Successive generations of Canadians have evolved their own versions of what it means to be Canadian, as I describe in these pages, but most of these visions were expressed in words.
Images are different. For Canadian artists, there were difficult challenges—I touch on some of them when I introduce Emily Carr. For the first century after Confederation, the Canadian imagination was cramped by poverty and visual illiteracy. How could European-trained artists capture panoramas that contained no man-made features? How could commercial artists work with such a limited choice of symbols when they wanted to promote national pride in their audience?
Only Indigenous artists were confident in the deeply rooted traditions of their different cultures, and produced extraordinary artifacts that spoke to the land they knew so well. But their work was not respected by newcomers, and it was valued only as trophies or museum specimens.
This has changed.
Within the text of this book, there are dozens of black and white images that relate directly to the stories I tell. But the colour inserts give a parallel commentary on the evolution of the Canadian imagination. My selections are entirely subjective, just as were my choices of whom to highlight in the main text. The colour illustrations are works that speak to me directly. Other people would have made very different choices.
For the first insert, I chose artworks that reflect artists’ response to past and present, ideas and ideals. Since 1867, Canadian artists have been melding the aesthetic traditions of this northern land with approaches and techniques from every part of the globe. Most of my choices are representational (like the majority of canvases hanging on the walls of established art galleries), but gathering them has been an exciting voyage of discovery. Some of the best sources for exploring the Canadian art world are the ebooks produced by the Art Canada Institute: http://www.aci-iac.ca.
Posters fill the second colour insert. Most of the early examples are vivid attempts to “brand” Canada (although their creators would not have recognised such Madison Avenue jargon). Later examples intensify the propaganda element, by reflecting the budding postwar pride in country. By the end of the twentieth century, poster art was often protest art, illustrating values that, hoped their sponsors, their viewers might share.
There is no single image that captures our country, just as there is no single narrative in our multi-layered history. Every vision, every story is part of the promise of Canada.