpine, para-alpine, or ski-cross, Canada's love affair with recreational skiing likely began in the late 1800s, with the official start of ski racing in Canada thought to be circa 1904 at the forerunner Montreal Ski Club, Mont Royal.
Nancy Greene won Gold for Canada in the 1968 Olympics at Grenoble France, while Podborski won Bronze in Lake Placid, 1980. In 1999, Greene was named Canada's Female Athlete of the Century by Canadian Press (that same year, Wayne Gretzky was named Male Athlete of the Century, perhaps reflecting Canada's other national love, hockey?). Greene remains very active promoting ski tourism in British Columbia, and has retired from roles as a Canadian senator and as Chancellor of Thompson Rivers University.
Alongside Ken Read, Dave Irwin, and Dave Murray, Podborski was one of four memorable Canadian skiers fondly called the Crazy Canucks, largely because of their daring boldness on fast and dangerous courses. As well as Podborski's Olympic win, these four skiers won an outstanding total of 39 World Cup podiums.
Have a look at 100 years of Canadian skiing history captured in three heart stopping moments here and check out the list of Canadian ski Olympians here. Join us in voting for your Canadian favourite here (voting closes at midnight Ottawa time on February 21, 2021).
Alongside Ken Read, Dave Irwin, and Dave Murray, Podborski was one of four memorable Canadian skiers fondly called the Crazy Canucks, largely because of their daring boldness on fast and dangerous courses. As well as Podborski's Olympic win, these four skiers won an outstanding total of 39 World Cup podiums.
Have a look at 100 years of Canadian skiing history captured in three heart stopping moments here and check out the list of Canadian ski Olympians here. Join us in voting for your Canadian favourite here (voting closes at midnight Ottawa time on February 21, 2021).
Stan Douglas, ambitious artist with international acclaim. This week, kicking off Black History Month in Canada, we profile Vancouver-based Canadian artist Stan Douglas whose recent public art commission for Penn Station in New York has stoked curiosity and expectation for his representation of Canada at next year’s Venice Biennale.
Stan Douglas, Penn Station’s Half Century, 2020. Niche 3, Panel 1: 20 June 1930. Photo: Public Art Fund
Working since the 1980s after his training at the Emily Carr College of Art + Design, Douglas challenges the limitations of his chosen medium (whether photography, film or theatre), blurring the lines of “traditional” media and innovating without bounds. Rooted in reality and extensive research, Douglas’s projects blur the line between truth and fantasy/fiction urging viewers to question representation and respond more deeply to the subjects treated. This way of working is a hallmark of the Vancouver School of conceptual photographers – such as Jeff Wall, Rodney Graham and Ian Wallace – who came to the forefront in the 1980s.
Douglas’s projects blur the line between truth and fantasy/fiction urging viewers to question representation and respond more deeply to the subjects treated.
Stan Douglas. Photo: Hassleblad Foundation
His upbringing in Vancouver serves as a generative source of inspiration for projects that focus on his hometown but also look beyond to cities that include Detroit, Havana, London, and New York, to name a few. Focusing on what he terms as “transitional moments,” Douglas’s work takes on issues of racial and class difference while also playing with time and place. “Minor” moments of history, seen in retrospect, contain a gravitas for reflection on our evolution as a society.
Stan Douglas, Mare Street (detail), 2017. Courtesy: Victoria Miro Gallery
His 2017 project, for example, reconstructed scenes from London’s 2011 riots; Douglas began with Sky News footage to inform later helicopter photography and subsequent computer-generated reconstruction to recreate the original scenes. Akin to his 2008 Abbott & Cordova, 7 August 1971 project commemorating the police conflict of the Gastown riot in Vancouver, the London scenes that were reconstructed bring focus to ideas of objectivity and truth.
His most recent commission for the Moynihan Train Hall in New York, entitled Penn Station’s Half Century, champions Douglas’s vision with the depths of research and staggering scope of production (especially in Covid times). Recreating nine “minor” moments in the history of the original Beaux Arts-style Penn Station, Douglas photographed over 400 actors in 500 period dress costumes over 4 days in Vancouver’s Agrodome arena. With CGI reconstruction of the station (which was demolished in 1963), Douglas and his team stitched together carefully planned shots to recreate the chosen moments in history. Douglas revisits historical figures such as Bert Williams (the first African American to direct a motion picture and who organized an impromptu vaudeville show in the station during a snowstorm which stranded passengers in March 1914) or Celia Cooney (the “Bobbed Hair Bandit”, a sort of hero/criminal who was brought to New York for trial arriving in the station in April 1924 to a wild crowd). Research, memory, and fantasy come together to honour the original Penn Station but also look at certain human stories that deserve new attention. The imagination, skill, and ambition shown in these epic, breath-taking tableaux make us wonder what Douglas will create for the Canadian Pavilion in Venice in 2022.
British Museum Arctic Exhibit closing February 21. Don't miss your last opportunity to take in the British Museum exhibit Arctic: Climate and Culture. Although the British Museum is currently closed because of the pandemic, there are ways to access the exhibit digitally, including through curator's talks, event recordings, and by exploring resources that are now on the museum's blog posts and website. We particularly flag to you Sheila Katsak’s blog post about amautis (mothers’ parkas).
Sheila Katsak with her daughter, demonstrating the amaut. Mittimatalik, Nunavut, 2019.
Photo: British Museum
In this compelling blog, Canadian Sheila Katsak describes how she started sewing amautis, the Inuit mothers' parka made with a back pocket to carry babies. Katsak describes how she learned to sew them and reveals many of her personal motivations and design inspirations for this beautiful domestic art form
In the spotlight this week is Simon Anderson, Public Programmes Officer at the High Commission of Canada in the United Kingdom who specialises in cultural and advocacy programming. Simon recently joined the Board of Trustees of the Canada-UK Foundation, as an observer providing liaison with the High Commission of Canada. As we welcome Simon, we also bid adieu and thanks to Ms. Caitlin Vito, who previously filled the role.
Prior to joining the Canadian mission, Simon worked overseas, initially teaching English in Japan then working in international cultural relations for the British Council in Kenya and Nigeria. He is a Fellow of the Royal Geographic Society, and a graduate of the Kent Institute of Art and Design where he concentrated in communications and media.
Simon makes an enormous contribution to London's community and social development through several voluntary and governance roles, including through sport with the top-10 ranked Double Jab Amateur Boxing Club and in the field of housing, through his work as a board member of Lewisham Homes. When he's not working on his own right hook, or more recently serving as a volunteer vaccinator, Simon is an amateur running enthusiast who also enjoys film and theatre. Simon is also an accomplished amateur cook who recently perfected his gravlax game —balancing deft handling of good knives and strategic deployment of the spices, his gravlax is the one to beat!