Sunday, December 05, 2021

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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Will psychedelics become mainstream? This Calgary company is betting on it

Investors, startups face big risks, but hope to become the

 next lucrative 'unicorn'


Reid Southwick · CBC News · 
An early spate of research and big injections of investor money have triggered a renaissance for psychedelics. Psygen, a Calgary company, plans to manufacture LSD, left, psilocybin, centre, 2-CB, right, along with five other drugs. (Duk Han Lee/CBC News Graphics)

Danny Motyka discovered his love for chemistry when he was high on LSD back in the mid-2000s. The single tab of blotter acid — emblazoned with images of tongues from the rock band Kiss — set him on a path to push psychedelics out of the shadows.

Now 31, Motyka is the CEO of Psygen, a Calgary business hoping to manufacture synthetic psychedelics for the pharmaceutical industry. While the application of hallucinogens in medicine is in its infancy and remains highly speculative, Motyka and his company of believers are encouraged by renewed interest in the field.

"There's a huge market opportunity here," Motyka said. 

A spate of early scientific research — along with big injections of cash from wealthy and celebrity investors — has triggered a renaissance of sorts for psychedelics, which for decades were pushed underground by the war on drugs. 

Companies want to be the next psychedelic unicorn

Dozens of companies have emerged in recent years, seeking to get in on the ground floor of a fledgling industry they bet will take them higher. Some, like Germany-based Atai Life Sciences and the U.K.'s Compass Pathways, have become unicorns — not some kind of hallucination, but the type of startups worth more than $1 billion.  

Danny Motyka, left, and Peter van der Heyden are co-founders of the Calgary startup Psygen, which has ambitions to supply the pharmaceutical industry with psychedelics like psilocybin and MDMA. (Reid Southwick/CBC)

"We're really breaking ground here in that psychedelic chemistry has been illegal, and now we're able to do it in a legal context," said Peter van der Heyden, Psygen's co-founder and chief science officer. 

"It's never been done before."

Potential for a new industry

Magic mushrooms, LSD and other psychedelics are hallucinogenic drugs that remain illegal to possess for recreational use. But some regulators such as Health Canada have allowed for research into them as possible treatments for mental health conditions, sending companies and investors on a trip to a new industry.

While the sector initially attracted an early rush of investor enthusiasm, some of the euphoria has already begun to fade as shareholders come to grips with the long and uncertain road ahead.

Researchers are still running clinical trials looking into whether substances like psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms, can effectively and safely treat depression, or whether MDMA, often found in ecstasy or molly, can help patients with post-traumatic stress disorder.

"We have to go through the entire drug approval pathway and demonstrate safety and demonstrate efficacy," van der Heyden said. "So it's too early, really, to say we know that these things work."

Production expected early 2022

Psygen's lab, currently under construction, would initially manufacture psychedelics for research and clinical trials, though it still needs Health Canada approval. The company hopes those trials lead to the creation of new therapeutic drugs, allowing its lab to expand to commercial-scale production of medical-grade substances.

They've asked Health Canada for a dealer's license, which gives special permission to handle and produce controlled drugs that are otherwise illegal to possess. The designation comes with a strict set of rules, including security measures to prevent theft, proper record keeping and reporting.

Van der Heyden, left, and Motyka stand inside the construction site of the firm's psychedelics manufacturing facility, expected to be operational by March 2022. (Reid Southwick/CBC)

For now, company officials are optimistic the first phase of the project will secure the green light from federal regulators and they can start producing psychedelics by the end of March 2022.

By then, the facility would be capable of producing 12 to 15 kilograms of synthetic psilocybin a year, enough to fill demand from clinical research, Motyka said.

Marijuana paves the way for mushrooms

The Alberta business has applied to handle eight different psychedelic drugs, though its CEO said psilocybin is the substance most in demand from drug development companies, likely because of loosening cannabis laws.

"That's reflective of this liberalization of plant medicines. It's easy to go from cannabis as a medicine to mushrooms as a medicine," Motyka said. "It's a bit harder to make that next jump to LSD, especially with the amount of stigma that's associated."

Researchers are looking at psilocybin's potential to treat various conditions, from anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder, to problematic substance use. Health Canada, which has approved three clinical trials testing the drug in treatment of depression, said psilocybin has so far shown some promise in some cases, but further research is needed.

"Clinical trials are the most appropriate and effective way to advance research with unapproved drugs such as psilocybin," the regulator said in a statement.

"Clinical trials ensure that the best interests of patients are protected and that a product is administered in accordance with national and international ethical, medical and scientific standards."

'Hungry for something new'

Industry observers say the legalization of cannabis for recreational or strictly medical purposes in many parts of the world has helped to ease stigmas and convince investors to pump hundreds of millions of dollars into psychedelics.

Plus, the outbreak of the deadly COVID-19 virus — and the rounds of restrictions that came with it — triggered a fresh wave of mental health concerns. And it's happening at a time when people are interested in unconventional ways of looking at problems, said Leila Rafi, a Toronto lawyer with clients in the industry.

Leila Rafi, a Toronto lawyer, says a fresh wave of mental health concerns emerging from the coronavirus pandemic has helped to bring renewed focus to psychedelics as possible medicines. (Leila Rafi)

"There's a lot of investors out there who are willing to put a little bit of money into this industry and see what happens — and even take a bit of a hit," said Rafi, a partner in McMillan's capital markets group.

"And I think investors are just hungry for something new."

Psychedelic stocks in a lull

Steve Hawkins, the CEO of financial services company Horizons ETFs, runs a fund that allows people to invest in the broader psychedelics market. The exchange traded fund (ETF) tracks a couple dozen publicly traded companies that are heavily involved in, or have significant exposure to, the industry.

So far, it's individual investors, rather than big pension funds, that have parked money in the fund, Hawkins said.

"This is still a very early stage investment proposition."

An initial burst of investor excitement has given way to a lull in recent months, with share prices for drug development firms plunging. The Horizons psychedelics ETF has lost half of its value on the stock market since hitting a peak in February. 

In an industry where companies are not making money, stock prices are driven by other developments, including news of breakthroughs in research. But there haven't been enough intoxicating incentives to lure investors back, Hawkins said, noting that while share prices have fallen from their peaks, they are still above where they were in 2020.

Investors hooked on psychedelic ventures also face plenty of risk.

"All investors who are investing in early stage drug development companies need to be prepared to lose a substantial amount of money- Eric Foster, Dentons lawyer

Firms that are attracting troves of investment dollars are often burning through all that cash researching drugs that may not materialize, Hawkins said. "These are very risky companies."

Some could fail, similar to what happened in the cannabis industry. 

"All investors who are investing in early stage drug development companies need to be prepared to lose a substantial amount of money," said Eric Foster, a partner at Dentons law firm who helps investment banks finance psychedelic ventures.

"The (potential) upside is that they will be able to take a candidate all the way through the regulatory approval process, and effectively get to a drug that's been approved … Then, all of a sudden, it's going to be worth significantly more."

A new frontier

The very idea that psychedelics could emerge from the shadows of a decades-long drug war and pave the way to a new frontier of medicine has inspired other investors with deep pockets.

Liam Payne, pictured here performing in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia in 2019, is among a growing list of celebrity investors betting on psychedelics. (Khalid Alhaj/The Associated Press)

Liam Payne, the British One Direction singer, along with PayPal co-founder and billionaire Peter Theil are on the growing list of celebrity investors. New York Mets owner Steven Cohen, Shark Tank's Kevin O'Leary and Tim Ferriss, the podcaster and author of The 4-Hour Workweek, are also on the roster.

Then there's Sa'ad Shah. Convinced that researchers are only scratching the surface of psychedelics' potential power to reshape mental healthcare, he co-founded a venture capital player focused on the industry. 

Sa'ad Shah, co-founder of a psychedelics venture capital fund, says the industry is 'a bit of the Wild West. (Sa'ad Shah)

Shah has been raising money from friends, various CEOs and ultra-high-networth investors to build a warchest to unleash on dozens of companies. The Noetic Fund, based in Toronto, raised $32 million US in its first round and invested it into 22 ventures, including Calgary's Psygen. Now, it's on the hunt for another $200 million.

Nearly halfway there, Shah said he's not facing the same kind of investor burnout that has sent stock prices tumbling. He said most of the "crown jewels" in the industry remain privately held companies that continue to raise funds.

"It's a burgeoning industry," Shah said. "It's an incredibly exciting industry. It is a bit of the Wild West."

An opportunity and a business venture

Van der Heyden, Psygen's co-founder, says he found a gap in this Wild West landscape when he spoke with researchers who couldn't get their hands on pharmaceutical-grade psychedelics for their studies. He saw an opportunity. 

A child of the hippie era of the 1960s and early 1970s, he said the counterculture movement exposed him to drugs like LSD. But it wasn't until his retirement that psychedelics became a possible business venture. 

And it's made for some unusual conversations.  

"I might be sitting at the barber and he asks me, 'What do you do?' And so I say, 'Hey, guess what? We make psychedelic drugs.'"

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