The story of Canada is the story of water. Between the three oceans, the lakes, rivers, marshes, streams, ponds and glaciers comprising seven per cent of the world’s renewable water supply, according to Environment Canada, Canada is a nation of water.
It’s why Canadian historian Pierre Berton once quipped that a Canadian knows how to make love in a canoe. It was more of a comment about Canadians’ connection to water, but that connection has changed since Berton made his observation.
How many Canadians even know how to paddle a canoe now, let alone make love in one? We’ve grown distant from water, which is why we have come to take our seemingly endless supply of freshwater for granted. Along with having a large portion of the world’s freshwater, we also use the most of the world’s freshwater, even in the face of a warming climate and shrinking glaciers.
We use water to clean our driveways. We dump it over our heads to raise money for charity. We compete with our neighbours to see who will have the lushest and greenest lawns. We even go so far as to destroy pristine lakes by turning them into tailings ponds.
And this is why the Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies this summer ia asking us to think about water through its summer exhibition Water, opening Sunday (June 14) with a reception from 1-4 p.m.
“Humanity, the animal kingdom, the aquatic kingdom is all contingent on water and I think we have to start changing our attitudes about how we use it and how see it. Canadians are really funny. There’s this altered notion, if you will, that we have an unquenchable supply of fresh water,” said Anne Ewan, Whyte Museum curator of art and heritage.
“It is really poignant for the museum to tap into what community members are thinking and people have been talking about the shrinking of the glaciers for a long time and here we sit on a river in the Bow Corridor that is fed by glaciers.”
Water, the exhibition, runs throughout the summer, bringing together the works of over 65 modern and historical artists in all mediums from private and public collections across Canada to “examine the beauty and peculiarity of Earth’s greatest resource,” according to the exhibition description, which adds the exhibition also invites contemplation of “this precious natural resource, in the face of changing climatic conditions.”
Ewan wanted to find a way to invite viewers to think about water, especially in this time of a changing climate, but to do it subtly.
“One of the things we are doing is we’re putting on these wooden taps that sit on the roof and as you walk into the museum you’ll hear a tap dripping and that is a very quiet way of saying of think about what you do with water,” she said.
“We’re not saying you have to use ‘X’ number of gallons; we’re not implying any of that; just asking that people really think about it and be concerned that maybe when you do brush your teeth you don’t let the tap run the whole time,” she said.
Each piece or series of married pieces in the exhibition, be it painting, sculpture or photograph, reflects this idea by exploring different aspects of water.
One such set focuses on the famed lakes of Algonquin Provincial Park by putting a painting by Canmore artist Janice Tanton of a group of people in a canoe floating above a lake in Algonquin Park together with a painting by Tom Thomson, an influential Canadian painter who drowned while canoeing on Canoe Lake in Algonquin Park, and a third painting by Ken Danby of Thomson paddling on Canoe Lake in his distinctive dark blue canoe.
Another section features Inuit artwork from the Whyte Museum’s collection as a means to talk about the Arctic and how, by way of the Bow River, we are connected to that seemingly distant landscape and its people. It also suggests, Ewan said, how a warming Arctic and melting ice cap is affecting polar bears and other Arctic animals.
Water also quietly challenges the myth of the wild river – also a major part of the Canadian psyche – as two of the rivers closest to the Bow Valley region, the Bow and the Columbia, are both heavily dammed and controlled. The Columbia River Basin, in the U.S. and Canada, has some 400 dams, while the Bow River has more dams on it than any other river in Alberta.
“You cannot go from the start of the Columbia River to the end without getting out a million times; that notion we have that kind of terrain, I think, needs to be discussed and people aren’t aware that it has changed. And people aren’t aware because they don’t go to rivers or they see a portion of a river, but don’t see for instance why Ghost Lake is a lake and not a river anymore,” Ewan said. “We’re completely unattached and we’re incredibly complacent.”
But Ewan is hoping that Whyte Museum visitors who take in the exhibitions and associated events go away with an even greater understanding and appreciation for water.
“Water is the world’s most crucial commodity and the basis of all earthly life. Its preservation and protection may be our greatest environmental challenge. The program and the exhibition is being designed to be a platform for community discussion and individual thought and other activities,” Ewan said.
Along with Water, the Whyte Museum is presenting the following exhibitions and events throughout the summer and fall:
Legacy in Time: Rephotography by Henry Vaux Jr., June 14 to Oct. 18, Rummel Room; presentation by Bob Sandford, June 25; A Portrait of Mary Vaux, July 26; Henry Vaux Jr.: Photographer’s Talk, Aug. 13; DamNation: Film Screening, Aug. 20; Watermark: Film Screening, Sept. 18; and Alberta Culture Days, artist-led tour of the exhibition Water, Sept. 26.
For more information, go to www.Whyte.org.
