We Can't Rewind, We've Gone Too Far

In 1912 Emily Carr had studied painting in San Francisco and England and France. She had exhibited her paintings. She had gone on sketching trips to northern British Columbia and lived with the First Nations people and painted their homes and art. She had gone to the government of British Columbia and proposed that she be employed in documenting the art and lifestyles of the First Nations peoples, which she (like most white people at the time) believed would soon cease to exist.

The government turned her down. The samples of art she had submitted were too "artistic", not realistic enough for a documentary project. However, they didn't hire anyone else to do it either.

Carr had a studio in Vancouver. She had worked for one month teaching art, but her students disliked her and she quit. Her studio did not make enough to support itself. She closed it and moved back to Victoria where her sisters lived. She opened a boarding house.

She didn't paint for 15 years.

That isn't entirely true. It wasn't, actually, fifteen full years before she was "rediscovered" by the Canadian art world. And during those years, she painted some local scenes. There's a self-portrait of her from this time, in which she is painting. She sent some of her work to exhibitions. But that's how she saw it - she had ceased to paint. And that's how it feels, that's how you think of your life. The narrative doesn't always match reality - but the narrative is what's important.

They can't have been entirely joyless years. She came up with nicknames for her boarding house and her lodgers. She worked in other mediums. She took up pottery and dog breeding. She was near her family. Biographies of her skip over this as a "depressing" period of "domestic drudgery", but it was fifteen years of her life.

In the late 1920s, when she was 57, she started to paint again. Canadian artistic tastes had changed, and people came to visit her to see her works, and her paintings were exhibited and sold. She travelled back up north to find source material. She invented new ways of sketching. She became very concerned about the impact of industry on the environment, and put that into her paintings.

She went fifteen years without painting, and then she started painting again.

What does it say about me that when I saw the name "Dion" I immediately associated it with Stéphane and not Céline (who was the actual referent)?

(probably that I'm still bitter about him not becoming Prime Minister 12 years ago)

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All Canadians:
(or at least all Canadian citizens, which isn’t quite the same thing)

There is an election on October 21st. You need to vote.

But if you’re going to be out of the country, or out of your home riding, or busy then, or you just want to get it over with so you don't have to think about it anymore, the advance polls are open this weekend, Friday to Monday, 9am to 9pm. That’s the 11th to the 14th.

If you received a voter card, it will have your advance poll location on it. If you did not, you can find the location HERE (français).

You can also vote at any Elections Canada office (français) before October 15th.

In order to vote you need EITHER a driver’s license or provincial ID card OR two pieces of ID, one of which has your current address. A letter from your University or residence counts. The full list of ID accepted is HERE (français).

If you are not yet registered to vote, you can register at the poll. You can register on Election Day. But it’s easier to register in advance, and you can do that online HERE (français) or in person at your local Elections Canada office (français) until Tuesday October 15th.

You can also vote by mail (français), but you must apply to do so by Tuesday October 15th.

EVERYONE GO VOTE.

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So consultingpiskies and I have been having financial/employment difficulties and we are moving. She is going back to her parents' and I am going back to my mother's in Toronto. (We are not breaking up, as I have had to explain to all of my relatives (though none of hers). My god the relationship escalator model is pervasive.)

This is not ideal. But I will be in Toronto and in a generally more comfortable milieu.

I am also planning on going to college to study electronics next year, for which I would have moved back to Ontario anyway, so. (Obviously my background level of stress is pretty high at the moment, so I am not really capable of summoning tonal enthusiasm even though I am actually looking forward to that.)

So much packing.

Jean Claude is coming to Toronto with me and we have put his collar on him so he gets used to it, and he is jingling disgruntledly around the apartment.

Title: Young At Being Old
Author: Violsva
Fandom: Alternative Girlfriend - The Barenaked Ladies
Rating: M
Warnings/Enticements: Femslash, technically genderswap I guess
Word Count: 500 exactly
Summary: You're in an all girl band. Your futon's second-hand. Your parents understand.

On AO3.

Robert W. Service

There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.

Now Sam McGee was from Tennessee, where the cotton blooms and blows.
Why he left his home in the South to roam 'round the Pole, God only knows.
He was always cold, but the land of gold seemed to hold him like a spell;
Though he'd often say in his homely way that "he'd sooner live in hell."

On a Christmas Day we were mushing our way over the Dawson trail.
Talk of your cold! through the parka's fold it stabbed like a driven nail.
If our eyes we'd close, then the lashes froze till sometimes we couldn't see;
It wasn't much fun, but the only one to whimper was Sam McGee.

And that very night, as we lay packed tight in our robes beneath the snow,
And the dogs were fed, and the stars o'erhead were dancing heel and toe,
He turned to me, and "Cap," says he, "I'll cash in this trip, I guess;
And if I do, I'm asking that you won't refuse my last request."

Well, he seemed so low that I couldn't say no; then he says with a sort of moan:
"It's the cursed cold, and it's got right hold till I'm chilled clean through to the bone.
Yet 'tain't being dead—it's my awful dread of the icy grave that pains;
So I want you to swear that, foul or fair, you'll cremate my last remains."
( Read more... )

First of all, mission accomplished today.

Second of all, Jennifer Jones, you guys, Jennifer Jones. This time last week I didn't even know the rules of curling, and I learned them in time to watch her throw 100%. Jennifer Jones, OMG. (Everyone in Canada who actually follows curling knew this ten years ago. (Warning: lots of justified screaming in that video.))

I have belatedly found the theme song for Arte Regendus, or at least the second half: White Blank Page by Mumford and Sons. Oh lead me to the truth and I/ will follow you for my whole life

According to knumpify the remake of Robocop has a shot of the street where I grew up. Dammit, now I may have to watch that movie. (Secret: all movies are actually set in Toronto. Even if it's supposed to be New York)

I already squeeed about women's ski jumping on capslock_dreamwidth; what I didn't know then is that the silver medalist, Daniela Iraschko-Stolz, is an out lesbian (one of seven at the games this year). Also, I have a video of Carina Vogt's win now.

Practicing my links in this post, apparently.

You know, I never thought of myself as a jock. But winter sports, oh I love them so much. And rock climbing. But mostly skiing and women's hockey and figure skating and apparently curling now.


ETA: From staranise: Ellen Page is gay OMG!

Well, it's as done as it will ever be. Now maybe A Study in Scarlet will give me a plot.

Title: A Very Different Level
Author: Violsva
Fandom: Sherlock Holmes
Rating: G
Warnings/Enticements: Gender Changes, Race Changes, Modern Setting, Canadian Content, Everything I know about the business of theatre I learned from Slings and Arrows
Word Count: 4392
Summary: A major figure in the music industry wants the assistance of a consulting detective. A consulting detective’s assistant wants a distraction. The Canada Council for the Arts wants accountability. Two of them will be disappointed, but honestly, Jane Wang can’t say she minds.

At AO3.

In this universe.

Rejected first line: To Xu-lai Ho she is always the liberal arts major.

"The disastrous 2011 election created an opportunity for the Liberal party to renew itself, Zach Paikin says."
-- Today's Toronto Star

Always nice to see optimism in politics.

That's a photo caption. The actual editorial is slightly less hilarious. But I needed a laugh.

Technically, this is accurate, except it's not an opportunity so much as a requirement.

I don't really think Justin Trudeau will actually help that much, assuming he's even nominated (everyone seems to be taking this as a foregone conclusion, which I suppose is justified given the rest of the Liberal field), but I really don't know much about opinion of him in Quebec, and that's what's important right now. Well, nothing's important right now. Important in three years.