In the News: Art and Architecture edition

I’ve been neglectful, but my google alerts have also been rather bereft lately – news of tourism business partnerships between Nova Scotia and Stirling, Scotland, while fascinating, are generally only  tangentially related to landscape, and I try to stay on topic (although, as an aside: the description of the visit to Scotland is incredibly evocative of every single tourism trade mission to Scotland of the past 80 years).

In a bit of self-promotion, my thesis was listed on the NiCHE (Network in Canadian History & Environment) website, probably thanks to my excellent thesis adviser. Neat!

Here’s an interesting article about Peter Gough, a landscape artist whose artistic imagination is captured by Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. A snippet:

Having roots in both is the best of two worlds, he says. While they are culturally and geographically close, the prevailing elements of their landscapes are quite different: Nova Scotia, practically surrounded by the sea, feels almost like an island to Gough, while, to him, the dominant feature of New Brunswick is its extensive, storied river systems.

I liked Gough’s emphasis on the full sensory experience of being in the landscape – I think the landscape should be more than what we see, even if the medium we will ultimately use (e.g. painting) is a visual medium.

The Chronicle Herald published an article on the architect Brian McKay-Lyons, his annual architectural project/retreat called Ghost, and this year’s project to reassemble a historic octagonal barn from Annapolis County on his own property on the South Shore. I find McKay-Lyons’ work interesting for his attempt to bring modern yet place-specific architecture to his projects, and I respect his commitment to live in Nova Scotia even when it may not always be professionally advantageous.

However, so far as our cultural/historic landscape goes, I’m not really sure how much value this gesture holds. Taking a building away from its original place turns it into more of an artifact than an object in the landscape – however the cumulation of all these preserved built “artifacts” can still be useful in picturing historic and/or vernacular architecture. While I cringe at the assumption that “saving” an old building by moving it is by definition virtuous and right – and the collecting impulse that accompanies it – I do like the idea that re-using old buildings if worthwhile if only for the purpose of reducing waste. What do you think? Are any of you as conflicted as I am?

Blogging on Nova Scotia’s landscape – from Guelph, Ontario

Well, I’m moved in and mostly unpacked at my apartment in Guelph.

I’ll be blogging about Nova Scotia from Ontario for the next two or three years at least. I hoped when I started this blog that it would serve as a way for me to stay connected to Nova Scotia while I bide my time doing this latest degree (which I am taking with hopes of being able to return to Nova Scotia as soon as possible with good career prospects). I hope this blog will help alleviate the homesickness and keep me tuned in to Nova Scotia’s landscape and environmental issues while I am 1,900 km away.

And of course, I am writing this post from Guelph because I finally finished, defended, and formally submitted my MA history thesis! It’s called The Road to Yesterday: Nova Scotia’s Tourism Landscape and the Automobile Age, 1920-1940. You can take a look at it in the Killam Library at Dalhousie University some time after October.

Thesis Relief/Relief Map

It’s been a while! I submitted my thesis to my defence committee on Wednesday, and I now have two weeks to prepare for a move to Upper Canada. I have a number of posts saved in my draft folder, but none that are ready to  be shared yet. So, until I have a little more time to finish those posts, I thought I might share a little excerpt from my thesis with you. Sorry about the super-long paragraphs; that’s thesis writing for you – nothing so short and snappy as the blog style. The excerpt is below the jump.

In the News – Woods and wastelands

Nova Scotia loses over 1/10th of its forest in 17 years. (link may expire)

“It is a concern because certain species require intact forests for their best survival,” said Cheng. “It is significant that this amount of landscape can change, especially this quickly, when in other forest management zones across Canada it is much lower.”

The Forest Products Association of Nova Scotia deflects by claiming that Hurricane Juan cleanup, as well as “parking lots and highways,” could have been a significant portion of the forest, half the size of Cape Breton, that has disappeared since 1990.

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Nova Scotians might be concerned to hear that we are harvesting our forests at twice the rate of places like Northern Ontario and inland British Columbia. If there is a good reason this is being done, and if the forestry companies are taking measures to restore the forest sustainably (and not just for harvesting in another 20-30 years), tell us. Don’t pretend parking lots are the villain.

If you’d like to read Global Forest Watch’s report, you can read the press release here. A link to download the report can be found here.

To be fair, this more detailed response of the Forest Products Association is better phrased and raises some good questions about the report’s methods.

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If you go for a hike on the Eastern Shore, you might find that wooded path has become a 485-hectare clearing. Harvesting wood for biomass, the new up-and-coming energy source which really means, “first we clearcut, then we strip and chipper every last bit of branch and twig and add it too a pile until we’re ready to burn it in a giant furnace” is causing concern among environmentalists.

If you read the comments section of any cbc.ca article, I always advise you use the “agreed” comment sorting option, and pay attention to how many people voted “agree” or “disagree” on the comments. It will make you feel better.

NS in Art – Adolf Fassbender

It’s no secret that much of the inspiration f0r this blog comes from my history studies. While editing my thesis last week, I came across a reference in a tourism brochure to a prominent photographer, “Mr. Passbender,” who extolled the beauties of Nova Scotia as a world-class destination:

“‘Nova Scotia possesses outstanding subjects for pictorial photography,’ writes Adolf Passbender, F.R.P.S., of New York, one of the foremost authorities on photography in America. Every year a small army of artists and photographers come to Nova Scotia. They know that the quaint little seaside villages with the fishermen’s homes built amongst granite boulders offer excellent studies. “

(From Canada’s Ocean Playground, 1939)

“Passbender” was actually a spelling mistake, as I discovered when I googled the name. Adolf Fassbender was a German-born photography instructor and pictorial photographer whose most important artistic years were in the 1930s and 1940s. Fassbender did not believe in absolute accuracy in photography or in anything like “the ugly truth.” Fassbender believed that the photographer was supposed to find – and create – the beautiful and picturesque.

Here are a few of Fassbender’s Nova Scotia images (The photo at the top of the post is “Cape Breton Beacon”):

Fishermen's Menace

Crooked Mile

Before the Storm

This final image is somewhere on the South Shore of Nova Scotia (here). It is different from his other NS subject matter – fishermen and fog and lighthouses – but the common element of the ocean is still there.

Apparently Fassbender’s major publication of his images includes lengthy captions written by the photographer which address the technical aspect of the photo and Fassbender’s personal thoughts about the setting. I would love to be able to read those captions, to get some kind of insight into how he approached and modified the Nova Scotia landscape in his images.

Sources:

• The Pictorial Artistry of Adolf Fassbender book review.
• Live Auctioneers listing
• Reference to A. Fassbender in book, The Appalachian photographs of Earl Palmer
• Adolf Fassbender at photogravure.com

In the News – Lighthouses, always.

Tourism approaches like Nova Scotia’s, which rely on a certain amount of “rugged charm” to draw in the visitors, walk a fine line between picturesquely abandoned and dilapidated sights, and just plain neglected and ugly. Combine that with jurisdictional/responsibility issues, and you’ve got a news story.

Take, for example, the recent dust-up over the Peggy’s Cove lighthouse. Despite the millions upon millions of dollars the Conservative government has decided to bestow, graciously, upon the taxpayers who gave it to them in the first place (I never said this blog was apolitical), the government itself was apparently unable to round up the $25,000 necessary to pay for cement work and paint on the province’s most recognizable lighthouse this year (it was supposed to happen last year).

After making the news a few days in a row (with DFO offering to donate the paint to volunteers who were willing to paint the lighthouse – now there’s a liability issue if I ever heard one), some provincial MPs have announced that the lighthouse will, after all, be painted. Of course, the minister in charge of the DFO didn’t make this announcement, but the minister in charge of ACOA, who has decided to give DFO the money. Right.

This is an example of the kind of problems that can emerge when multiple jurisdictions or levels of government have responsibility for different aspects of one landscape – especially when goals are divergent. DFO only really cares if the light is working – the tourism industry (as well as many Nova Scotians) cares what it looks like as well.

Snapshot – Canadian Coastguard, Woodside NS

Just as a sort of place-holder on this blog, to let you know I am still here (but generally editing my thesis or out digging in the garden), I thought I would share a photo that is slightly topical to my last post. The Canadian Coast Guard, which administers active lighthouses and still owns many of the deactivated ones (including the lighthouse in my blog header image), has a station in Woodside (for now – I believe they are eventually moving to the Bedford Institute of Oceanography docks).

This image, taken in late April, shows the yard full of buoys and concrete anchors – navigation lights lined up like torpedos and the groaners and clankers (my terms) that you are especially familiar with if you do any coastal sailing and use them for navigation, or any yacht racing as well. In fact, you may have had to fend yourself off with a boathook once or twice, or perhaps had a spinnaker try to wrap itself around one?

Places – Devil’s Island

Devil’s Island is in the news today over the issue of its lighthouse – will it be saved, and by whom, and why it should be, and so on.

Anyone from Nova Scotia who reads this blog probably knows that Devil’s Island is the outermost island in Halifax Harbour. The island is maybe best known for being the place where Helen Creighton did some of her earliest folklore collecting, most of that from Ben Henneberry. I grew up hearing about stories of how the devil once showed up to a Sunday night card game on the island, and was identified by his cloven hooves.

Devil’s Island is low-lying, and you might assume from afar that it is a sandy barrier island, but it is not. Devil’s Island is actually bedrock, or slate, similar to the “ironstone” that makes up the old drystone walls and foundations in the oldest parts of Halifax (although it could be related to the bluestone found in parts of Lake Echo, I’m not sure – where’s a geologist when you need one?). The ocean side of the island is sharply corrugated by the rock striations, and littered with flat cobbles.

I visited Devil’s Island a few years ago, and these pictures I am sharing are from that trip. When I was there, the old house, the second-most prominent building on the island other than the lighthouse (pretty much the only other thing left standing), was empty inside save for a moudly old armchair and some makeshift kitchen counters. An old boyfriend of my mother’s once Went Hermit and spent a couple months squatting in the house. I don’t think my mother was impressed; she kept searching and found my father.

The island is mainly covered in grass and various weeds and wildflowers. There are lots of little hummocks on the east side of the island, old seagull nests. Little paths crisscross in and out and around the hillocks – they’re rat paths. But don’t worry, they’re little rats, nothing near the size of their waterfront cousins. Just don’t plan for a picnic on the island if you’re rodent-averse.

Despite the bald lighthouse and empty house, there’s nothing particularly menacing about Devil’s Island, no bad vibes or ghostly fingers on the spine. But standing on the island and looking back at the harbour still gave me an odd sort of feeling. The island seems abandoned and forgotten by the bustling inner harbour denizens, and yet it is so close that it is never beyond the glow of the city lights.

I’m not going to say that the lighthouse should be preserved for nostalgia alone. And yet, how wonderful is it crossing the harbour in the winter dusk and watching the navigation buoy lights blinking all the way out to the open sea? It’s true that lighthouses don’t guide the way for very many storm-tossed vessels in our day and age, but I think they serve a new purpose – reminding us to look out beyond ourselves and tell stories and even daydream, however inaccurately and nostalgically, about where we came from.

Quicklink – Grand Pré UNESCO bid

More in the news yesterday about the Grand Pré UNESCO World Heritage Site bid – homeowners (well, two of them) in the proposed area shared their concerns about what might happen if the bid is successful – possibly higher property taxes, more visitors could mean more people cutting across private property hoping to walk along the dikes, and more development in the form of hotels and restaurants.

These World Heritage designations are a great tool to recognize (and preserve) significant landscapes, but they can be doubled-edged. A successful bid can be a bit like waving a red flag in front of the tourist industry. On the other hand, Grand Pré is already one of the top tourist destinations in the province, and I wonder if UNESCO recognition would  actually attract significantly more people than the area’s existing “carrying capacity” for tourists? If the nomination committee is a good one, they have already considered the increased environmental/infrastructure/lifestyle pressure at the site that this designation would create, and are able to address local concerns (who knows, perhaps the homeowners were speaking out at a public info session – the article is kind of poor, by j-school standards).

Links of Note – Roberto Dutesco

I love Sable Island. I love the idea of it, I love pictures of it, I like to hear about the scientific research that takes place on it (this is my post on the Sable Island Update from 2008), I think it’s all good. The academic in me tells me to resist the romance and embrace the pragmatism, but even “objectively,” the landscape is stunning and the location (out in the North Atlantic, on the edge of the continental shelf) and history is captivating (yes, I grew up in one of those families with a “Graveyard of the Atlantic” map of Sable Island in the basement. We have a ceramic blue nose as well).

I watched a documentary this evening called Chasing Wild Horses, about Roberto Dutesco’s photography of the Sable Island horses. It was intimate, evocative, sparse and poetic. Because we didn’t get to see any of the finished photos until Dutesco was back in New York (he’s best known for his fashion photography), the emphasis was on the process and the experience of being out in the dunes with the wind and the horses.

I’m not going to post any Dutesco images here since I’m cautious about copyright infringement, but I would encourage you to visit Dutesco’s online gallery to take a look at his images of the horses and landscape of Sable Island.

For more information on Sable Island, visit the Green Horse Society’s information-packed website.

The images in this post are from NSARM’s Clara Dennis virtual exhibit.