ICONS OF CANADA
Two new books describe who — and what — defines us,
In spite of the fact that southern British Columbia sees it only on faraway mountaintops and no more than a couple of times a season, it would be safe to say that all Canadians are, at least for some portion of the year, fully obsessed by snow. They hate it when they are walkers and drivers, and they love it when they are skiers and bobsledders. They build snow forts and igloos and hotels out of it, and they make paths through it and angels in it. Some of them, who want their Christmases to be white, are comforted by the softly falling snow of December. Others are fond of quoting Voltaire’s assertion that when looked at in the cold light of day, Canada is nothing more than “quelques arpents de neige.” And each year a couple of Canadians drop dead of massive heart attacks while they are outside in the cold of January, trying to shovel this neige out of the way.
Beardmore, Ont., situated 200 kilometres north of Thunder Bay, has taken a positive attitude toward snow. After making the claim that it holds the title for Snow Capital of the World, this sparsely populated mining and lumber town, from which most of the miners and lumberjacks have fled, decided to celebrate its status by building a white wooden structure professing to be the world’s largest snowman. This particular Big-Thing-Along-the-Road is unusual even in such an unusual category, in that he is not only the biggest but also the longest lasting of his ilk. That is, if one defines his ilk as his fellow snowmen, and ignores the fact that he has been torn down and replaced at least once.
Over the years, the snowman has been both a tourist information booth and a temporary home for certain patrons of the Beardmore Lounge (who apparently have a key and are rumoured to sometimes sleep it off inside the snowman before going home to face the ire of their women). He has also changed somewhat in his latest incarnation, and now wears sunglasses day and night, winter and summer.
The snowman is not Beardmore’s only claim to fame. The town is also the home of one of Canada’s most notorious archaeological finds.
During the1930s, while Beardmore was coming into being, hundreds of prospectors, both amateur and professional (my father among them), were drawn to the region by news of the gold strike at Little Long Lac Gold Mine. One of these prospectors claimed to have found a different kind of gold when he was wandering through the forest: a broken sword and an axe-head that were clearly of ancient origin.
The Royal Ontario Museum became involved, and news of the Beardmore Relics, supposed evidence of a Viking settlement halfway between James Bay and Lake Superior, was made known to the public. Soon all Canadian schoolchildren knew the story: how the Vikings had sailed into Hudson Bay in their longboats; how they had proceeded through James Bay and along a complicated series of rivers, reaching the ancient site of Beardmore before the snowman had even been heard of.
Eventually unmasked as the hoaxes they were (the “discoverer” had Norwegian friends in Thunder Bay, and one of them had inherited the artefacts from a relative), the relics nevertheless had a profound effect on Canada’s collective psyche. Scholars wrote papers, geographers mapped navigable rivers, and a couple of decades later, Farley Mowat, one of Canada’s most popular writers, wrote a thrilling young adult novel called The Curse of the Viking Grave.
When all is said and done, however, the most important fact about Beardmore is that it is the birthplace of one of Canada’s most distinguished painters, Norval Morrisseau (also known as Copper Thunderbird), an Anishinaabe artist from the nearby Sand Point First Nation. Using images from the natural world and from the mystical legends of his people, Morrisseau spent his life (March 14, 1932– Dec. 4, 2007) creating bright, compelling paintings filled with colour and vitality. As his renown spread, these works of art became much sought after by collectors in the cities to the south, and the demand for his work grew to a sometimes unmanageable degree.
In spite of this and a number of personal tragedies, Morrisseau remained focused on the beauty and spirituality of the birds and animals that he remembered from his childhood. All his paintings are warm, pulsing with life, and exuding natural purpose. There is not even a suggestion in them of the cold coming winter, and not a hint of snow. Excerpt from: A Number of Things: Stories of Canada Told Through Fifty Objects by Jane Urquhart ©2016. Illustrations by Scott McKowen ©2016. Published by HarperCollins- Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.