Sunday, December 05, 2021

$14.7 million in funding announced to fight invasive species in Alberta mountain parks

Money will be spent over 5 years on prevention and

education programs

CBC · 
Steven Guilbeault, left, visited Cascade Ponds in Banff National Park Saturday to announce almost $15 million in funding to fight invasive species. (Evelyne Asselin/CBC)

Steven Guilbeault, federal minister of environment and climate change, announced $14.7 million in funding to fight invasive aquatic species in Alberta's national parks Saturday.

The money will be spent over five years on conservation projects in Banff, Jasper, Kootenay, Waterton Lakes and Yoho national parks.

"Aquatic invasive species are a very concerning issue, certainly here in the region as they are in many parts of Canada," said Guilbeault during a visit to Cascade Ponds in Banff National Park.

"This money will help increase surveillance and monitoring and try to ensure that we limit, if not stop entirely, the spread of these invasive species."

The funding will be used for prevention and eduction programs, and is divided for each park:

  • $4.70 million for Yoho and Kootenay parks, as well as the northern part of Banff National Park
  • $3.73 million for Jasper National Park
  • $3.43 million for the southern part of Banff National Park
  • $2.84 million for Waterton Lakes National Park

"The mountain national parks are particularly vulnerable to aquatic invasive species due to the high amount of water recreationists who visit each year," said a release from Parks Canada.

"Aquatic invasive species alter aquatic ecosystems, cause irreversible damage, impact vulnerable species at risk, and spread downstream beyond park boundaries through the interconnected river systems."

Rick Kubian, the field unit superintendent for the Lake Louise Yoho Kootenay field unit, says the first priority is not allowing species to get introduced in the first place.

"It's very expensive to remove aquatic invasive once they've taken hold," said Kubian.

He also said it's important to make sure sure visitors are aware of how they can help prevent the movement of invasive species between parks.

Whirling disease, mussels of concern for mountain parks

Parks Canada hopes to prevent a parasite that causes whirling disease, which causes skeletal deformities in some fish, such as whitefish, bull trout and cutthroat trout, from entering the ecosystems.

A sign posted by Alberta Parks near a stream in Kananaskis warns of the risks of whirling disease in summer 2021. (Sarah Rieger/CBC)

Invasive zebra and quagga mussels are also a concern. They take nutrients from the water, which affects the entire food web, and change water chemistry. Mussels can also clog structures such as dams, water treatment facilities and boats.

These species are often transported by people. Making sure all watercraft and recreational gear are cleaned, drained and dried before moving between bodies or water is the best way to protect against aquatic invasive species, says Parks Canada.

Mandatory policies for visitors to clean, drain and dry their boats are already in place for Kootenay, Waterton Lakes and Yoho national parks. Banff joined that list this summer.

With files from Evelyne Asselin

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 Anger management: New Twitter CEO needs to make platform less hostile


When the CEO of a major company steps down, there’s usually a clear and obvious reason: sometimes scandal, often shareholder revolt — or more simply, that after amassing billions, it’s just time.

In the case of Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, however, there seems to be a different reason: his heart just didn’t seem to be in it any more.

Dorsey, who announced his exit from Twitter this week — and whose public persona over the past few years has morphed into more a New Age, crypto-obsessed yoga fan than a tech CEO — also runs financial company Square, and many in the company felt his focus on Twitter was insufficient. While Twitter itself remains important, the company has been on an unsteady course, failing to do much to grow or tackle the many challenges of an acrimonious platform.

The question, then, as new CEO Parag Agrawal steps in, is what Twitter needs to do to ameliorate what has become, for better or worse, the closest thing to an online public square. What seems key for Twitter is twofold: first, to make itself more useful to everyday people; but perhaps more importantly, find new ways to clamp down on the bitter, angry, inflammatory culture that seems to have become endemic to the platform.

One should be clear that Twitter is never going to replace Facebook: your dad or your aunt will never turn to a social-information site in order to connect with people. It is also completely dwarfed by other social-media platforms. Twitter sits at a comparatively meagre 315 million users on the site daily, while Facebook has nearly 10 times as much. To try and narrow that gap seems futile.

What Twitter has rather remarkably done, however, is to become the place people go to both find out what is happening and debate the issues of the day. The platform has become the go-to home for journalists, writers, media figures, or people who simply wish to shoot the breeze and make jokes in a public way. If you want to be plugged in to the world and culture, you don’t turn to Instagram or Facebook; you log on to Twitter.

However, Twitter abides by the classic “one per cent rule” of the internet: a tiny fraction of people are responsible for the bulk of content and most people just lurk. That is a problem for a company looking to grow.

Despite some steps made by the site — curating tweets instead of presenting them in chronological order; showing trending topics, if often clumsily — Twitter is still an overwhelming place for newcomers. While for expert users it is a great place to learn both the news and what people are saying about it, for new users it is a miasma of in-jokes, niche cultural expectations, and a flood of information, the quality of which is hard to parse.

Agrawal’s task is thus to make Twitter’s vitality as a source of information for its core users available to all. That will likely involve more and better human curation, more accessible onboarding, and a focus and marketing push to get people to think of Twitter as the place to go for news and discussion.

But before that can happen, the nature of discussion also needs to be tackled. While Twitter of course cannot single-handedly tackle the deep polarization of contemporary societies, certain features of the site do lend themselves to bad-faith interpretations, drive-by condemnation and a bitter tone.

The ability to “quote tweet” — adding commentary to another’s tweet — very often results in blunt, frequently unfair interpretation, quashing conversation rather than encouraging it. It also cultivates a culture of people talking past one another.

Maybe more importantly, Twitter has yet to deal with two key problems: context collapse; and the tension between ephemerality and permanence.

Context collapse is the problem that arises when differing groups and interpretive frameworks try to engage online with the same thing. The result — at best miscommunication, at worst deep offence — is something that could be mitigated by an ability to limit tweets to particular groups, or perhaps only those who ask for them.

The other issue is that while a record of statements is sometimes useful, very often tweets — which can be small, throwaway thoughts — have no reason to be made permanent. While Twitter tried an ill-fated experiment with vanishing posts called Fleets, there is no default way to have tweets delete, or choose certain ones to disappear.

Those oversights reflect a product and a platform that has for too long languished, and been unresponsive to the needs of both its current and new users. Dorsey’s heart may have never been in it, but if Twitter is to find a more stable footing, Agrawal is going to have give it not just effort but, more importantly, a commitment to building a platform which cultivates a culture of communication, rather than the anger that so predominates now.

Navneet Alang is a Toronto-based freelance contributing technology columnist for the Star. Follow him on Twitter: @navalang

News From, TORONTO STAR

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Absence of Dissident Artist’s Works Spurs Fears of Hong Kong Art Censorship

December 04, 2021 
VOA News
 Chinese artist Ai Wei Wei joins supporters of Julian Assange as they stage a demonstration outside the High Court in London, Oct. 27, 2021

HONG KONG —

Art censorship in Hong Kong is “very much real,” an expert said after the city’s much-anticipated art gallery opened recently without showcasing some expected artworks by a Chinese dissident.

The former British colony’s largest art museum, M+, opened Nov. 12 to great fanfare, but also heated debate because of its failure to exhibit two of famous exiled artist Ai Wei Wei’s artworks in a donated collection of celebrated Swiss art collector Uli Sigg.

Among the collection of contemporary Chinese art from the 1970s to the 2000s, Ai’s Study of Perspective: Tiananmen, a photo that features Ai’s middle finger in front of Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, and Map of China, a sculpture made of salvaged wood from a Qing Dynasty temple, have been under review by authorities since March this year, essentially barring them from display.

That came two weeks after M+ director Suhanya Raffel guaranteed that the gallery would show Ai’s art and pieces about the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown, according to The South China Morning Post.

In the same month, Hong Kong’s leader Carrie Lam said the authorities would be on “full alert” to ensure museum exhibitions would not undermine national security, after pro-Beijing lawmakers said the artworks at M+ caused “great concerns” to the public for “spreading hatred” against China, public broadcaster RTHK reported.

In a September editorial in local media outlet Stand News, Ai called the government’s decision to shelve his two pieces “incredible.”

“The Study of Perspective series I started at Tiananmen Square 26 years ago once again became the testing ground for an important change in history, and a convincing note for China’s political censorship of its culture and art,” Ai wrote. Other images in the series featured the middle finger in front of the White House, the Swiss parliament and the Mona Lisa.

Sigg donated over 1,400 artworks and sold 47 pieces to M+ gallery in 2012, before the city experienced political turmoil from the 2014 Occupy Central movement, the 2019 anti-government protests and implementation of the controversial national security law last year.

FILE - A woman walks outside the M+ visual culture museum in the West Kowloon Cultural District of Hong Kong, Nov. 11, 2021.

Sigg originally wanted to make mainland China home to his collection, but no art galleries there could ensure that his artworks, including Ai Wei Wei’s, would be displayed without restriction, according to SOAS University of London art history professor Shane McCausland.

“Hong Kong’s legal framework at the time promised that these artworks could be shown…[but] policy on display will have changed dramatically after the national security law came in,” McCausland told VOA.

The head of the West Kowloon Cultural District, Henry Tang, said ahead of the M+ gallery opening that the board would “uphold and encourage freedom of artistic expression and creativity,” but added that the opening of M+ “does not mean artistic expression is above the law.” He also denied that the two artworks put under review meant they were illegal.

However, such an ostensibly normal bureaucratic act from the government is China’s usual form of censorship, McCausland said.

“It’s often unclear even to the initiated, where the boundary lies, as it moves all the time. The laws are framed in vague language: they often appear to be applied arbitrarily and randomly. …The application depends on the [Chinese] leadership from the top, where there is a degree of sensitivity to criticism and intolerance of critiques,” he said.

FILE - A painting titled 'Rouge 1992' created by Chinese artist Li Shan, is seen during a media preview in the West Kowloon Cultural District of Hong Kong, Nov. 11, 2021.

The city’s freedom of artistic expression has been declining since the national security law took effect last year, according to a local independent performance and dance artist who asked that she only be identified by her initial, “V.”

“This [the ban] did not come as a surprise - some artists’ works that might be considered sensitive are not allowed to display recently after the national security law was out, not to mention M+ is a government venue,” V told VOA.

Self-censorship has become a norm in Hong Kong’s art circles, V added.

“The atmosphere has been rather tense. Some movie screenings had to be canceled. Now we still want to voice out our views, but we start thinking about if we should express in a very edgy way, or if politics is the only way for us to express,” she said.

A new film censorship law came into effect in November that aims to “prevent and suppress acts or activities that may endanger national security.”

The supposedly autonomous region is now on track to mirror mainland China’s propaganda and censorship, McCausland said.

“Essentially Hong Kong is poised to become very similar to the framework within the rest of China, with artists being vigilant and constantly watching the moving sense of what’s OK and becoming attuned to when the likelihood is high of the system kicking in with legal ramifications, such as house detention or other judicial options that are open to the authorities, which they are happy to use to ensure the public discourse of harmony,” he said.

Growing art censorship is expected to intensify the talent drain in Hong Kong, which has witnessed an exodus to Western countries, including Britain and Canada, since the start of the 2019 anti-government protests, the art expert said.

“We know there was an astounding majority in favor of democracy - the views of the people were very clear but now you are hearing and seeing the space for expression has been closed down, and often in a heavy-handed way,” McCausland said.

The University of Hong Kong, one of Hong Kong’s most prestigious educational institutions, has ordered the removal of a sculpture commemorating the student victims of the Tiananmen crackdown since October. The university cited “the latest risk assessment and legal advice” as the reason for the request to take away the iconic statue that has been in place for the last 24 years.

“Being an ‘artivist’ [activist artist] is not easy anymore - I started thinking about the role I should play in this era. … I can’t say for sure I will go, but some of my artist friends left because funding has become more challenging,” V said.

‘There is still hope here’ in Hong Kong: Zhang Xiaogang, Chinese contemporary artist, tours M+ museum

Zhang Xiaogang, the first major Chinese art figure to tour M+, admits to being pleasantly surprised by Hong Kong’s new museum and its exhibitions


Chinese artist Zhang Xiaogang (wearing a cap) in conversation with Pi Li, Sigg Senior Curator of M+, on December 2, 2021. The event was held at the M+ Lounge for patrons of Hong Kong’s new museum of visual culture. Photo: Enid Tsui

He says it would be ‘difficult’ to show some of its Chinese contemporary art in mainland China, and reaffirms his intention to live and work in Hong Kong


Enid Tsui
Published: 3 Dec, 2021

One of China’s best-known contemporary artists said after touring the newly opened M+ museum it had reassured him there is “still hope” in Hong Kong and that he was ready to live and work in the city as soon as quarantine restrictions on travel are lifted.

Zhang Xiaogang, 63, has painted some of the most recognisable works of the post-1989 generation of Chinese artists, and a large reproduction of his Bloodline – Big Family No. 17 (1998) is displayed prominently in one of the M+ lobbies.

Zhang, who arrived in Hong Kong on November 28, is the first major mainland Chinese artist to see the new museum of visual culture.

Speaking on December 2 to museum patrons, he said he had doubted what M+ could accomplish after the “rich” events of the past two years in Hong Kong, a reference to the 2019 anti-extradition-law protests and subsequent introduction of National Security Law, which includes broad powers of censorship that many fear will diminish the civil liberties enshrined in the city’s mini-constitution.

My art is independent of politics and only comes from within. I can make anything I like inside my studio in mainland ChinaZhang Xiaogang

“The opening hasn’t been very well publicised in mainland China. And the level of anticipation had gone from very strong to numbness over the years. But now that I’m here, I am surprised and also touched to see the building and the exhibitions,” he said.

Without mentioning specific works, he said the contents in the Sigg Galleries of contemporary Chinese art would be “difficult” to show under mainland China’s strict censorship regime. “There is still hope here,” he added.


“The Dark Trilogy: Fear, Meditation, Sorrow” by Zhang Xiaogang on display ahead of a Sotheby’s auction in Hong Kong in 2020. Photo: SCMP/Sam Tsang

M+ opened on November 12 after 14 years of preparations, at a time when the Hong Kong government’s strict implementation of the National Security Law has impinged on many aspects of life in the city, including the cultural realm: people have been arrested for publishing a children’s book about sheep and wolves that was considered seditious, for example, and the film censorship law amended to allow the screening of films to be banned on national security grounds.

The museum’s Sigg Collection of contemporary Chinese art, which includes three pieces by Zhang, has been attacked for promoting anti-Chinese sentiment by pro-Beijing politicians and newspapers controlled by the Chinese government’s liaison office in Hong Kong. However, M+ insists its curatorial independence has not been affected by politics, and works by dissident Chinese artist Ai Weiwei and paintings referencing the Cultural Revolution and the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown remain on display.

Speaking to the Post, Zhang stressed that his long-planned move to Hong Kong was mainly prompted by practical considerations rather than freedom of expression.

“New Beijing” by Wang Xingwei, which references the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown, on display at M+. Photo: SCMP/Felix Wong

In 2019, Zhang decided to set up a second home and workshop in Hong Kong because Pace Gallery, which represents him, closed its permanent space in Beijing. He has visited the city many times – coming often to attend the annual Art Basel international art fair – but acknowledged that his knowledge of the city remains shallow. (He could not remember where his Ap Lei Chau workshop is located, for example.)

“It is simply too complicated to move my paintings from Beijing to the gallery here,” he said, referring to the city’s tax-free status and easy connections to the rest of world before the pandemic.

Of his work, Zhang said: “My art is independent of politics and only comes from within. I can make anything I like inside my studio in mainland China.” That is true even for his painting One Day in March 2020 (2020), which he completed shortly after the death of Dr Li Wenliang, the whistle-blower in Wuhan who tried to alert people to the spread of Covid-19 but was reprimanded by the police.


One Day in March 2020, Zhang Xiaogang. Photo: courtesy Pace Gallery

The painting shows a hand holding a torch that illuminates newspaper cuttings about the pandemic. “I have never said it was a commemoration. The painting merely reflects my own emotions. It’s open to interpretation,” Zhang said.

He said he did appreciate the chance to see art in Hong Kong that he wouldn’t see in Beijing, especially as many of the paintings at M+ donated by Swiss collector Uli Sigg were by artists he has known well. “It gives me such a warm feeling to see these works again,” he said.

In a speech at M+, Zhang spoke obliquely about how his whole approach to art changed after the 1989 crackdown on the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy movement.


Bloodline – Big Family No 3 (1995) by Zhang Xiaogang.

“After 1989, artists like myself experienced a great awakening from within. We felt we had to find our own identity, our own position, role and values in the world. It was a big turning point for me,” he said.

He explained that before 1989, his paintings were “romantic narratives” reflecting on Western art historical materials and philosophy that the 1978 opening up of China had made available to a generation that grew up during the Cultural Revolution. But after a short spell in Germany in 1992, he returned home to look through old family photo albums and saw them with new eyes, he said.

The result was his “Bloodline – Big Family” series. These large oil paintings of Cultural Revolution-era family studio portraits show near-identical faces all bearing the same, expressionless, blank look.

“It moved me that no matter what pain people went through in their lives they looked the same in the photos. I also wanted to reflect certain de-individualised traditions in Chinese aesthetics,” he said.

He has long moved on from this career-making series, and in recent years has produced works that are more surreal and dream-like. Some of these will soon go on display at a new solo exhibition in Shanghai’s Long Museum, he said.

“I look forward to the day when I can have a solo exhibition at M+”, he added.



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Fort Severn housing project earns architecture nod

2021 Canadian Architect Awards of Excellence mark the highest level of design recognition in Canada

Northern Ontario Business Staff
Dec 2, 2021


'Resilient Duplex', a conceptual design for a residential building in Fort Severn First Nation, has received a Canadian Architect Award of Excellence

A housing project designed to meet the needs of residents in Fort Severn First Nation has been selected as the winner of a 2021 Canadian Architect Award of Excellence.

Conceptualized by Two Row Architect of Six Nations of the Grand River and KPMB of Toronto, the project is one of six selected for the national awards, now in their 54th year and the highest recognition for future architecture projects in Canada.

The winning design is the result of an initiative of the National Research Council of Canada’s Path to Healthy Homes initiative, which pairs Indigenous communities with Indigenous-led architectural firms in an effort to produce a best practices manual for the design of affordable, resilient, culturally appropriate Indigenous housing.

It’s an effort to address the issues of overcrowding and substandard housing, which are faced by 20 to 25 per cent of Indigenous people in Canada.

In Fort Severn, designers worked closed with band leaders and community members to glean input on their design.

The ‘Resilient Duplex’ enables Elders to live independently longer, while providing units for young families.

According to the judges, “The Resilient Duplex iterative housing system allows elders and young families to live as neighbours and support each other. A single-storey accessible elder’s apartment is attached to a two-bedroom unit with a flexible loft space. The two units share an entry porch, encouraging interaction between neighbours, and the elder’s apartment has a private terrace off the bedroom.”

In their design, the team also considered challenges of building in the remote north.

The project currently remains in the design phase, while proponents seek out funding to move it forward to construction.

Canadian Architect's full synopsis of the project is available to read here.

Our collaboration with Two Row Architect for A Resilient Duplex for Fort Severn First Nation has been awarded a 2021 Award of Excellence from Canadian Architect

by ahnationtalk on December 3, 2021

We are pleased to announce that our collaboration with Two Row Architect for A Resilient Duplex for Fort Severn First Nation has been awarded a 2021 Award of Excellence from Canadian Architect. The jury recognized the project “as a design rooted in a robust consultation process with its northern Ontario community.”

Indeed, central to this project was a series of community engagement sessions, including meetings with band leaders, site visits to housing units currently under construction, and a multi-generational community workshop in which we asked Fort Severn residents of all ages to describe what they love about their community, the challenges they face with their current homes, and how new housing could better meet their needs and aspirations. This input determined the project team’s needs assessment and design strategies.

“We have tried to think of our research and design work as the product of a two-way exchange of knowledge and skills, rather than a case of settlers arriving with predetermined solutions. Two Row has been at the center of that exchange,” says Laurence Holland, a project team member. “Brian and his team have been so adept at navigating multiple worlds, synthesizing the needs, wants, and aspirations of the community and ensuring that the resulting design is a result of both technical innovation and cultural specificity. ”

The jurors bestowed five Awards of Excellence, seven Awards of Merit, two Student Awards of Excellence, one Photo Award of Excellence, and two Photo Awards of Merit. The program this year received 174 professional entries, 39 student entries, and 46 photo entries.

You can find the full list online and in the December 2021 issue here.


From First Nations architects, a new vision for Northern housing


DECEMBER 5, 2021

As part of an initiative by the National Research Council of Canada, Indigenous architects working with Fort Severn have come up with a better solution to the insufficient housing program.

Two Row/KPMB

There is an old house in Fort Severn, Ont., which has been lying vacant for decades. The windows of the one-story building are long gone, but the silver tamarind siding is a reminder of how homes were built with locally available materials in Ontario’s northernmost community.
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These days, customized housing kits of vinyl siding and asphalt shingles are shipped hundreds of kilometers on a flatbed truck by Winter Road to a remote community located along Hudson Bay’s southern shore. A barge carries goods and supplies in the summer when the bay is not frozen.

The community is trying out a new housing type designed by Indigenous architects, who worked with Fort Severn as part of an initiative by the National Research Council of Canada, called the Path to Healthy Homes. They say they have come up with a better solution to the inadequate housing program provided by the federal government, which accounts for reserved infrastructure such as housing.
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Called Flexible Duplex for Fort Severn First Nation, it is one of four new housing types designed by four First Nations architects to meet the specific needs of four different Indigenous communities.

David Fortin Metis is the architect who coordinated Path to Healthy Homes, an initiative that developed out of the work of the First Nations National Building Officers Association. The union developed a Technical Guide to Northern Housing to help communities that were “recourse to previous methods of building that were flawed, and causing too many problems” under the federal government’s Reserved Housing Program. .


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Forgotten First Nations art found in basement of Yukon Friendship Centre

Among the 183 pieces found are 28 from well-known artist

 Carl Beam

Sissi De Flaviis · CBC News · 
Staff at the Skookum Jim Friendship Centre were shocked to find 183 pieces of art from Indigenous artists in their basement. Among them was art from Stephen Snake, shown above, and Carl Beam. (Wayne Vallevand/CBC)

Staff at the Skookum Jim Friendship Centre were shocked to find 183 art pieces in their basement recently, many of them created by well-known artists.

"This recent discovery during this year of significant hardship has been a very welcome surprise," said Bill Griffis, the centre's executive director, in a news release.

The art was originally donated to the non-profit organization in Whitehorse back in 1997, but was forgotten over the years as staff left.

Among the pieces found, 28 belonged to the well-known contemporary artist Carl Beam. The other 155 were created by Stephen Snake and other Indigenous artists.

Joe Migwans holds Beam's piece titled 'A poem for the unborn' from the late 90s. The orange plexiglass has an unborn baby in a womb followed by the words 'you can never believe the rational.' (Wayne Vallevand/CBC)

Griffis said the next step is to determine the value of each piece.

"Each one [of Beam's art pieces] has an appraisal certificate with them," said Griffis. "Part of the process is to figure out what the value is now because we have a collection [and] there may be some historical value to it."

Out of the other 155, about a third of them also had appraisals from the late 90s.

Significant impact on Canadian art sector

As one of Canada's most ground-breaking Indigenous artists, the art from Beam is of particular interest.

He was from M'Chigeeng First Nation, located on Manitoulin Island, Ont. He was born in 1943 and passed away in 2005.

Beam had a significant impact on the Canadian art sector. His work, which ranged from Plexiglass to canvas and other media, provoked conversations about the Indigenous experience of injustice in Canada.

Beam's cousin, Joe Migwans, is a long-time Yukon resident and cultural mentor.

'I know Carl would be really happy to have his gifts of artwork being shared in a way that will touch so many people’s lives at this time,' said Joe Migwans. (Wayne Vallevand/CBC)

"He was my cousin by blood, but he's more like my uncle because in our way, when we have a cousin like that, that age, he's more like my uncle. I always listen to what he said to me because he's my elder," explained Migwans.

He said Beam's work has a powerful message and is even more relevant today.

"He's basically preserving those kind of snippets in this time and telling, and it kind of like how he perceives the world to be and what his take is on it. And then in the future, people will see kind of what was going on here from from his perspective," he says.

Towards the end of his life, Beam started to talk more about what life could be or what life is all about, said Migwans.

"What it's about is overcoming and then achieving something in your life and not having to go through what you did in the past. So your life can move forward. I mean, that's the vision, right? And a lot of us back home that knew him and worked with him, we always believed that he was more well ahead of his time," he said.

Migwans said art is used to tell a story and capture a moment in time. He added that most of Beam's work came from his anger from residential schools and injustices towards Indigenous people.

"Some of the things he would like to really do was to take any stereotype around First Nations people. One of the things was saying our people were dirty Indians. Except there never was. We never were like that," said Migwans.

5:06Art by Carl Beams and Stephen Snake discovered at the Skookum Jim Friendship Centre in Whitehorse
Indigenous art discovered at the Skookum Jim Friendship Centre in Whitehorse is set to be auctioned off on line to help the centre. The work is by artists including Stephen Snake and Carl Beam. Skookum Executive Director Bill Griffis and Beams' cousin Joe Migwans spoke about the significance of the find. 5:06

Beam was the first Indigenous contemporary artist featured at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa.

"He did it on his own in his own way. Not as a First Nations artist, as the contemporary artist, which means he's just like anybody else. He's not under the guise of First Nations or the idea that he's entitled to something because he's First Nation.

"He didn't have to use that as something to get him forward," said Migwans.

Fundraiser

Out of nearly 200 pieces, some will be sold to the public and some to private galleries across Canada.

The remaining pieces will be part of a silent auction on the Friendship Centre's website from Dec. 4 to the 14th.

The auction is part of a fundraiser between the Skookum Jim Friendship Centre and Sundog Veggies Training Farm.

Heather Finton, owner of Sundog Veggies, said the organization is grateful they can use the found art to raise some money.

The staff at Skookum Jim Friendship Centre and Sundog Veggies Training Farm going through Stephen Snake and Carl Beam's artwork. (Wayne Vallevand/CBC)

"Not only is this artwork like amazing and so timely but the way that some of these gifts are going to be available to the community to support the work Skookum does is ... it's just a privilege to be part of these amazing story," she said.

The two organizations have been collaborating since 2020 for the community lunch program which feeds several families in Whitehorse. They share a goal of building food security in the Yukon and creating opportunities to develop land-based skills.

With files from Danielle d'Entremont

Art that spent over 20 years in a box could mean money for the Skookum Jim Friendship Centre and Sundog Veggies

Friday, December 3rd, 2021 2:57pm

By Dylan MacNeil

One of the works of art by Carl Beam that is going to be up for auction (photo: Mike Thomas, Yukon Arts Center and Sundog Veggies).

A collection donated to the friendship centre in 1997 contains work from some famous Canadian artists.

A box of art that was sitting under at desk at the Skookum Jim Friendship Centre in Whitehorse since 1997 has turned out to contain some gold. It recently came to light that in the box was original art by the first Indigenous artist to have their work in the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, Carl Beam

Beam was born Ojibwe of M'Chigeeng First Nation on Manitoulin Island, Ontario in 1943. He was sent to Garnier residential school in Spanish, Ontario, at the age of 10 and stayed there until he was 18. After that, he studied at the Kootenay School of Art in 1971 and then went on to get a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Victoria. He also did graduate work at the University of Alberta between 1975 and 1976. He died at the age of 62 in 2005.

Beam became known for his mixed media style of art. He would often combine old photos of Indigenous people, news paper articles, polaroid pictures, texts, and drawings. It was his 1985 work, “The North American Iceberg” that landed him in the country’s national gallery, making history in 1986. The piece is one of his collages on a large sheet of plexiglass. It’s splattered with red, green and yellow paint and contains a self portrait of a long haired and bearded Beam.

The works of art at the Skookum Jim Friendship Centre are the same plexiglass mixed media style. There are 28 Beam originals. Many of them are brightly coloured, some yellow, some green, some red, and some orange. They show old photos of Indigenous Elders, newspaper clippings, animal pictures, and playing cards. A few have old photos of a dead whale and one has an x-ray of a human skeleton.

Above - Carl Beam collage from the donated collection (photo: Mike Thomas, Yukon Arts Center and Sundog Veggies).

The art by Beam is not the end of the box though. It also contained 155 original works of acrylic on paper by Stephen Snake, another Ojibwe artist from Ontario. Snake’s art seems to be a little more traditional than Beam’s. His paintings depict bears, fish, birds, and people with bright and pastel colours in their bold black outlines.

Above - Stephen Snake painting from the donated collection (photo: Mike Thomas, Yukon Arts Center and Sundog Veggies).

In the late 1990s, Beam and Snake donated their art to a foundation in Ontario that provided them with tax receipts. From there the collection made its way to the Council of Yukon First Nations, who then gave it to the Skookum Jim Friendship Centre. According to Michelle Kolla, the friendship centre’s executive director in ’97, no one knew what to do with it. Some of the art ended up on the walls but most stayed in the box. That was until almost 25 years later when current Executive Director Bill Griffis mentioned it to Andrew Finton of Sundog Veggies. Sundog has a training farm about 20 minutes north of Whitehorse that teaches people how to grow vegetables. Some of those veggies get donated to the friendship centre. When the two were discussing their partnership for the upcoming season, Griffis said they had some art that might be able to raise some funds. Finton admits that when he looked at the pieces, he didn’t know much about Carl Beam, but after some research he realized they had something cool.

“I don’t believe that very many people actually understood the significance of the work and how significant Carl Beam and Stephen Snake were on the Canadian art scene,” Finton told CHONfm.

They decide to use the art in an online auction to raise money for Sundog Veggies and the friendship centre.

“We plan to use the money raised to fund our lunch program. We continue to see a need for the people of Whitehorse, many of whom are homeless,” said Griffis in a statement.

Not all of the pieces will be at the auction, some will be offered for sale to public and private galleries across the country. One work titled “Poem to the Unborn” is all ready at its new home. The orange collage with a picture of a fetus on it was recently gifted to Beam’s first cousin and long time Yukoner Joe Migwans. Migwans is also from M'Chigeeng First Nation in Ontario but has been in the Yukon for the last 34 years. CHONfm reached him over the phone at the reserve where he and Beam grew up. He's there for a visit. Migwans has more of his cousin’s art, but the newly acquired work is still special to him.

“There’s so many ways he did his artwork, you know, and he said ‘to be an artist you need to work in many different forms, don’t just work in on way,’ he said ‘you need to express and work in all types,’ and he also said ‘if it doesn’t sell, why do it? Change to something else!’ Maybe that’s why he was doing all kinds,” said Migwans

“He was quite the philosopher,” Migwans added.

“To have his work is an honour,” he continued.

Migwans is an artist himself. He makes snowshoes, drums, canoes, tools, and he paints a bit too. A lot of it he learned from Beam, who was a mentor to him. Migwans knew about the art tucked away this whole time. He was the one who dropped it off there back in the day.

The collection has now been moved to a vault at the Yukon Arts Centre where it awaits the auction, which kicks off tomorrow. Finton said that paper work from 1997 shows the pieces were worth about $1000 each at that time. He said he has talked with an appraiser in Kelowna, BC but it is difficult to know what they are worth today. Finton hopes that they will fetch a decent amount of cash to though. 

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#FORTEAN ANOMALOUS PHENOMENA 
Central Alberta residents searching for answers after reports of loud 'boom,' 'shockwave'

Adam Lachacz
CTVNewsEdmonton.ca
 Digital Producer
Published Dec. 3, 2021

EDMONTON -

Residents of Ponoka and surrounding communities are wondering what made a loud "boom" sound on Friday.

RCMP and Ponoka County Fire Rescue Services confirmed to CTV News Edmonton that they received multiple reports around 5 p.m. saying people heard the noise and felt a "shockwave."

Sgt. Ron Bumbry, RCMP media relations officer, said EMS, firefighters, RCMP, and Alberta Sherriffs responded to the reports to try and locate a cause. Officials also reached out to CP Rail to check if there were any derailments and with authorities at the nearby Joffre, Alta., NOVA Chemicals plant to see if any incidents occurred.

"Multiple agencies tried to find a cause or source of these reports," Bumbry said. "We did our due diligence to try and locate a source for these reports but just couldn't."

No injuries were reported to authorities, Bumbry said. Gas companies told RCMP that no underground monitors indicated that anything suspicious occurred.

According to Rob Johnson, east district deputy fire chief, firefighters checked multiple sites within the town and natural gas compressor sites but could not locate any source for the loud noise. Emergency crews could find no flames or smoke, Johnson said.

As of publication, no earthquakes have been reported in the area.

Ponoka is a town in central Alberta, approximately 95 kilometres south of Edmonton, at the junction of highways 2A and 53.
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