Capital News Wednesday, April 6, 2011
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NEWS W THE MEMORY PROJECT
Museum display mixes art and history Jennifer Smith STAFF REPORTER
There is a corner of the Okanagan Heritage Museum where the staff always seem to set up the interactive part of their displays. Even if it’s by happenstance, they haven’t broken the mould with the latest exhibit, The Memory Project: Art and Stories of The Second World War, positioning an interesting place to compose handwritten notes to servicemen and women in that same back corner. Yet this time, the entire collection is really an interactive display, a uniquely engaging approach to telling a story that most of us think we know—the story of the Second World War. “These are really the human stories of what someone experienced in the day-to-day,” explained Davida Aronovitch, communications coordinator of The Historica-Dominion Institute. “It really is about those smaller stories and vignettes.” Aronovitch represents the team which has been diligently collecting veterans’ stories and posting them on an online archive for anyone to access, since September 2009. The stories run the
gauntlet of those involved in the war, from gunners on the front-lines to the women who handled supplies, and have given new life to the dates and timelines and critical facts taught in Canadian schools. “It’s not about their actual duties as military personnel. It’s about their memories, and their memories often have nothing to do with the actual fighting,” said Patti Kilback, with the Okanagan Heritage Museum. “It’s about the food, and the clothes and the touching friendships they made.” But showcasing those oral histories required a visual component, so The Memory Project posted a call to artists. The resulting display brings snippets of the online archive of veteran’s testimonials to life via pieces of artwork which young and local artists, like potter Bridget Fairbank, have created by listening to the veterans’ tales. “It is interesting how the artists are asked to just look at the website, listen to the different oral histories…and something will catch them,” said Kilback. “Sometimes it’s just a phrase or something that really grabs them and just makes them have all these images and memories of their own.”
In Fairbank’s case, for example, the Nelsonbased potter found Hubert Lalonde’s testimonial hit home, about the importance of food for him as he battled in Europe. At one point, Lalonde said he went four days without any rations and then he also lost his mess tin to a bullet. The only alternative was a tin can and the recording goes on to describe how he put that can to good use. “The cook, he poured hot water in there a couple of times to rinse it out and I said, fill it up. That’s how I ate my food that night because they couldn’t get me a mess tin,” Lalonde recalled. Fairbank’s display is of a grouping of pottery mess tins, a plate-type object with a whole through it and snippets of the story inscribed on the side. Just down the way, Capital News photographer Sean Connor has given the project a stylized photograph he took at Brettville-sur-Laize Canadian War Cemetery, a spot he wound up in while tracing his father’s footsteps during the war. Some 2,872 Canadians are buried in the cemetery, along with much of Connor’s father’s unit. He flipped through the oral histories online and
DAVE CONNOR/CONTRIBUTOR
PHOTOJOURNALIST Sean Connor with his Art From Memory Project original artwork inspired by the story of an Okanagan Valley veteran. Photographed at Bretteville-Sur-Laize Canadan War Cemetery in Normandy France. The photo/art work called “My Only Son” will be on display at the Okanagan Heritage Museum as part of a larger exhibition in conjunction with the Historica-Dominion Institute. connected with a local soldier named Nigel Taylor, who became a paraplegic as a result of a hit he took in a tank. “My dad was a tanker as well and his story sort of resonated with me. He was in Italy and he was in a tank and one of his crew members was killed when he was hit,” said Connor. Taylor’s story describes a horrific battle in which he was paralyzed from the waist down and the other soldier he was with was killed. “He knocked it out
and said, ‘I got him sir.’ And those were his last words because an antitank gun got us right after that and our tank went up in flames,” Taylor says on the recording. There are more than 1,800 such oral histories online; over 2000 have been collected and the project’s funding was just renewed in March. A painting at the back of the display serves as a reminder of just how important the collection is for future generations. Local artist Rena War-
ren has painted a colourful depiction of famous local artist Mary Bull, who passed away last year. Bull was a nurse in the war and over tea had told Warren some interesting tales of flirting with the servicemen. But she also mentioned how deeply it impacted her, to hold a young soldier’s hand as he lay dying and how she carried that memory with her for the rest of her life. “To us it’s very poignant…This isn’t a story we were able to capture, but
this painting, which is a portrait of her at two different points in her life, as a storyteller of her history in the service and of herself as a young woman in the service, is another kind of tribute,” said Aronovitch. The grand opening for the exhibit runs this Saturday, April 9, from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., at the Okanagan Heritage Museum. Admission is by donation. The exhibition will be in the museum until the end of November. jsmith@kelownacapnews.com
W KELOWNA
Arts and culture summit seeks to marry business and cultural services Jennifer Smith STAFF REPORTER
On Friday morning, the business and arts communities will meet with an expert in mobilizing communities in an attempt to spur economic and cultural growth. Dubbed the Kelowna Arts and Culture Summit, the city’s cultur-
G N I CH RI EN
al crew have tapped Paul Born to take the lead on a two-day workshop intended to brainstorm some concrete projects citizens from both campus can come together on. “You never want to prejudge outcomes too much when you’re bringing people together to have their own dialogue. But it might be just to help them realize that maybe business and
culture are not as different as they may think,” said Sandra Kochan, with the City of Kelowna cultural services. Last year, the municipality conducted extensive consultations to develop a cultural plan and discovered the business and arts communities did not appear to be connected enough to know how they might work together to build a more vibrant, and profitable
community. Kochan said she is hoping the sessions will yield some tangible ideas that people within the community are willing to sign on to champion. Born has worked as a motivational speaker and facilitator all over the world and was tapped to bring an approach which would resonate with the business community as much as it
does with the cultural sector. In addition to leading the Tamarack Institute in Waterloo, Born holds a masters degree in leadership, is an author and has been recognized with awards from the Conference Board of Canada, Imagine Canada and the Governor General of Canada. jsmith@kelownacapnews.com
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