Portrait of Cree veteran, 98, unveiled
The portrait of 98-year-old Second World War veteran Pte. Philip Favel unveiled Sunday at the Canadian War Museum is at once an act of remembrance and an act of reconciliation.
Favel, a Cree from Saskatchewan's Sweetgrass First Nation and Canada's oldest living First Nations veteran, landed at Juno Beach on D-Day, then fought in France, Belgium and the Netherlands, driving a truck on the dangerous task of delivering ammunition and supplies to the front lines. The portrait, unveiled on Indigenous Veterans Day, is a belated honour to the thousands of First Nations people, Inuit and Métis who served their country in the world wars, Korea, Afghanistan and other conflicts.
That it came to be was thanks to a chance meeting at the museum last winter between Ottawa artist Elaine Goble and Hélène Cayer, an Algonquin woman and a member of the Friends of Library and Archives Canada.
“It's amazing how a small endeavour by a very quiet mom in the 'burbs of Orléans gets connected with such an endeavour by so many people,” Goble said. “It's miraculous.”
Goble and Cayer were at the museum Sunday along with National Chief Perry Bellegarde to watch as Canada's top soldier, Gen. Jonathan Vance, and Favel's granddaughter, Nadine Favel, unveiled the painting. Favel himself was unable to make the trip to Ottawa.
“I'm just so proud of him and the kind of person he is and all the things he's done all his life,” Nadine Favel said, her voice breaking with emotion. “He's been a hard worker all his life. He taught me a lot, all my life.”
Vance honoured Favel, not only for his war service, but for his efforts on behalf of other veterans.
“When you returned home, you fought once more so that all Indigenous veterans can receive the treatment and recognition that they so hugely deserve,” he said.
Goble has no military background, but in the 1990s painted the portrait of six veterans she saw at the National War Memorial. The Royal Canadian Legion made prints of her paintings and Goble gave one of them to the war museum for its files. Impressed, the museum asked her to do more. It now has more than 20 of her portraits in its permanent collection.
During a conversation at a museum event last February, Cayer asked Goble if she had ever painted an Indigenous veteran. “She said no,” Cayer recalled. “Then she said, `Let's do it!' ”
Cayer met with her friend and fellow elder, James Eagle, over lunch at the Odawa Native Friendship Centre. Eagle, a veteran himself, contacted a veterans' group in Saskatchewan with the request. The answer wasn't straightforward. Elders at Sweetgrass First Nation, near Battleford, held a Shaker Tent ceremony, consulting spirits for their approval. Once satisfied, they selected Favel for the honour.
But then the COVID-19 pandemic struck. Goble usually likes to photograph her subjects herself to get to know them before she paints. The pandemic made that impossible.
“Under normal circumstances, I only work from my own photographs and my own face-to-face interviews,” she said. “I allow my subjects to interview me and scrutinize my work. Usually, it's a collaborative narrative, too, not only to do a portrait of them, but to do a portrait of their history, their narrative. I try to be an archivist as much as a painter.”
But COVID made a meeting too risky. Instead, Cayer found an Indigenous videographer, Shelley Mike, who had videotaped and photographed Favel as part of her own work documenting veterans' stories. Mike let Goble use her images for the painting.
Then Goble got to work. The Favel portrait took months to complete, and even without the personal contact, Goble said she felt like she got to know the man.
“I pretty much fell in love with his face after working on it for months.”
The painting is in egg tempera, a finicky, slow medium that requires dedication and meticulous attention to detail. She finished the painting in the summer, but there was one more vital step before it could leave her studio. Cayer and Eagle visited Goble's house for a backyard smudging ceremony.
“When Elaine unveiled it, the elder had tears running down his eyes,” Cayer said. “He said, `My friend is now immortalized.' ”
More than 4,000 Indigenous soldiers fought for Canada in the First World War, among them Francis Pegahmagabow, an Ojibwa from the Perry Island Band on Georgian Bay who became one of Canada's most decorated soldiers.
In the Second World War, Sgt. Tommy Prince of Manitoba's Brokenhead Band won the Canadian Military Medal and the American Silver Star for his courage as a scout with the famed Devil's Brigade. Prince would go on to serve with the army in the Korean War. Other Indigenous soldiers became “code talkers,” transmitting messages in their own languages, safe from enemy interception.
Yet Indigenous veterans felt their story has never been properly told. In Goble, Indigenous people have found an ally and a friend to help tell that story, she said.
“This is an act of true reconciliation.”