Remembering with a sense of relief
It was a busy summer. Extra busy because of the move to Montreal and the renovations to the house, but I managed to squeeze a few art projects in there too.
I was involved with the LandMarks project, a huge cross country installation project. Part of my involvement was through the LandMarks Class at NSCAD, for which I was the TA, and I also created a piece as a part of Ursula Johnson’s event titled (re)al-location.
The piece that I created for the LandMarks Class was installed at Green Cove, Cape Breton Highlands National Park in June, 2017. It was an anti monument for the doomed memorial that was just narrowly averted in that space, and it was titled Remembering with a sense of relief. The documentation of this piece was installed at the Anna Leonowens Gallery in Halifax as a part of NSCAD’s official LandMarks exhibition that ran from late June through early July, 2017. When I returned to check on it about a month later, it had vanished.
The text from the didactic panel is below the images.
Photos by Christina Arsenault
Remembering with a sense of relief
It seemed to come out of nowhere and then suddenly it was everywhere. I very quickly became obsessed. Some Toronto business tycoon visited Cape Breton and came up with the bright idea to erect a gigantic statue of a veiled woman, arms outstretched toward the Atlantic Ocean, supposedly beckoning to Canada’s war dead at Vimy Ridge. An amateur’s riff on Canada Bereft. This fellow got it into his head that the pink granite cliffs at Green Cove on Cape Breton’s celebrated Cabot Trail was just the place for his monument. Right here, where you’re standing.
I was gobsmacked. Green Cove is protected land! It’s National Park land! Expropriated National Park Land!! How could this possibly be? The bug had gotten into the, then Prime Minister, Steven Harper’s, ear and suddenly land and money was being donated by the National Park for this so-called cause. The project was steam-rolling ahead.
The locals must be outraged, I thought. Some were. Others supported the project with the hope that it would bring employment to the economically depressed villages North of Smokey. Communities were cleaved. For and against factions were formed and the arguments were heated. Perversely, I hung about reading the comments sections of the numerous articles about the project, or I scrolled through posts on the group pages of social media platforms feeling muzzled. I was outraged too, but I didn’t feel like I could voice my opinions about the project - I didn’t live North of Smokey. I didn’t know how hard it was to make it through the year with only seasonable employment.
I was troubled. It seemed the entire country was troubled by this project’s seemingly unstoppable fast track into realization. Then, after about two years of controversy, it disappeared just as quickly as it had manifested itself. In 2015, the leadership of Canada changed hands from the Conservatives to the Liberals and the Mother Canada project died almost overnight.
Every once in awhile you still see an article about it crop up online (or if you are like me you have a collection of them bookmarked on your laptop, ahem), but it seems more like a distant joke than a possible reality. Now, like me, you can stand here on the pink granite cliffs of Green Cove, enjoying the untarnished natural beauty, and remember with a sense of relief.