Young visitors to the Winnipeg Art Gallery’s new addition Qaumajuqsometimes ask me why there are so many holes in the ceiling. I can’t be sure what the architect Michael Maltzan had in mind when he designed the building but Maxine Angoo an Inuk from Whale Cove Nunavut said in an interview that the ceiling’s many skylights remind her of seal holes in the Arctic ice.
I tell the children who visit the gallery that the Arctic Ocean is home to six kinds of seals- harp, hooded, ringed, bearded, spotted, and ribbon. In autumn and early winter, the seals must make breathing holes in the ice so they can come up for air regularly.
Some seals have claws up to 2.5 centimetres thick that help them make breathing holes. I have read that some seals use their teeth to make holes in the ice and can also butt against the ice with their heads or breathe on the ice to melt it.
The Inuktitut word for a seal hole is aglu. Seals remember where they have made their aglu’s so they can revisit them.
Unfortunately for the seals, polar bears also know about the seal holes and can be waiting at the edges of them when the seals come up for a breath.
Some visitors to the gallery have told me the holes in the ceiling remind them of the holes in the tops of igloos that allow for ventilation.
Of course, the holes which open to the sky and flood the new addition to the art gallery with natural light illustrate its name Qaumajuq which means ‘it is bright-it is lit.’
The stunning architecture of Qaumajuq is an artwork in and of itself that will always be on view even as the installations change in the Winnipeg Art Gallery’s new addition.
Statue of Tom Lamb by Leo Mol in the Richardson Building Winnipeg
I’ve passed this statue hundreds of times as I walk through the Richardson Building on my way to work so I decided I wanted to find out more about Tom Lamb the man whose name is on the statue’s plaque.
Tom, who would eventually earn the nickname Mr North was born in 1898 in Grand Rapids Manitoba. His British parents went to the north as Anglican missionaries. Tom’s family moved to Moose Lake in 1900where his Dad built a log cabin and began a fur trading business with local traders.
Tom grew up with Cree children as his companions and learned to speak their language fluently. Tom quit school at the end of grade three to help his Dad with a fish hauling operation he had started.
Tom married Jean Armstrong in 1924 and together they raised six sons and three daughters. Eventually, his children helped operate the fur trading and fishing businesses Tom took over from his Dad.
Photo of Tom Lamb by Richard Harrington from Library and Archives Canada- Photostories Canada site- National Gallery of Canada
Tom instituted a conservation and development plan to increase the declining muskrat and beaver population in the north and in 1935 bought an airplane to help haul fresh fish. He hired a pilot who soon was as busy doing charter work for the government, the RCMP, geologists, oil rig operators and medical evacuations as he was transporting fish.
Tom Lamb with his six sons who all became pilots and worked for Lambair- photo from Wikipedia– They learned to fly sitting on their Dad’s lap in the cockpit
In 1937 Tom became a pilot himself and a decade later had purchased a fleet of aircraft with floats and skis that became a thriving northern airline called Lambair. All six of his sons got their pilot licences and flew charter operations throughout the Arctic including Greenland, the Yukon and Alaska.
Lamb Air passengers are ready for a flight. The company motto was “Don’t ask us where we fly. Tell us where you want to go.”- Photo Lamb Family Archive- from Vintage Wings of Canada
By 1959 Lambair had logged more than 1,500,000 air miles, owned twenty planes and employed 40 pilots.
Photo by Richard Harringtonfrom Library and Archives Canada- Photostories Canada site- National Gallery of Canada
At the same time as his airline flourished Tom maintained the fishing and shipping business, his Dad had founded. In the photo above one of the Lamb’s boats is transporting lumber as well as cattle for a ranching operation another one of Tom’s initiatives in the north.
Tom Lamb’s portrait in the Aviation Hall of Fame was created by artist Irma Sophia Coucill.
Tom Lamb was given an honorary doctorate by the University of Manitoba and has been inducted into the Canadian Aviation Hall of Fame. He died in 1969 and his children carried on his airline business for another decade. He had twenty-four grandchildren. His son Jack chronicled his Dad’s life in the book My Life in the North.
Statue of Tom Lamb in the Leo Mol Sculpture Garden in Assiniboine Park
Although the Leo Mol statue in the Richardson Building bears the date 1991, the original piece was poured in 1971. There is another copy of the Tom Lamb statue in the Leo Mol Sculpture Garden in Assiniboine Park. A fibreglass version sits in the airport at The Pas and there is another copy in the Canadian embassy in Washington DC.
Leo Mol said he wanted to show Tom Lamb as a young pilot and he made the propeller in his hands look a bit like a clock because he wanted the statue to take people back in time to the era when Mr Lamb helped open up the north as an aviation pioneer.
Yesterday I took a group of grade eleven students from a rural Manitoba community on a tour of A Hard Birth or Kwaata-nihtaawakihk in the Métis language of Michif. The exhibit tells the story of how Manitoba became a province in 1870. The exhibit is called A Hard Birth because the birth of Manitoba involved conflict and confrontation and wasn’t an easy thing at all.
One of the artworks on display is a perfect example of thatconflict and confrontation and yesterday I think it was the students’ favourite part of the exhibit.
Survey Chain for Stepping On by Ian August
This survey chain piece was created by Métis artist Ian August. It references an incident that happened on October 11, 1869. The previous March the dominion of Canada had purchased most of the territory which now makes up the prairie provinces of our country from the Hudson’s Bay Company. In finalizing the transaction they gave little or no thought to the people like the Métis who were already living there.
In anticipation of a stream of settlers who would come to claim free land in the prairie region, the government of Canada sent out survey teams to create township grids for their newly acquired territory. But the land they were surveying had been home to the Métis for generationsand the transfer of the land to the Canadian government was not yet complete.
On October 11, 1869, a survey team led by Captain Adam Webb began working on the Métis farm of Andre Nault. Nault called his cousin Louis Riel who arrived with about a dozen other Métis.
A 1985 painting by Bonna EQ Rouse shows the scene on the Nault farm.
Louis Riel told the surveyors they were on Métis land and put his foot on their surveying chain, demanding the surveyors stop working and leave. They did.
A sign on Survey Chain for Stepping On by Ian August invites visitors to “Be like Louis. Step on the chain!“
The students I took on the tour yesterday had such a good time acting out the scene and then together they stepped on the chain the way Louis Riel had. All those kids stepping on the chain made a loud clanking noise that echoed through the gallery. They loved it!
Last week I took a group of seven and eight-year-olds through the exhibit. They LOVED stepping on the chain just the way the high school students did yesterday. Tonight I will take a group of adults through the exhibit. I hope I can entice them to do a little chain stepping too.
Next week I start giving Winnipeg Art Gallery tours of A Hard Birth or Kwaata-nihtaawakihk the exhibit’s name in Michif, the Métis language. A Hard Birth tells the story of Manitoba becoming an official province of Canada 150 years ago.
One of the pieces I am excited to show young visitors is this sash. Saencheur Flayshii is its name in Michif, the Métis language. The sash is on display thanks to the National Gallery in Ottawa. They think it was made in the first half of the 1800s. This kind of sash was very popular in the Red River Valleyand orginated with the voyageurs. They were French workers employed to transport furs for the Hudson’s Bay company.
The sashes could be up to three meters long and were made from brightly coloured wool. The one currently on display at the Winnipeg Art Gallery has a popular flame design with diamonds at its centre.
Shooting the Rapids 1879 a painting by Frances Anne Hopkins. The lead paddler is wearing a Metis sash.
Making a sash could take up to two hundred hours. Until the 1800s the sashes were handwoven and sometimes made with plant fibres. It was only later they were woven on looms with wool.
Once when I took a tour of the St. Boniface Museum the guide showed us the heavy bales of fur and told us how the sashes helped to ease the burden of carrying them
The sashes have been used for many things. Here are fifteen I found. There are probably more.
As a support to your back while carrying bales of fur that could weigh more than a hundred pounds. This helped prevent hernias.
As a tumpline to lash your canoe or supplies to your head during portage
Firestarter bags, tobacco pouches, knives and first aid kits were tucked into the sash for carrying
A tourniquet for broken bones
A scarf for your face in winter
A washcloth or towel
A saddle blanket or emergency bridle for your horse
You could tear off the fringes to get pieces of thread to mend your clothes
You could tie keys to the fringes so didn’t lose them
Storing pemmican or other foods
A belt to keep your coat closed.
A rope to tie up your canoe
To mark a bison as someone’s property after it was killed
As a gift to give someone
A symbol of Metis pride at ceremonies and events
This statue on the grounds of the Manitoba Legislature shows Louis Riel wearing a Métis sash
In Shelley Niro’s woodcut series Resting With Warriors she shows a woman wearing the traditional sash. I photographed this piece when it was on display at the Winnipeg Art Gallery in the spring of 2017.
Today the sash is worn by both men and women although originally only men would have worn them.
It is Full of Stars by Glen Gear. Shipping containers play an important role in bringing supplies to Canadian Arctic communities. Studies concerning their environmental impact are underway.
Did you know there are are dozens of stories about how the northern lights were created? You can step inside a huge shipping container in the INUA exhibit at the Winnipeg Art Gallery Qaumajuq and learn about one of them.
Detail from It is Full of Stars mural by Glen Gear
When the Thule people arrived in Labrador from Alaska more than a thousand years ago an elder took out spear to test the ground so he could dig a foundation for a house. He struck a rock called labradorite thus freeing the spirits within it which escaped and formed the northern lights.
Labradorite can be found in England and this beautiful piece is in the collection of the geology department of University College in London
Interestingly labradorite which was first discovered in Labrador can be found in many other countries worldwide AND when sliced open in certain ways can produce a colourful play of light across cleavage planes. This effect is called labradorescence. The intense colours range from blues and violets through greens, yellows and oranges. Some rare specimens display all these colours at once.
Glen Gear an artist from Newfoundland and Labrador has created what he calls a meditation pad inside a shipping container in the INUA exhibit and it includes an illustrated version of the labradorite origin story for the northern lights.
There are other neat things to see and hear inside the It is Full of Stars installation.
Images of how Labrador looked long ago
Images of how northern Labrador might look in the future
Photos Glen Gear took of how Labrador looks in the present
You can also see creative abstract images Glenn has created of ocean waves and the northern lights and you can hear their sounds
Glen Gear’s work is currently featured on the windows of the Hudsons Bay Store across the street from the gallery
During the pandemic winter the WAG featured cinematic work by It is Full of Stars artist Glen Gear on the outside of the art gallery and some of his work is displayed in the windows of the Hudsons Bay Store across the street from the Winnipeg Art Gallery-Qaumajuq.
It is Full of Stars is only one of the unique art pieces you can see in INUA an exhibit that will be on display at the Winnipeg Art Gallery- Qaumajuqtill February of 2023.
Every year during the Easter season I like to do an update on my Last Supper collection. I collect unique renditions of Leonardo Da Vinci’s classic work. I recently found this one called The First Supper.
It is painted by Susan Dorthea Whitean Australian artist in 1988. She wanted to challenge the patriarchal image of the original Last Supper so she painted thirteen women from different parts of the world. Susan has replaced Christ with an Australian Indigenous woman wearing a T-shirt with an Indigenous land rights flag. She has placed traditional Australian foods on the table and the rock you see through the window is called Uluru, a sacred site for Indigenous people in Australia that has been returned to them by the Australian government.
I found this Last Supper at the Albert Gilles Copper Museum in Quebec City.
I photographed this unconventional Last Supper featuring classic Hollywood movie stars in a shop window in Phuket Thailand. It is the work of Italian artist Renato Casaro.
This Last Supper by Francisco Victor Newton de Souza an artist from Mumbai India shows the moment at The Last Supper when Jesus reveals one of his disciples has betrayed him.
I photographed this Last Supper in the Aboriginal Art section of the Museum of Sydney in Sydney Australia. Eleven disciples are facing Jesus but Judas the twelfth is turned away.
When many people think of Inuit art they envision soapstone sculptures but Inuit art is so much more than that as people learn when they visit the INUA exhibit at the Winnipeg Art Gallery -Qaumajuq. It is photographs and murals, masks and dolls, rugs and wall hangings, jewellery and fashion, embroidery and beadwork and……….film.
Bringing the whale to shore
One of my favourite pieces in the INUA exhibit is an animated film by Megan Kyak-Montieth. It is called Whale Hunt: I Think Everyone Is Here.
Megan Kyak-Montieth is a multi-disciplinary artist from Mittimatalik or Pond Inlet Nunavut. Pond Inlet is a small hamlet on the coast of Baffin Island. Born in Pond Inlet in 1997 Megan’s family moved to Nova Scotia when she was ten.
In 2019 Megan graduated from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design and already has an impressive body of work. An article in the Inuit Art Quarterly says about her place in the Inuit art world, “she is a star rising and burning bright.” Her work is deeply personal often revolving around childhood memories she pieces together so she can preserve them. Megan says she saw a whale hunt when she was a little girl still living in Pond Inlet. That inspired her film, Whale Hunt: I Think Everyone Is Here.
Hauling the whale into shore with a tractor
Megan wanted her film to document a whale hunt but also to show the strength of northern communities and how when a whale is killed it is shared with everyone and none of it is wasted. She created the images for her film with oil paint and oil pastels and then covered them with glass to film them. She used both time-lapse and animation techniques.
Harvesting the whale begins
The whale meat is laid out on a blue tarp and people from the community start arriving to pick up their share
Every single part of the whale has been used and the area for harvesting has been cleaned so you hardly know the whale was ever there
I have four tours of INUA booked with kids in the next couple of weeks and I am looking forward to showing them Megan’s film and having them tell me the story they see recorded in its frames.
This red wool seat which currently is part of an installation at the Winnipeg Art Gallery once played an important role in Canada’s parliamentary system.
For nearly seventy years when the opening ceremonies for Parliament took place in the Senate this oddly shaped large stuffed cushion called a woolsack was placed in the chamber’s centre aisle and the seven judges of Canada’s Supreme Court sat on it while the Governor General read the Speech From the Throne.
Photo taken in the British House of Lords in April of 2021 with the Speaker of the House Lord Fowler sitting on the woolsack. – Photo by Roger Harris from Creative Commons
The tradition had its roots in a similar practice in British parliamentary tradition that dates back to the 1300s.The sack was made of wool because wool was the backbone of the British economy at the time, and the Lord Chancellor and later the Speaker of the House of Lords sat on it in the centre of the House of Lords to illustrate political impartiality. It is still used in Britain today.
But in 1953 the year I was born, the Canadian Senate voted to replace the woolsack with conventional hard backed chairs for each of the Canadian Supreme Court justices and the woolsack was relegated to the senate archives.
So what is that very same woolsack doing at the Winnipeg Art Gallery?It is part of an art installation titled Witnesser by artists Lori Blondeauand Theo Sims.Witnesser was created for a brand new exhibit at the Winnipeg Art Gallery called A Hard Birth or Kwaata-nihtaawakihk in Michif a Metis language. A Hard Birth refers to the birthing of the province of Manitoba in 1870.
With support from a Canadian senator The Honorable Patricia Bovey who was once the Director of the Winnipeg Art Gallery, the woolsack was taken from the archives in Ottawa and transported to Winnipeg to become a part of Witnesser an exhibit that speaks to the efforts of reconciliation in Canada.
Around the woolsack are grandfather rocks collected by Lori Blondeau. Grandfather rocks are based on the understanding that rocks are really animate beings with memories and stories to share with those who are able to hear Indigenous ancestral voices. In Witnesser those voices surround a historic symbol of the Canadian government.
On one wall of the exhibit you can see an artwork done by Theo Sims which shows the woolsack in use in Canada’s Parliamentduring a royal visit.
On Monday I had the distinct privilege of listening to Cathy Mattes and Sherry Farrel Racette the curators of A Hard Birth– Kwaata-nihtaawakihk introduce Witnesser to the art gallery guides.
You won’t want to miss seeing it or the other interesting and thought provoking pieces in this exhibit which will be on view till September.
When I give tours at the Winnipeg Art Gallery people sometimes ask me which painting in the gallery’s collection is my favourite. That’s easy. It’s Friends Rejoicing by Canadian Indigenous artist Daphne Odjig.
Friends Rejoicing by Daphne Odjig- photographed at the Winnipeg Art Gallery
I love the rich and stunning colours of this painting that shows a group of friends rejoicing over the birth of a baby. I think the mother is the woman on the right her breasts filling with milk to feed the newborn. I love the people’s mouths. Are they open in surprise at the wonder of the child or are they singing songs of joy? I love the movement and light in the sky as if all of nature is rejoicing too because a new living being is on this earth. I love the way everyone has pressed together providing a close-knit circle of love and support for the mother and her child.
I follow a Twitter account called Canadian Paintings. Every four or five hours during the day they do a post about a work of art by a Canadian. There is no comment- just the artwork, its title, the year it was made and the name of its creator.
A few days ago they posted a painting by Daphne Odjig and I immediately thought it was the perfect companion to Friends Rejoicing.
In Tune with the Infinite by Daphne Odjig
Called In Tune with the Infinite the painting shows people gathered around a pregnant woman providing her with love and support before she gives birth and marvelling how the child about to be born reminds them of their connection with the divine. The colours are more muted than the ones in Friends Rejoicing and give an aura of peace and contentment. I love the way the trees in the forest above cover the people to show that nature is helping to provide protection and comfort to the mother, child and her friends who wait for the birth with her.
I think In Tune With the Infinite is the perfect companion and prequel to Friends Rejoicing.
In Tune with the Infinite is in the collection of the McIntosh Gallery at Western University and of course Friends Rejoicing is in the collection of the Winnipeg Art Gallery-Qaumajuq. Wouldn’t it be amazing if someday the two pieces could be displayed together side by side?
This morning I will give a sermon about how to navigate through our daily lives when the world is in such a crisis. As I was reflecting on what I would say some art pieces I’ve seen in different places came to mind.
I photographed my husband Dave standing in front of this wall just across the street from the United Nations in New York with the hopeful words from Isaiah 2:4– Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.
When we visited the Yoko Ono exhibit at the Vancouver Art Gallery in October we were invited to stamp the words Imagine Peace close to our home town on a huge map of the world on the wall.
This art piece is called Sun-Poe and is by Reena Kallat. It is from her collection called Hyphenated Lives which I photographed at the Winnipeg Art Gallery. It depicts a new species of bird made from the national bird of Palestine the sunbird and the hoopoe the national bird of Israel. Reena Kallat has created similar hybrid nature pieces for other countries that have been in conflict.
Between Dog and Wolf by Joe Fafard is a sculpture located on the grounds of the former St. Boniface City Hall. It is said to depict the blurry line between hope and fear.
I photographed this painting called Wars Dread of Mothers by George Rouault at the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City. George Rouault painted Wars- Dread of Mothers nine years after World War I when his country of France was already involved in two new wars one in Congo and another in Lebanon. Thepainting alludes to the Madonna and the infant Jesus and a line from the Odes of Horace. Horace was an ancient Roman poet who wrote that while some rejoice at the sounds of war mothers detest them.
I photographed this painting at the Peace Memorial Museum in Hiroshima. It was done by a woman named Yasuk Onishi who was 13 years old in 1945 when the bomb fell. She was attending classes at her school at the time. Her painting shows her and a friend in their school uniforms over to the right on the riverbank their heads in their hands because they have just realized their homes which were across the bridge are gone and their families are dead.
My husband Dave looks at a piece of wall art listing all the people who died when Pearl Harbor was bombed.
The only child left in the Bosnian village of Lukomir after the war. Photo by Ziyah Gafic in 2000. I photographed it in the War Photo Museum in Dubrovnik, Croatia.
Captured Mayans being led away by the Spanish during The Caste Wars in the Yucatan. I photographed this mural by Fernando Castro Pacheco in the Governor’s Palace in Merida, Mexico.
A statue of Andrew Mynarski a quiet young man with a sense of humour from Winnipeg who died during World War II saving a fellow airman.
What Next? 
