When my friend, Canadian artist Jerry Pethick was a little boy in London, Ontario, he loved reading Brick Bradford cartoon strips in the newspapers. One particular image stayed in his mind; as he looked through the archway cut between the living and dining rooms of his house he imagined himself in Bradford’s Time Top, spinning into the future and the past, bringing home artifacts.
Influenced by that memory in 2000, Jerry, then in his early sixties, had the idea to make a Time Top and in 2003 he received a public art commission from Concord Pacific, a Vancouver developer. Sadly, soon after he was awarded this grant, Jerry died of cancer. Margaret, his wife, decided to take over the contract and see the piece through to its completion.
Using Jerry’s detailed instructions, moulds were made to be cast in bronze at a foundry on the Sunshine Coast. Margaret said watching the workers in their gauntlets, coveralls and masks by the oven flames, she felt as if she were thrust back into the twelfth century. The Time Top was then submerged underwater at a nearby marina in Gibsons for the process of accretion to occur. A low electrical charge was put through it constantly in order to attract barnacles, mussels and minerals to adhere to its surface. As Jerry had envisioned it, the Time Top would look like a relic from the sea and, because it was to be installed permanently outdoors and exposed to wind, rain and birds, its appearance would always be in flux. After a two-year period of accretion the Time Top was deemed ready to be hauled up.
The tides on August 2, 2006 were high enough that the Time Top could be towed on a barge to Vancouver., where it would be installed on the shores of False Creek. Friends of the Pethicks and others involved in the project, as well as locals from Gibsons, were gathered at the marina early in the morning just after sunrise. As it was slowly hoisted up by a crane we were all on tenterhooks wondering what the Time Top would look like. It came up perfectly intact, covered in a patina of marine life and transformed by a delicate mottled beauty that only nature could have created. It was then positioned onto a barge to be pulled down Burrard Inlet.
On a boat accompanying the barge were Margaret and Jerry’s son, Yana, and his young family, and others who had been at the marina. The captain of the boat was also a jazz festival organizer and his partner, who catered the affair, was a professional clairvoyant. The sun was bright, the music mellow, it was a magical ride across the water which culminated four hours later as we sailed under Vancouver’s Granville and Burrard Street Bridges. We were a flotilla arriving home in triumph with our treasure.
On the banks of Yaletown to welcome us with enthusiastic waves and hearty cheers were several other friends of the Pethicks, people from the arts community, as well as the public. With bated breath we watched as the crane gradually lowered the Time Top on to its relatively tiny pins. Everything had to fit down to the inch and it did. Then its crowning glory, a clear transparent dome, was placed on its very top. The Time Top was home.
We celebrated by feasting on food Margaret had bought from a nearby gourmet deli and that evening we reboarded the boat to sail into the middle of English Bay for the August fireworks. The installation of the Time Top had been spectacular, but it was exciting to be so close to the constellations of colours exploding in the sky and great fun to be around the many awestruck kids on board.
It had been a long day and night. The captain had been letting people off at various spots in the city and by the time the last of us arrived in Kitsilano we were a motley crew of some twenty adults with half a dozen children in tow, all exhausted and in need of our beds. We trudged up from the shore lugging bags dripping with hummus and tzatziki and suddenly found ourselves at a yacht club in the middle of a chichi cocktail party.
The agitated manager of the club charged over to us, shooing us with his hands, as if we were diseased pigeons. He yelled, “Go back to where you came from, you can’t be here.” Margaret gathered herself up as imperiously as the situation demanded and declared, “We will not go back to where we came from.” And on we marched through the martini-sipping crowd up to Point Grey Road where there were terrific traffic jams because of the fireworks. But everybody managed to catch a bus or taxi to their homes or to wherever they were staying that night. There were many out-of-towners.
Margaret was staying at my place just a few blocks away from where we’d disembarked and we laughed as we walked home about the preposterous incident. Jerry had made public art to be seen freely by land and sea. We had landed on the shore of a natural body of water which is supposed to be public and been told we were on private property.
The next day we went to Coopers Park, west of the Cambie Street Bridge, to see the Time Top. You come upon it on foot by rounding a corner and there it is, a happy surprise awaiting you. Because of the accretion, the Time Top looks like an ancient artifact. Due to its shape, resembling a light bulb sitting on three legs, it also looks gently alien, perhaps a space ship that beckons to you in a friendly way.
We sat for a while on a nearby bench and noticed the reactions of the passersby. Older adults got a kick out of it because they recognized the image from their comic strip reading days. Children immediately wanted to clamber on it to play. All seemed amused and bemused by this new/old feature that had appeared on the shore.
Jerry had been a larger-than-life figure and his absence has left a huge hole in the universe. When we climbed down the rocks onto the beach to touch it, Margaret knelt right into the Time Top, peeked up through it and said, “I can see the sky.”