Audain unites activism, art
B.C. renaissance man a leader in multiple walks of life
“I never dared to be radical when I was young for fear it would make me conservative when old,” poet Robert Frost once said. Luckily, Michael Audain didn’t follow that caution or we would all be the poorer. It was the activism of youth that shaped the philanthropist collector now among the most influential benefactors of the visual arts in B.C.
Audain was born to a retired cavalry officer and a London model in 1937, deep in the bucolic pastoral of England’s Dorset, the iconic Wessex of novelist and poet Thomas Hardy. Yet he already had deep roots in B.C. His dad was the eldest grandson of Premier James Dunsmuir and great-grandson of coal tycoon Robert Dunsmuir, once the wealthiest man in the province.
He was nine when, with his parents, two cocker spaniels and 26 pieces of luggage, he arrived in Victoria in 1946 — “the most important day of my life.”
At private schools, his adventurous spirit and a precocious appreciation of the arts emerged early. He excelled at boxing with the Victoria City Police club. He roamed the Northwest galleries of the Royal B.C. Museum, where he once questioned — and was an- swered by—great Kwakwaka’wakw artist Mungo Martin. He won boxing championships and then, aged 17, caught a bus for Mexico to see the works of Diego Rivera and other radical Mexican muralists.
When he first encountered Emily Carr’s work — he compares her to Paul Gauguin — her brushwork so evoked his own intense feelings for B.C. he was convinced she was an artistic genius of the 20th century.
He led UBC’s student protests against nuclear arms, joined the Freedom Riders and was jailed in Mississippi. The B.C. Civil Liberties Association held its first meeting in his living room in 1961. He went to university, lived on a boat, kicked around jobs — social worker, farm economist, housing policy and planning consultant. Then, he founded Polygon Homes and discovered his métier — building places for people to live. Since 1980, Polygon companies have built 26,000 homes.
If a spirited youth saw no contradiction between pugilism and art appreciation, the mature man saw none between business success and support for the visual arts. He established the Audain Foundation, providing more than $34 million to support the visual arts. His private collection of both Emily Carr and First Nations art is shared with the public at the Audain Museum of Art.