The old Banff Mineral Springs Hospital was the place of my birth in June, 1928. At the same time, Kate Smith, with a singing engagement at the Banff Springs Hotel, was hospitalized with a bite from a bear she had been feeding. She took me and rocked me while she sang and that was the poetic beginning of my life.
I attended Banff Elementary School and in grade three won the R.B. Bennett medal.
Winter was a great time. We wore mocassins measured for us by Indian ladies in their teepees during the Banff Indian Days. Our felt boots came from the Eatons’ catalogue. I skied to the post office at noon, through the streets of deep snow, a challenge to be on time, and then after school came the fun of sledding down the hill behind our home on Banff Avenue. The winter festival with the Charlie Beal ice sculptures centering Banff Avenue, the ice palace, the toboggan run from Tunnel Mountain down to the Mount Royal Hotel where people mingled and relaxed on the verandah wearing Hudson Bay blanket coats, were visions that were the highlight of winter. We were not allowed to attend the school hockey games of the teams in the Bow Valley for fear we just might meet the renowned tough players of Canmore.
Summer was busy. It was Depression time and we helped clean and prepare a room and the cabin for rental to the tourists. A rare treat was a swim in the Cave and Basin.
I loved to wander through the woods of Banff – the station bush as we called it then – to find the first wild flowers, the early crocus, the shooting stars, the lady slippers, the columbine, the tiger lilies, Indian paintbrush and fireweed, often coming face to face with a beautiful deer who also inhabited my paths of adventure. These images captured my sensibilities and stayed with me all of my life.
R.L. Harvey, who taught art at Haultain school in Calgary, was my teacher there, and for private lessons from 1938 to 1944. He always entered my pieces in the annual Calgary Exhibition and Stampede. Of course, I was overjoyed when I saw gold ribbons hanging from them. I was fascinated that he also worked from his studio in Banff.
My life took me across Canada, living in many cities and towns. While raising four daughters I made time for evening courses in drawing and painting. We managed family outings to theatre and ballet and the first major exhibit was to see the Van Gogh paintings in Winnipeg in 1959. Later, journeys to World “Expos” – Montreal 1967 – enabled us to spend some hours in the art Galleries.
I graduated with an Honours B.A. in Visual Arts from University of Ottawa in 1978 where Ken Lochhead urged me to study abstraction and large format canvas. Those five years gave me a wealth of information.
In 1979 I returned to Calgary to marry my Western Canada High School boyfriend, Jack Fair, who enjoys the art world as much as I do. Our travels take us to major galleries and exhibitions in the world – the Monet and Picasso in New York, the treasures of the National Gallery in London, the same in Amsterdam, and our own galleries across Canada, to name a few. We always look forward to these hours with anticipation as part of our holiday agenda.
Summer finds us on the golf course. At Earl Grey in Calgary or from the fairways of the Canmore Golf Course, we say the score does not matter for the mountains are so magnificent. Jack was planning retirement from his medical career and so in 1988 we started to search for property in Canmore. We always yearned for a place in the mountains – a studio space for each of us. We have a strong tie to the Whyte Museum of Banff where I have had the opportunity to exhibit. We attend the “Openings” and take our visiting guests for an afternoon at the Whyte and to events at the theatres of the Banff Centre.
We feel fortunate we could locate where we look out to the Bow River and that we could design the space of our needs. The reality of this dream came to fruition in 1997 when we finally moved into our home in Canmore. Our great joy is in the appreciation of the Bow Valley from our windows when the weather each day brings us awesome views. Our lifestyle is one of fulfilment as we indulge in our passions. We enjoy comradeship with other artists in the community through the group known as CAAG and participating in exhibitions at the Canmore Art Gallery. We have joined many of the activities sponsored by the Canmore Seniors Centre.
We have no morbid thoughts of death but get a big kick out of knowing we have two plots in the Canmore Cemetery underneath the hoodoos which we call our “family of angels” and, of course, a view of the Three Sisters which my mother always said was named for my two sisters, Mavis, JoAnne, and myself.
This new century of 2000 is like a white canvas. I can articulate the deep feeling I have for this environment, my homeland, where I translate the beauty of mountain flowers into my felt landscapes of Abstract Expressionism.
In Canmore Seniors at the Summit, ed. Canmore Seniors Association, 2000, p. 72-74.
