The Kootenay Plains is a powerful place.
With its broad valley stretching away from the Rocky Mountains, home to the North Saskatchewan River, the dry plains have called out to people for thousands of years.
And Calgary-born author Bruce Hunter, a professor of English and Liberal Studies at Seneca College in Toronto, is one of these people.
Throughout much of Hunter’s life, Kootenay Plains has haunted him.
He has visited the plains many times in person and perhaps even more in his dreams.
“I know it is a magical place and I have been haunted by it. It was in my dreams for many years. I knew about Bighorn Dam and I knew about the controversy about it and I had dreams that I was wandering around Kootenay Plains and the water was coming up around my ankles,” Hunter told the Outlook recently.
Kootenay Plains and the development of the Bighorn Dam play pivotal roles in Hunter’s story and the effect both had on the people who lived at this magical place.
“This is a book about the mountains and this is a book about a holy place and it is also about this huge sociological and environmental impact of Bighorn Dam.
“Like the narrator in the book, I did live on Kootenay Plains, but nowhere near as long. As I say to people, the bones are mine but the flesh and the clothing and the adventures are fiction,” Hunter said, adding he stayed with his great aunt and uncle, who worked for the forest service.
Hunter drew heavily from his dreams, his own life experience and a substantial amount of research as he crafted the superbly written In the Bear’s House, a story that follows the lives of a deaf boy nicknamed Trout and his mother Clare. He wove fact and fiction together, telling a story that speaks of despair, loss, loneliness, but more importantly, discovery and redemption.
It is a coming-of-age story that blends the real and the imagined to such a high degree that separating fact from fiction is a challenge, as what appears to be real is in fact imagined, and vice versa. This effective blurring of the lines is a testament to the level of honesty and research Hunter, who, like his protagonist Trout, is deaf, employed as he wrote this 455-page novel.
And it is a combination that obviously works as Hunter received the Canadian Rockies award – beating out 101 entries from 10 countries – during the 2009 Banff Mountain Book Festival, Thursday (Nov. 5).
Representing the award committee, Will Gadd wrote on the Banff Mountain Festivals website, In the Bear’s House “captures the transformative power of the Rocky Mountains… We initially had a hard time selecting this book for the Canadian Rockies Award as not all of it occurs in the Canadian Rockies.But the major transformations do, and the writing is as solid as the limestone in the Rockies isn’t."
But the transformations Hunter quietly reveals throughout the book did not come easy. In the Bear’s House only came together after a false start, writing from the third person about Trout. But after his research,Hunter began to understand he needed to learn a number of powerful elements that would help drive the story.
“One is the anger of the kids, not so much that they can’t hear, but they’re not heard and that’s why I became a writer. But for a good part of it, I realized that unless I told the story, at least part of it, from the mother’s point of view, I wasn’t going to get the whole story,” he said.
Writing teachers will often tell their students to write about what they know, but in this case, Hunter willfully ignored that tried but true approach by including Clare in the first person, alongside a host of First Nations third-person characters.
Both techniques can be risky for a white male, but Hunter handles each with the same honesty and sensitivity he uses throughout the book. As a result, Hunter does what he set out to do, honour each of the different groups that play a role in the book, be it women, or the Wesley band of the Stoney-Nakoda First Nation, the Scots and deaf children.
In the Bear’s House is published by B.C.- based Oolichan Books. It sells for $22.95.
Saturday, November 20, 2010
Friday, January 1, 2010
Book chronicles changing views of the Bow River valley
When British spy Henry James Warre sat down in a meadow in 1845 and created the first painting of the Bow Valley, he would have had no idea he had just initiated what is now a long-standing tradition.
Today, according to environmental historians and authors Christopher Armstrong and H.V. Nelles in their newly released The Painted Valley: Artists Along Alberta’s Bow River, 1845-2000, the Bow River valley is one of the most heavily painted regions in Canada.
Just as the Bow River region has been a focal point of national importance for transportation, this region has a similar status in the history of Canadian and Western Canadian art.
With the hopes of answering a simple question: how had people pictured the Bow River over time, the authors set out to gauge how the perception of the Bow River valley has changed in the more than 150 years artists have been drawn to paint the river, its valley and its mountainous backdrop.
“The history of a river is written not just along its banks; it can be read too in the culture and memory of the people who share the valley,” they wrote. “Our interest as environmental historians is in this aspect of art, rather than the aesthetic and theoretical concerns of contemporary art historians.
“Artistic representations provide one vantage point to observe shifting broader cultural perceptions of nature.”
As the authors sifted through the holdings of all of the major Alberta archives as they searched for their answers, five distinct topics emerged that ranged in time from Warre’s 1845 paintings through the periods of Impressionism and Modernism.
Along with 200 black-and-white and colour reproductions, these chapters form the backbone of the 160-page book, which adeptly explores the thought process of each group of artists who painted the river and its surroundings.
Explorers, fur traders and geographers, for example, tended to see the land as a
European possession and the subjects within the paintings reflected that belief. Red-coated Mounties, log-palisade forts and early settlements were prominent elements in the landscapes, while native people – mirroring how Europeans saw them – often appeared as small and insignificant.
Artwork, as the authors said, was enlisted in the service of the Empire. Railway artists, meanwhile, tended to make the Bow River region look like their European homes. As a result, the river and especially the mountains appear to be a calm, pastoral setting. Surprisingly, these artists, riding the rails in relative luxury on free passes, tended toleave the railway and its steam and smoke-belching locomotives out of their paintings, opting instead to pretend the industrial age had not reached the Bow Valley.
The Impressionists of the early 1900s, including famed wildlife painter Carl Rungius, began to give the Painted Valley – especially its mountains – its own distinct appearance as they began to move away from established conventions and explored their own vision.
Following in the path of the Impressionists, a new generation, artists who called the Bow valley home, began to edge away from the British watercolour traditions, paving the way for the next group who would hone a distinct sense of art in the Bow River region.
While the history of the Bow Valley region obviously plays an important role, as those were the circumstances, ideas and philosophies of the time, the authors only used that as the peg to hang the rest of the book on.
Those looking for more history of the region might be disappointed as the book is sparse in those overall historical details, but for those seeking to understand how the region has been painted and perceived over the years, it is quite rich and does a wonderful job of filling that niche.
But both artist and historian will find the authors’ insights valuable, such as why the mountains in Warre’s Bow Valley watercolours look so exaggerated or why so few painters chose to portray the river as it passes through Calgary. It also provides insights into the painters themselves, such as Rungius,who enjoyed shooting the animals he painted.
Beyond the art and history schools, The Painted Valley will have some appeal to local readers looking to see how the Bow Valley has changed over the years. In so many ways, this is a book about Canmore and Banff, more so than any other part of the river, as the majority of artists gravitated to the mountains, rather than the burgeoning city of Calgary or the prairies that line the river for the bulk of its course.
Like other University of Calgary Press titles, this book will appeal to book lovers who enjoy a tactile experience when reading: it has a nice feel and a nice look. The Painted Valley retails
for $54.95.
Today, according to environmental historians and authors Christopher Armstrong and H.V. Nelles in their newly released The Painted Valley: Artists Along Alberta’s Bow River, 1845-2000, the Bow River valley is one of the most heavily painted regions in Canada.
Just as the Bow River region has been a focal point of national importance for transportation, this region has a similar status in the history of Canadian and Western Canadian art.
With the hopes of answering a simple question: how had people pictured the Bow River over time, the authors set out to gauge how the perception of the Bow River valley has changed in the more than 150 years artists have been drawn to paint the river, its valley and its mountainous backdrop.
“The history of a river is written not just along its banks; it can be read too in the culture and memory of the people who share the valley,” they wrote. “Our interest as environmental historians is in this aspect of art, rather than the aesthetic and theoretical concerns of contemporary art historians.
“Artistic representations provide one vantage point to observe shifting broader cultural perceptions of nature.”
As the authors sifted through the holdings of all of the major Alberta archives as they searched for their answers, five distinct topics emerged that ranged in time from Warre’s 1845 paintings through the periods of Impressionism and Modernism.
Along with 200 black-and-white and colour reproductions, these chapters form the backbone of the 160-page book, which adeptly explores the thought process of each group of artists who painted the river and its surroundings.
Explorers, fur traders and geographers, for example, tended to see the land as a
European possession and the subjects within the paintings reflected that belief. Red-coated Mounties, log-palisade forts and early settlements were prominent elements in the landscapes, while native people – mirroring how Europeans saw them – often appeared as small and insignificant.
Artwork, as the authors said, was enlisted in the service of the Empire. Railway artists, meanwhile, tended to make the Bow River region look like their European homes. As a result, the river and especially the mountains appear to be a calm, pastoral setting. Surprisingly, these artists, riding the rails in relative luxury on free passes, tended toleave the railway and its steam and smoke-belching locomotives out of their paintings, opting instead to pretend the industrial age had not reached the Bow Valley.
The Impressionists of the early 1900s, including famed wildlife painter Carl Rungius, began to give the Painted Valley – especially its mountains – its own distinct appearance as they began to move away from established conventions and explored their own vision.
Following in the path of the Impressionists, a new generation, artists who called the Bow valley home, began to edge away from the British watercolour traditions, paving the way for the next group who would hone a distinct sense of art in the Bow River region.
While the history of the Bow Valley region obviously plays an important role, as those were the circumstances, ideas and philosophies of the time, the authors only used that as the peg to hang the rest of the book on.
Those looking for more history of the region might be disappointed as the book is sparse in those overall historical details, but for those seeking to understand how the region has been painted and perceived over the years, it is quite rich and does a wonderful job of filling that niche.
But both artist and historian will find the authors’ insights valuable, such as why the mountains in Warre’s Bow Valley watercolours look so exaggerated or why so few painters chose to portray the river as it passes through Calgary. It also provides insights into the painters themselves, such as Rungius,who enjoyed shooting the animals he painted.
Beyond the art and history schools, The Painted Valley will have some appeal to local readers looking to see how the Bow Valley has changed over the years. In so many ways, this is a book about Canmore and Banff, more so than any other part of the river, as the majority of artists gravitated to the mountains, rather than the burgeoning city of Calgary or the prairies that line the river for the bulk of its course.
Like other University of Calgary Press titles, this book will appeal to book lovers who enjoy a tactile experience when reading: it has a nice feel and a nice look. The Painted Valley retails
for $54.95.
New book features Alberta ladybugs
Hercules, blotch-backed, twice-stabbed, oncesquashed and flying saucer.
The names are as evocative as they are unusual and an interesting if not surprising factoid in the world of the insects we know as ‘ladybugs.’
But then, who knew ladybugs, long considered friend of gardeners everywhere, had such interesting names, or that Alberta was home to enough species of these distinctive beetles to fill a book.
Ladybugs of Alberta: Finding the Spots and Connecting the Dots is that book, published by The University of Alberta Press. Written by John Acorn, an Edmonton-based writer, photographer, naturalist and broadcaster, it features 75 of the common and not-so-common ladybugs found throughout Alberta, including the Rocky Mountains.
After reading Acorn’s newest book, number three in his Alberta insect series, it is impossible to walk away thinking that the red ladybugs with the distinctive black dots are the end-all be-all of ladybugs.
While they may be the more common ladybugs found in this region, saying ‘seen one,seen ‘em all’, is so far from the truth it’s like saying all alpine wildflowers are the
same.
In fact, the range and size of ladybugs is staggering. Some ladybugs are tiny, like the micro ladybug at 1.0 millimetre, and about the thickness of dime, while others are massive (at least by ladybug standards), like the wonderfully-named mealybug destroyer at 4.5 mm.
They also come in a broad range of colours and patterns, beyond the red-and-black. Some are entirely black or, like the twice-stabbed ladybug, black with a red dot on each wing cover.
Even though ladybugs are one of the most appreciated denizens of the bug world – along with butterflies and dragonflies – Acorn had the difficult job of presenting these aphid eating creatures in a manner that would not only grab a reader’s attention, but also keep it.
A difficult task given that his topic is not one to garner much passion among mainstream audiences.
But for those with even a slight interest in nature and its smaller denizens, Acorn does a commendable job of keeping his topic readable and funny. It’s an approach he used in his recent Deep Alberta: Fossil Facts and Dinosaur Digs.
That’s the charm of Ladybugs of Alberta: Finding the Spots and Connecting the Dots,the first regional field guide of its kind in North America. Acorn uses the book to share his passion, and in the process his knowledge, of what he believes to be some pretty cool critters.
The names are as evocative as they are unusual and an interesting if not surprising factoid in the world of the insects we know as ‘ladybugs.’
But then, who knew ladybugs, long considered friend of gardeners everywhere, had such interesting names, or that Alberta was home to enough species of these distinctive beetles to fill a book.
Ladybugs of Alberta: Finding the Spots and Connecting the Dots is that book, published by The University of Alberta Press. Written by John Acorn, an Edmonton-based writer, photographer, naturalist and broadcaster, it features 75 of the common and not-so-common ladybugs found throughout Alberta, including the Rocky Mountains.
After reading Acorn’s newest book, number three in his Alberta insect series, it is impossible to walk away thinking that the red ladybugs with the distinctive black dots are the end-all be-all of ladybugs.
While they may be the more common ladybugs found in this region, saying ‘seen one,seen ‘em all’, is so far from the truth it’s like saying all alpine wildflowers are the
same.
In fact, the range and size of ladybugs is staggering. Some ladybugs are tiny, like the micro ladybug at 1.0 millimetre, and about the thickness of dime, while others are massive (at least by ladybug standards), like the wonderfully-named mealybug destroyer at 4.5 mm.
They also come in a broad range of colours and patterns, beyond the red-and-black. Some are entirely black or, like the twice-stabbed ladybug, black with a red dot on each wing cover.
Even though ladybugs are one of the most appreciated denizens of the bug world – along with butterflies and dragonflies – Acorn had the difficult job of presenting these aphid eating creatures in a manner that would not only grab a reader’s attention, but also keep it.
A difficult task given that his topic is not one to garner much passion among mainstream audiences.
But for those with even a slight interest in nature and its smaller denizens, Acorn does a commendable job of keeping his topic readable and funny. It’s an approach he used in his recent Deep Alberta: Fossil Facts and Dinosaur Digs.
That’s the charm of Ladybugs of Alberta: Finding the Spots and Connecting the Dots,the first regional field guide of its kind in North America. Acorn uses the book to share his passion, and in the process his knowledge, of what he believes to be some pretty cool critters.
In the Bear’s House wins Canadian Rockies award
The Kootenay Plains is a powerful place.
With its broad valley stretching away from the Rocky Mountains, home to the North Saskatchewan River, the dry plains have called out to people for thousands of years.
And Calgary-born author Bruce Hunter, a professor of English and Liberal Studies at Seneca College in Toronto, is one of these people.
Throughout much of Hunter’s life, Kootenay Plains has haunted him. He has visited the plains many times in person and perhaps even more in his dreams.
“I know it is a magical place and I have been haunted by it. It was in my dreams for many years. I knew about Bighorn Dam and I knew about the controversy about it and I had dreams that I was wandering around Kootenay Plains and the water was coming up around my ankles,” Hunter told the Outlook recently.
Kootenay Plains and the development of the Bighorn Dam play pivotal roles in Hunter’s story and the effect both had on the people who lived at this magical place.
“This is a book about the mountains and this is a book about a holy place and it is also about this huge sociological and environmental impact of Bighorn Dam.
“Like the narrator in the book, I did live on Kootenay Plains, but nowhere near as long. As I say to people, the bones are mine but the flesh and the clothing and the adventures are fiction,” Hunter said, adding he stayed with his great aunt and uncle, who worked for the forest service.
Hunter drew heavily from his dreams, his own life experience and a substantial amount of research as he crafted the superbly written In the Bear’s House, a story that follows the lives of a deaf boy nicknamed Trout and his mother Clare. He wove fact and fiction together, telling a story that speaks of despair, loss, love, loneliness, but more importantly, discovery and redemption.
It is a coming-of-age story that blends the real and the imagined to such a high degree that separating fact from fiction is a challenge, as what appears to be real is in fact imagined, and vice versa.
This effective blurring of the lines is a testament to the level of honesty and research Hunter, who, like his protagonist Trout, is deaf, employed as he wrote this 455-page novel.
And it is a combination that obviously works as Hunter received the Canadian Rockies award – beating out 101 entries from 10 countries – during the Banff Mountain Book Festival, Thursday (Nov. 5).
Representing the award committee, Will Gadd wrote on the Banff Mountain Festivals website, In the Bear’s House “captures the transformative power of the Rocky Mountains… We initially had a hard time selecting this book for the Canadian Rockies Award as not all of it occurs in the Canadian Rockies. But the major transformations do, and the writing is as solid as the limestone in the Rockies isn’t.”
But the transformations Hunter quietly reveals throughout the book did not come easy.
In the Bear’s House only came together after a false start, writing from the third person about Trout.
But after his research, Hunter began to understand he needed to learn a number of powerful elements that would help drive the story.
“One is the anger of the kids, not so much that they can’t hear, but they’re not heard and that’s why I became a writer. But for a good part of it, I realized that unless I told the story, at least part of it, from the mother’s point of view, I wasn’t going to get the whole story,” he said.
Writing teachers will often tell their students to write about what they know, but in this case,Hunter willfully ignored that tried but true approach by including Clare in the first person, alongside a host of First Nations third-person characters.
Both techniques can be risky for a white male, but Hunter handles each with the same honesty and sensitivity he uses throughout the book. As a result, Hunter does what he set out to do, honour each of the different groups that play a role in the book, be it women, or the Wesley band of the Stoney-Nakoda First Nation, the Scots and deaf children.
In the Bear’s House is published by B.C.-based Oolichan Books. It sells for $22.95.
With its broad valley stretching away from the Rocky Mountains, home to the North Saskatchewan River, the dry plains have called out to people for thousands of years.
And Calgary-born author Bruce Hunter, a professor of English and Liberal Studies at Seneca College in Toronto, is one of these people.
Throughout much of Hunter’s life, Kootenay Plains has haunted him. He has visited the plains many times in person and perhaps even more in his dreams.
“I know it is a magical place and I have been haunted by it. It was in my dreams for many years. I knew about Bighorn Dam and I knew about the controversy about it and I had dreams that I was wandering around Kootenay Plains and the water was coming up around my ankles,” Hunter told the Outlook recently.
Kootenay Plains and the development of the Bighorn Dam play pivotal roles in Hunter’s story and the effect both had on the people who lived at this magical place.
“This is a book about the mountains and this is a book about a holy place and it is also about this huge sociological and environmental impact of Bighorn Dam.
“Like the narrator in the book, I did live on Kootenay Plains, but nowhere near as long. As I say to people, the bones are mine but the flesh and the clothing and the adventures are fiction,” Hunter said, adding he stayed with his great aunt and uncle, who worked for the forest service.
Hunter drew heavily from his dreams, his own life experience and a substantial amount of research as he crafted the superbly written In the Bear’s House, a story that follows the lives of a deaf boy nicknamed Trout and his mother Clare. He wove fact and fiction together, telling a story that speaks of despair, loss, love, loneliness, but more importantly, discovery and redemption.
It is a coming-of-age story that blends the real and the imagined to such a high degree that separating fact from fiction is a challenge, as what appears to be real is in fact imagined, and vice versa.
This effective blurring of the lines is a testament to the level of honesty and research Hunter, who, like his protagonist Trout, is deaf, employed as he wrote this 455-page novel.
And it is a combination that obviously works as Hunter received the Canadian Rockies award – beating out 101 entries from 10 countries – during the Banff Mountain Book Festival, Thursday (Nov. 5).
Representing the award committee, Will Gadd wrote on the Banff Mountain Festivals website, In the Bear’s House “captures the transformative power of the Rocky Mountains… We initially had a hard time selecting this book for the Canadian Rockies Award as not all of it occurs in the Canadian Rockies. But the major transformations do, and the writing is as solid as the limestone in the Rockies isn’t.”
But the transformations Hunter quietly reveals throughout the book did not come easy.
In the Bear’s House only came together after a false start, writing from the third person about Trout.
But after his research, Hunter began to understand he needed to learn a number of powerful elements that would help drive the story.
“One is the anger of the kids, not so much that they can’t hear, but they’re not heard and that’s why I became a writer. But for a good part of it, I realized that unless I told the story, at least part of it, from the mother’s point of view, I wasn’t going to get the whole story,” he said.
Writing teachers will often tell their students to write about what they know, but in this case,Hunter willfully ignored that tried but true approach by including Clare in the first person, alongside a host of First Nations third-person characters.
Both techniques can be risky for a white male, but Hunter handles each with the same honesty and sensitivity he uses throughout the book. As a result, Hunter does what he set out to do, honour each of the different groups that play a role in the book, be it women, or the Wesley band of the Stoney-Nakoda First Nation, the Scots and deaf children.
In the Bear’s House is published by B.C.-based Oolichan Books. It sells for $22.95.
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