Magnolia Warbler

Magnolia warbler by Harold Stiver

I saw a small bird with a yellow breast boldly striped with black, busily gleaning something from a fruit tree–insects, I suppose. It was quite striking. It was a magnolia warbler, which might have been passing through to northern forests or staying for the summer. We get quite a few unusual birds passing through in the spring.

Canadian art and the Group of Seven

This article, “White Feathers and Tangled Gardens,” is an expert from Ross King’s new book, Modern Spirits.

As we all know, their approach was novel:

…one critic cautioned that to paint a Canadian landscape under snow was “unpatriotic, untactful, and unwise.” But Snow I and Snow II unapologetically showed fir boughs weighed down by fresh snow that Harris depicted with luminous strokes of azure, mauve, salmon pink and cornflower blue.

"Snow" by Lawren Harris

Their colours were shocking:

As a connoisseur once admonished John Constable: “A good picture, like a good fiddle, should be brown.” …Would Torontonians, nourished on fiddle-brown landscapes, be ready for works like The Tangled Garden or Autumn’s Garland?

Apparently not:

“that rough, splashy, meaningless, blatant, plastering and massing of unpleasant colours which seems to be a necessary evil in all Canadian art exhibitions these days…”

"Tangled Garden" by J. E. H. MacDonald

They were even accused of being limp-wristed “hermaphrodites” in spite of their canoeing, camping, and manly paintings.

"The Jack Pine" by Tom Thomson

As these paintings were being shown during the first world war, there was some discussion of why these apparently hale artists didn’t volunteer for the armed forces and of Thomson’s retreat into the forests of Algonquin Park. There, in the midst of a dangerous storm, he sketched one of his most famous paintings.

Thomson would turn this small sketch into one of his most famous paintings, The West Wind, in which the potent energies of nature are distilled into the whiplashing curves of the Jack pines. The painting is a scene of struggle, of an elemental tug-of-war between the dynamic and destructive forces that nearly killed him. If Canadians believed that what made them unique was their engagement with this hostile and unforgiving land that dictated the terms of human existence, then Thomson’s painting is an elegant image of this life-and-death encounter..

"The West Wind" by Tom Thomson

All in all, this book is more than a re-hashing of the usual biographical details. I’d like to read it.

Happy New Year, global warming edition!

We had November like the Septembers used to be, December like the Octobers we used to have, a green Christmas, and now pouring rain for New Year’s Day. This is not the climate I grew up with and I’ve moved north! It should be cooler here.

Happy New Year, people!

To quarry or not to quarry

Dufferin County has a lot of prime farmland sitting on a lot of prime limestone. Should a large quarry be developed there?

The limestone is a good, hard sort that makes up the backbone of the Niagara Escarpment. It runs under cool soil good for growing potatoes, but it’s not as environmentally sensitive as wetlands or the Escarpment itself. And Ontario uses a lot of limestone every year, mostly for roads. The potential developers, however, lied about their intentions when purchasing land in the area.

Update on Pottery Road closing

Pottery Road goes under the Don Valley Parkway and connects Broadview Avenue with the Bayview Extension. It’s an old road that climbs down into the valley. A new retaining wall has been installed north of the road. However, engineers weren’t satisfied that the hill slope was stable and have nibbled the hill back further. The road is currently scheduled to re-open November 30th.

Cofounder of Bick’s Pickles dies

Walter and Jeanny Bick

Story here: Walter Bick was a Jewish coat-maker at a time when Canada wanted Christian farmers. Sadly, there was once a time when, even with Hitler rattling sabres and spewing anti-Semitism, Canada could get away with denying entrance to Jews because of their religion.

Walter Bick’s only ticket into Canada was as a Christian farmer.

A lifelong pragmatist, he didn’t let the minor details — his Jewish faith, his occupation in the woman’s coat industry — get him down.

So in 1939, the Bick family — Walter, Thomas and their parents — left an increasingly hostile Europe behind, posing as a family of farmers who believed in the New Testament.

Before they left Amsterdam, they purchased the farm. While other faux-farming Jewish families sold the farms upon arrival, the Bicks made good on the lie, learning to farm and eventually creating a pickle empire.

They ended up farming in Scarborough, Ontario, which I guess is why the Bick’s Pickle factory is still there on Progress Road.

He also helped found the Jewish Vocational Services, an organization that helped Jewish people find jobs, which, he later remarked, was a lot harder than selling pickles.