Adventure - Returning West -

What a wonderful time with family. My sister in law, Adell, is the most amazing woman,  She’s a PhD and was President of the Canadian Federation of University Women after a distinguished  educational career first as teacher then as Principal.  Mostly I love her for her life long love affair with my brother. I remember when she was the most beautiful girl in the church and sang soprano solo. My brilliant brother Ron was smitten.  The love affair of the century was as beautiful as Adell’s voice.   

Best of all she’s the grandmother to Finn and Elliott. I’m their great uncle and uncle to her three incredible sons, Graeme the nuclear physicist engineer movie maker writer, Andrew computer genus inventor and gamer, and Allan, the loving psychologist who gives the best hugs. Alan’s wife Meagan is due to deliver my neice in July, not that I ever focus on my perspective.

Adell loves politics and tries to be neutral in a polarized world with media that only reports what bleeds.  I think she’s swayed by the radical left like CBC and CNN while she thinks I’m swayed by the radical right like Tucker.  I enjoyed watching news and CBC commentary with her. We watched King Charles give the throne speech with PM Carney.   We even saw Trudeau standing beside Mr. Harper. Trudeau looked like a kid out of prison among adults . Really it was tremendous pageantry.  I liked watching it with Adell and Graeme remembering watching NFL games with my father , mother and brother.  Canadian moments.  I rather liked that CBC now that it longer sounded like the propaganda rag of Trudeau dumbed down for his low brow take on the world.  Something about PM Carney has made it really  try to be representative.  

I laughed when I read later Quebec vowed to ban the monarchy from that province. I actually thought the elite were pulling together to maintain power and wealth like the Royal family has for centuries. The Métis girl from Manitoba’s violin playing was sacred   I didn’t hear anything much for me but really I’m very blessed.  I’m able to make this trip and see my  eastern  family. I  truly enjoy my companion Madigan, the cockapoo.  Graeme’s cockapoo Pepper and Adell’s fur baby Eva all had  a barking good time together.  

Goslings and geese by the lake. Swans.  White tail deer, bunny rabbits,  Downy wood pecker, Blue Jay, Cardinal, wild turkeys.  So much wildlife.  So much life.  It was rainy and dreary most days but the sun came out and I really enjoyed the sheer beauty of the area.  We had wonderful tapas in Kingston and a couple of meals including Italian in Napanee.  Adell made me breakfast each morning and several great meals. Graeme barbecued steaks and frankly I felt at home. I felt the spirit of my brother and father and remembered all the good times I had at Hay Bay with family.  Alan and I caught a fish too. Ron and Adell had the home they dreamed.

Today I was ready to leave only to find the trailer lights didn’t work.  Adell, the researcher, found Canadian tire had temporary magnetic lights.  Graeme and I headed out.  We got the bulbs that had burnt out and back at the boat my Hay pit stop crew,  Graeme with Adell fetching tools, soon had the lights on the boat trailer  working.  

12 noon.  Hugs all round.  I really thanked Adell and Graeme.  I was off. I’d hardly made it down the street when Graeme was driving behind me, stopping me, because the lights weren’t working . I don’t know what engineering voodoo but they came on and stayed on. I was off again. 

It was a scenic drive on 41 north.  Addington.  Lakes everywhere.  Moose crossing signs.  And mosquitoes.  Feeling drowsy around 3 I pulled off only to get myself into the typical problem needing to back up with travellor. I’m impossible.  I over turned and broke the light wire cable.  It just snapped.  I finally turned around and stopped for a pee break for me and Madigan. The mosqutoes descended.  Adell had warned me. I was glad I had the Off handy  What pesky little beasts.  

At Pembroke I picked up the bits so I could strip andcrimp the wires. I had the tool and may have the bits but was bought some new connectors.  I found a sunny rest area just beyond Pembroke. I’d been hoping to find a mechanic and had the makings as back up. But the sunny rest stop was perfect. Mosquitoes don’t like the sun and breeze.  I restored Graeme’s great work, missed the Hay Pit Stop crew but remembered how to strip and crimp. I got the light flashing right. Hope the brake lights work.   It  felt good to be whole again.   

A thunderstorm and rainstorm hit after that.  For some reason I thought Petwawa was the provincial asylum but it’s the army base in stead. So now I’m wondering where the asylum is.  I saw Chalk River and filled up with gas.  In Deep River   Graeme had done nuclear energy research before the plasma research he does now , I took pictures and got Madigan and me Burger King.  Great burgers.  It was getting dark about seven with cloud so I looked on google search for “RV campgrounds near to me.”  Here I was 2.5 km from Lakeview Trailer Park.  

Lakeview Trailer Park is a gem. The manger, a delightful young woman, lead me to my spot with her 4x4. It is just perfect.  I set up and walked Madigan. Other campers sitting around fires. Terrific smell of woodsmoke.  Sound of friends enjoying the evening. Great beach and lake.  Lots of fishing boats.    Pretty full campground with some RV’s that look like they’re year round combination RV Cabins.   Just a wonderful place. I’m travelling and so thankful to find such a friendly well maintained  place.  Perfect.  I’ve electricty and water and the Star link is working despite the trees.  

It’s been another great day .  Despite the late start and technical issues I’ve still done 277 km.  I’m thankful for all the hospitality , love and inspiration I had with family.  The beauty of the country is breathtaking at times..  Canadian scenery is  second to none.  After a decade of low life Trudeau shit canning Canada I loved to see all the Canadian flags and feel like the spirit of the north is returning after the idiot child has gone.  

Thank you God. Thank you Jesus. 

 

Adventure - dreams

I am sleeping in my brother’s home with my sister in law and nephew, along with three dogs.

I feel that our souls compress among others and expand the fewer humans there are.  I felt most expansive in the Yukon, most compressed in cities like New York, London, Istanbul, Kuala Lampur. The experience of being a thousand miles from others solo sailing in the Pacific was palpably so. The density of human consciousness changes one, bears down on them, creates a heaviness.  

I love the Czek book, ‘the incredible lightness of being’.   I  have a psychologist ballet dancer friend in New York whose joie de vivre seemed to lift her from the heaviness of humanity despite her living and working in the centre of the city.  Personally I feel the press of humanity and have all my life felt solace in the escape to the country.  

In recovery the social component is becoming a part of the human race again. Alcohol and drugs isolate and disconnect the individual from the group.  Our traumas do the same.  The intrusive thoughts and the feelings of infestation and alienesss don’t shake easily.  When you sleep with the devil or play with sulphur that scent lingers.  After being raped and betrayed and rejected and lied to I felt paranoid, closed, unsafe.  I have gone to the wilderness to heal. But in recovery the aim is to regain the comfort in community.  The monks of old knew this.  Today I go to meetings of others in recovery.  I believe the church was and in some places remains a place where you can ‘lay your burdens down’.  Yet too many there have a hierarchy of sins.  The gluttonous and avaricious look down on the lustful and angry.  

I dream often of a heavenly place which reminds me thoroughly of the Greek island Santorini.  The buildings and rooms are white. The climate is idyllic. The people and me are all like those in my college and university years. The singleness of purpose is higher learning. There’s a quality of Godliness, that essence of Magister Ludi.  It’s welcoming and we are mingling with adults and history and yet our common purpose of celebration brings us together as war and necessity are described as doing. There seems no past but only the moment. There are many mansions and many rooms and we can come and go to classes and feasts and activities, sports, dance, games.  I always think of this as heaven.  There is passion and love but I’m mostly arriving alone and joining the community which is fully welcoming.  Some times I see my mother, ex lovers, father and uncles and grandparents. They are just more familiar.

In the Tibetan Book of the Dead the teachings is we reincarnate again and again but not alone rather as a member of a caste of a thousand or so. Each person plays a role till all the roles are taken.  The whole collection of family and society binaries are played out like master and slave, parent and child, murderer and murdered all to be played out against in the next collective unconscious dance of consciousness.  Now reincarnation was a teaching of Judaism and Christianity till the Nicene Creed and intellectually it didn’t matter in the time of the ‘cloud of unknowing’.  We simply played our part the best we could and there were no end of rehearsals.  Everything was one day at a time and no rush.  Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, Gandhi, Marx , the whole group of them were waiting till the last of us came home.  Maya was seen as veils and creations were infinite as stars.  The one became many and the many became one.

I also dream of another place that’s here in the west where we are all gathering in large groups in the woods and day lakes in the rural region. I remember the gatherings , the Strawberry Mountains Peace and Love Festival, or San Francisco dancing in the streets, love painted on my forehead in luscious red lipstick and flowers in my hair. The Rainbow festivals continue.  Then there’s the camp outs and sweat lodges and RV Parks and church camps and YMCA and motorcycle rallies. These gatherings are in  another dream and they are like the market place in Instabul or the labyrinth of shops in Bombay or Tokyo. This place seems to have money and ‘stuff’ and ‘experiences’.  It’s a bit like a circus and I’m again in that pivotal age of passage from adolescence to adult hood.  There’s a bit more disorderl and chaos.  I imagine this is closer to hell or purgatory but it’s exciting.

Last night I dreamed I was in this place and I’d had the content of my wallet stolen. I didn’t feel afraid just that I then had to find those contents. This week we’d gone for dinner and I’d left my iPhone and credit cards, license etc in the car.  Graeme found them for me and brought them back to the restaurant. I wasn’t afraid just annoyed at the time I foresaw I’d need to take to restore my ‘state’.  Like the time I lost my iPhone in the Seattle Airport on the way to New York.  Thanks to Apple I was able to get a new phone in Manhattan and have the information reloaded from the Cloud. A few hours detour from my schedule restored the ‘state’.  I felt the same in the dream but it felt like. I was at this reception without a tie or something similar.

In the heavenly Santorini like place I felt that no one would notice if I was naked and there were those who might be walking about as such. We mostly wore white togas like Romans did and there was never any need for currency as all appeared free like an all expenses included vacation where as the ‘other place’ was more like ‘the world’. It was darker to and people wore all manner of clothing western and cultural. There seemed to be no commonness of purpose and individually there was a self seeking which all manner of individual pleasure being offered almost like a booths.  I imagine the medieval art and literature depictions of Dante. 

Buddha said Desire is the root of all suffering. The idea of attachment is the source of pain. C. S. Lewis said stop looking for God in the wall.  The cult classic Lazy Man’s Guide to Englightenment by Thaddeus Golas focused on acceptance, love and enlightenment.  Positive psychology today describes ‘joy’.  Jesus taught ‘do not be afraid’ and the idea of Milton’s devil was the angel that preferred to watch his shadow than turn to face the light of God.  This disconnections or what 12 step programs call the ‘ego’ is the problem.  

In both dreams which are recurring there is no army war or police presence.  In both the meeting and greeting and sharing is like the idealized ‘savage’ tribes of middle european consciousness.  The glorified Islanders of Hawaii before they ate Cook.  The simplistic projection of the adolescent idealistic mind that doesn’t know the superstition and self absorption or self centered ness of the primitive mind. Courage is doing the right thing in spite of fear while there is the idealized notion of ‘fearlessness’ popular with those who have a similar thought of ‘pain free bodies’ but they haven’t treated the third degree burns of a person lacking nerve endings so they have no warning system.

In lucid dreaming one can intervene in their own dream and last night wandering about obsessed with my wallet and identity and credit cards I stepped out of that was in my truck and camper doing 360 degree turns down a road nearly missing cars and cranes and coming to a stop without hitting anything now with my whole house wheels and wallet and crowds but an amazing lesson is Christ carding for the falling bird. There I’d been like so many times on the verge of an horrendous crash and been snatched out harms’ way by ‘luck’.  I don’t believe in ‘luck’ but rather called that ‘God acting anonymously’.  

Constantine removed reincarnation from the Creed. I wonder what it is about reincarnation that makes the most prideful to want to have their vision of the afterlife and the means to achieve it and the ‘rules’ of this game of life as their. Of course there’ ‘control’.  I watched King Charles and the pomp and celebration of the Throne Speech and was amused to think that this was the surviving descendent of the Medieval Knights tradition.  I saw that the organization of society was the same in Azerbaijan with Romance and Chivalry the same as the Shield Wall days of Rome.  I loved Ender’s Game by Orion Scott Card.  

There is only now and only God and today with the lifelike computer game and animation and holographic realities and AI people are imagining with a whole other robustness.  I’m continuing in my gypsy mode, healer, shaman, author, philosopher, scientist, poet, dancer. I don’t know where I’m going other than ‘in’ and yet I feel I’m ‘okay’. I’ve a friend in ‘Jesus’.  His teaching was summed as ‘Love God and Love your neighbor as yourself.”  The present day emphasis is on being ‘kind’.  Kind and kindred suggest that the ‘other’ is ‘you’.  I am he, I am he, blessed spirit I am he is the Swami song of enlightenment. 

I love that Adam’s in Dick Slaterly’s Holistic Detective Agency needs Thor and the old English Gods and finds them in nursing homes talking about the clean sheets and lovely buxom efficient ladies cleaning the rooms and the regular good food . He doesn’t want to go out to the wild with cold weather and harsh days.  I supposed we forfeit freedom and individuality for conformity. The offer of the WEF and AGENDA 21 15 minute city is the well cared for comfortable cage.  Soylent Green and all the futuristic series of the ‘benign dictator’ who morphs into Nero or Caligula.  We have our new leaders , the Traditionalist Pope declaring all sex but marriage baby making sex unblessed.  L’chaim.  The war of weaponized jihadi children of Islam being fought out with Christian and Secular societies paying for those ‘fucking for Allah’ as aetheists don’t reproduce.  The age of the Trudeau selfie and the claim that mass migration is necessary for GDP is just disruption and control.  Scab labor . Scab voters.  Divide and conquer.  Favoritism for the in and exclusion for the out while all sing kumbaya and offer peace in the legendary deceit of politics and war.

In both my dreams there is peace.  I’ve not lived in war.  I felt the presecnece of God at Meteoria and Cappadocia and imagined those with the hoards like urban gangs surrounding and passing by.  The laws and police didn’t allow me to protect my self or my home and I feel safer in motion.  My brother lived here and trusted his society and felt safe from maurauders.  I miss that peace. Even as a child I feared invaders in the Cold War and felt my Dad would protect us.  Now I’m the old one and my back aches and I’m weakened with age . At the target range the tremor in my arm has made a pistol inaccurate for me. I must depend on a shot gun and laughed to see Stratham in his latest shoot em up movie using just that. 

Thank you God for dreams and mysteries and all the entertainment and hide and seek with Jesus. Help me to focus on the light and walk upright and forward. Protect me and my family from evil and harm.  Thank you for Grace.  Thank you Jesus. 

Adventure - Hay Bay

Memories permeate this space. My brother’s spirit lives on in love and creation. Everywhere I look I see the discussions of him and his wife and their decisions for which tree or blossom went where. This is the canvas of their love and family.  The final retouch to a life long work of incredible art.  

Mundane some might say.  Family and Rockwell and Hallmark cards.  This brother of mine I knew and loved from childhood on was always a genius, a nerd before nerds. I loved his filing cabinet in our shared childhood bedroom. H was the only kid I knew who had a filing cabinet filled ideas,  projects and plans alphabetized, costed. Articles cut out and added to thoughts.   I remember when we were all into rock and roll he was listening to 78 records on an old gramaphone he’d brought home as a teen  from some dusty second hand store, the hig old machine and a whole collection from 30’s and 50’s. Symphonies and Fats Waller.  All the weird old greats. He’d get his motorcycle back then too but later he’d work on car engines. Always fixing things. Always building and creating. 

He met his beautiful wife in church. I remember him coming home starry eyed. The soprano. Then it Billy Graham and the spirit filled days of Baptist Revival. I was listening to John Lennon and he was listening to Elvis Presley and gospel.  He was the good son.   I was the black sheep but he always had my back.  Always helping.  Always a rock. 

Here there are buildings and boats.  It’s a few acres with  a big house with the thoughtful touches of love in every nook and cranny.  The choice of light switches. The choices of color for paint on walls. It all works. Each space has comforting whole.  There’s lots of windows, lots of space, lots of light.  I like the light rugs on floors, the fireplace in the living room, the glass chandelier over the mahogany dining table. .  

He died here. I was there when he couldn’t hold on and finally  let go.   He’d  have his last breaths in the nearby hospital hospice surrounded by  white.   

Here I’ll always remember him standing on the front lawn standing tall and strong pointing out swans on the lake  talking about my father and mother. He and his wife did the lion’s share of caring for them in their old age.   My brother was a big man. A commanding man.  He also had a tremendous sense of humor and joy.  In town shopping with him he’d chat and laugh with shops keepers and baristas.   He raised fish and had grand salt water tanks in  room where the guitars he collected stood  amidst photography equipment and a library of books from college, work and endless curiosity. 

His sons were his soul.  He always spoke of them and his wife.  This was his home.

I’m here now breathing the air he breathed wondering at the sights he saw, enjoying the contribution he made to this world.  I’m so blessed to have had such a brother and to be part of this family.

His wife Adell continues to manage the property they so loved. With her oldest son,  she’s been cutting down trees to address a bark disease.  The wing on the house my brother and she envisioned  is finished, elegant yet cozy.. So is the sitting gazebo where the sailboats stood by the shore.  I imagine him looking down with pride and approval.  

His oldest son , now a nuclear engineer has computers and cameras and telescopes cluttering a working space.  I remember my father and brother and I lying on the lawn in front of our childhood home as they pointed out the constellations in the sky to me. Years later I’d  navigate my sailboat on the vast Pacific looking at the endless stars . Now  this is this bearded man I met as a baby in his mothers arms. He is photographs cosmic events, at night taking pictures he publishes while in the day he works in plasma physics. 

The skies are vast here.  The stars were majestic and happy over Hay Bay at night.  

This morning a couple of huge white swans swam by the dock.  Geese and goslings have taken over that stretch of beach. We’ve been keeping the dogs up here so as not to disturb the parents.  Back from the lake  the property is wooded and populated with rabbits.  I saw a downy wood pecker and a black and red cardinal. A couple of crows are quite raucous.My sister in law told me of the foxes they saw. Yesterday walking the dogs we spooked three white tails and watched them bound off towards Nick the carpenter sculpture guitarists fields.  As we walk the dogs Adell tells me of the comings and going of neighbours. She says she learns most from the folk she plays pickle ball with twice a week in the nearby town. 

It’s a wonderland here. Ontario at its finest. The real Ontario, unique and old, not the  pavement high rise, angry city Ontario.  Those homogenities are increasingly like any city ghetto in the world, Toronto annd Ottawa like Istanbul, New York, LA.  Cities.  Human order annd control .  Homogenized with traffic, crowds,  fast food and loud.   Here there’s elegance and charm.  There’s touches of wilderness. Nature. People all about here have built their own homes,   defined their estates and expressed  culture and love in a Frank Lloyd Wright sort of way. .  This is old Canada.  My brother loved to drive by the lakes and tell me tales from hundreds of years ago. He pointed out  Mohawks , Red Coats and Loyalists fought Americans. We sailed the lake together. He kayaked Hay Bay. I fished with his youngest son now a doctor with a baby expecting. I’d visited the genious middle son with his beautiful creative loving wife,  their two amazing sons , the great nephews. They made me a great uncle and  remind me of their father and brother were this age and I played with them.  That was when my brother and sister in law lived in the home on the river another city by the university.    

There are three dogs here. Cockapoos.  My cousin Wayne who built his own log cabin and raised Appaloosas in the north had a cockapoo who rode with him in his truck.  Later I’d invite a cockapoo into my home. That was Gilbert now deceased. My dad called him , Monkey Dog.   Today I have Madigan, Gaelic for Little Dog.  He’s enjoying visitting his cousins Eva and Pepper. They are all a going concern. Growing up my brother and I had Sunny, a liver springer spaniel.  He’d reside under the kitchen table at meals.  Mom and dad would tell us not to feed him there while my brother and I watched as the two adults each sneaked him morsels.  Dogs and kids and home

It’s peaceful here.  The dogs have me up at 6 or 7.  It was rainy and dreary a couple of days but today the sun is up with blue sky and the occasional fluffy white cloud. King Charles is speaking in Ottawa Parliament today. President Trump is visitting the G7 meeting in Alberta next week or the week after. I’ll be driving home with my camper and truck towing  my hard bottomed inflatable fishing boat with Honda 30 hp four stroke. I’d had it shipped here with my big yacht when my brother became sick and I wanted to be with him.  We had some years but not enough. I miss him..  I miss my mother and father and aunt and uncles and grandparents. I was thankful that Adell had us visit my cousin.  She is older than my brother would have been. She was in hospital recovering from a fall fracture. We reminisced.  We’d all taken trips to Europe and talked of relatives in Scotland and Ireland.  The Art Professor , the BBC Correspondent, the Audubon photographer. The old country.  Here we are in the ‘new’ country while plans are being made to colonize Mars.   We drove home stopping at the Big Apple celebrating all the orchards of this fertile cultivated region, rich in agriculture, families and civilization.  Maple syrup and everything apple.  

Now big grey squirrels are crossing the great lawn. Eva insists on barking to repel the invaders.  Pepper joins in and Madigan follows till they depart and the house is safe from attack once again.  They don’t think we appreciate all they have done for us keeping the squirrels away.

I’m of an age where memories are all blossoming. Long ago I didn’t know the ugly roots or boring stems would be needed for these glory days of full grown plants with flowers and fruit.  It’s all so colorful today. I once remembered most the black and white days.  Now I really have to suck on the tit of despair and cry poor me to dwell in that morass. Today I’m more humble.  I’m daily focused on gratitude.  Now the past is colorful with light and  pastels.  I love the impressionist era of art.  My brothers home is Monet and Van Goht. The family is Rembrandt. I see glimpses of Klimt in my personal life.  For sure the group of Seven is here at Hay Bay.   

Thank you God for this day, for my brother and his family, for my father and mother, grand parents and all those who have gone before, the workers, the doers, builders and lovers. And of course, I thank you for the dogs, the birds, fish and stars.  

Adventure - Ottawa - National Gallery of Canada

The National Gallery of Art begins by being the most amazing architecture. Public architecture is considered the people’s art as it is accessible to all whereas sculptures and paintings can be squirreled away in private homes. If the building was empty of art it would be worth it just to see and be in its presence. It’s truly a modern day cathedral of light and granite. The Scotia bank Great Hall is a work of wonderful 

Moshe Safdie born in Haifa, emigrated to Canada in 1953 and received an architectural degree from Montreal’s McGill University.  His firm’s  Habitat 67 was Canada’s key contribution to the world fair, Expo 67.  I remember it with the amazement of a teenager and today, much older ,realize how so many ideas of the t design became common place in the modern world.  While the National Art Gallery of Canada was established in 1880 the present incredible complex on Sussex Drive designed  by Moshe Safdie  opened 1988

The distinctive Maman sculpture created by French American artist in 1991 was acquired in 2005. An arachnid tribute to her mother the Artists work certainly brings instant attention to the National Gallery. 

I age myself with my love of music either Classical or from the era of my youth, 60’s, 60’s, 80’s.  Similarly I love Impressionism  which , despite being a hundred years old at the time, was so avante garde in my College years. Then I had posters of Renoir and Picasso on the walls of my basement rooms with the shared washroom down the hall.  Now I’ve enjoyed seeing the Impressionist exhibits at the  Musee d’Orsay, the Met, St. Petersburg, and elsewhere. I like the modernists as well and when last I was at the National Gallery 4 years ago loved that they had a picture of the Spanish Surrealist Salvador Dali. I like little rap music despite appreciating some poetry.

I also love the early European art in which perspective was being developed before and during the Ressansance. I was disappointed by the examples on exhibit.  I especially enjoy the depictions of the Mother and Child often amused at the facial expression of the baby Jesus.  

I also loved the National for the particularly Canadian exhibits.  I especially loved the historical painting from the Plains of Abraham reminiscent of similar works in the Louvre when art preceded photo and served political and historical functions. 

I love the Group of Seven. As a canoeist, hunter, fisherman I have so enjoyed seeing their works depict the very wilderness I revel in. 

There was a fairly remarkable representative of indigenous art,some pieces, clearly unique anthropologically and truly remarkable.

There were modern and contemporary exhibits, some of which will no doubt last the test of time but few have captured my interest except in passing.  I suspect the curators have chosen works as well as they have in areas which I know. Seeing the students on tour I was hopeful for the future. What an incredible educations!

I really loved the sound and visual exhibit offered in the chapel. 

There were also many sculptures , silver works and gold but today I was interested in the paintings.




Each time I’ve come and this may be my fourth or fifth. I’ve just been overwhelmed by the offerings. It’s not  huge like the Met or British Museum but one could return day after day and see and learn so much. I envy my family who live here. Even the cafe was a delight.  The Art Gallery serves many functions and the architecture made way for that. 

Vancouver’s art gallery is best for visitting works and the Emily Carr, the cafe and gift shop.  But it really needs to expand.  Public works such as this are so important. 

If I had one criticism it would be the sparse representation of the greatest art of Western Canada, the prairie landscape, Louis Riel statuses  of Manitoba, the contemporary industrial  works of Alberta, their oil fields and ranching, the fisheries and sailors of the northern pacific seas, or the LGBT art of Vancouver’s inner city.. It’s not an original concern as the narcissism of the art exhibitors has always suffered from cronyism at the centres of political power. It was most amusingly demonstrated when someone noted that almost all the saints of the Roman Catholic Church through Italy were Italian.  Apparently even God is reduced by tribalism and regionalism.  

That said, I love the National Art Gallery of Ottawa and look forward to returning. I’d recommend this truly amazing artistic space to any and all.