Partnership Events with Words: 

Events featuring ECH Contributors and Friends:

Response from the ECH community:

Thanks for sharing this image. I remember that exhibit so well. There was a lot of political mobilization in Montréal in 1990-1991. The siege of Kanesatake happened in summer 1990. Caravans of activists traveled to Oka daily to support the Mohawk resistance. Dave had done a video piece that addressed “the Oka crisis.” Less than a year later, protests against Operation Desert Storm filled Boulevard René-Lévesque in Montréal in Spring 1991. The post-cold war era began with those acts of state violence. The conditions set in motion in those years have continued over the last 30 years, with what seems to be ever-increasing death and destruction. 
 
Even as his work looked back to the 19th and early 20th century, Dave was very much aware of the historical moment of the late 20th century and early 21st century. He was attentive to nuance, discerning in his assessment of situations, and a great conversationalist. One of our first talks was in London at your studio  [Jamelie Hassan] in the late 1980s. I don’t know if he was in London for Edward Said’s Tamblyn Lectures at Western, or if he was part of a show in London. 
 
I also recall on a visit to London or Toronto in the late 1980s going to an opening and seeing one of his pieces on exhibit that was a labyrinth of texts, quotations from Foucault and other theorists. We had a good long discussion about the piece that in my memory was cryptic, opaque, and perplexing;  I could not fully grasp what the work was doing, but sensed that Dave wanted to push the limits of signification and perception.
 
He was an erudite scholar as well as an artist, who like you [Jamelie Hassan] and Ron [Benner] read widely across the disciplines. His work tended toward the scientific, theoretical, technical, and in some ways so did his personality. He had a remarkable calmness, even when we disagreed. This drawing for the poster in some ways stands in contrast to how I remember his art, but is evocative of his critical relationship to art history. 
 
He was always very generous and showed a genuine interest in my graduate studies at McGill during the late 1980s, when I think that he was just finishing his PhD.  He also was encouraging when he learned that I was going to the University of Texas to do my PhD with Barbara Harlow. Before leaving Montréal for Austin in August 1992, I visited Dave a few times at his home in the Vieux Port. I never saw him again after that summer. 
 
Warmly,
Salah D. Hassan
Director of Global Studies in the Arts and Humanities Program
​at Michigan State University, Lansing, MI, USA

Received May 19, 2022

Editor's note: David Tomas' video on the 1990 Oka crisis is titled Rum and Coca-Cola, 1992,
​17 minutes, English and French, distributed by V Tape, Toronto

"It really reflects a deep settler-colonial insecurity when even mentioning Palestine is deemed a threat."

At the core of their artistic practice is a steadfast commitment to represent and give voice to a diversity of class, race, gender, community and labour perspectives. - Nominator Dot Tuer: writer, curator and professor, OCAD University

Memories of Tony Urquhart By Judith Rodger (Left) Urquhart in his studio, 2007. Unknown photographer, with permission from the Elora Centre for the Arts

One of the most memorable experiences of my career was a day in 1994 that I spent with Tony Urquhart.  We met in his large studio overlooking a pond at his home in Wellesley, Ontario. Our goal was to choose works on paper that would be donated to Museum London. We went through his collection of thousands of drawings from every stage of his career. Urquhart’s practice included daily drawing. Some of these drawings were worked on over days or even years. They often incorporated other media such as watercolour, oil, and collage, but always began with pen and ink.  When we chose the work from 1948, Stage Coach,  Tony showed me a small book, Canada’s Past in Pictures, written and illustrated with ink drawings by C. W. Jefferys. This book, given to him as a child, was the source of his interest in drawing, he explained. Later works showed the influence of his extensive travels through foreign landscapes, but many of the drawings depicted imaginary places. Still others were working drawings for his inimitable box sculptures.
​
At the end of the day, we had selected over fifty works from 1948 to 1993.  The conversation was lively, and fascinating. Tony’s passionate approach to drawing was evident as he described each work. However, unassuming as he was, he never mentioned that two of his drawings had been added to the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1961. Eventually, in 2006, he would see one of these drawings displayed in an exhibition along the same wall as works by Paul Cézanne, Barnet Newman, Gerhard Richter, and André Derain to name a few. I can imagine how happy he must have been to stand in front of these works.  An installation photo is available here. 

Some years later I remember his eyes twinkling as he recalled that when he was artist-in-residence at the McIntosh Gallery at Western University in the 1960s, he had initiated the purchase of drawings for the McIntosh collection. Though the budget was small, over the next few years, there was enough to develop a small, but choice collection of drawings by Alex Colville, L. L. Fitzgerald, A. Y. Jackson, Greg Curnoe, F. H. Varley, Bernice Vincent. Paddy Gunn O’Brien, Horatio Walker, and Christiane Pflug among others. 
I first met Tony in November 1970, when he gave a tour of his retrospective exhibition, Reunion, at the London Art Gallery on Queens Avenue. I remember being captivated by his box sculptures and drawings, as I listened to his tales of the ideas behind the works. Over the years we met many times, encounters with Tony were always delightful and stimulating. I was privileged to have known him.

- Judith Rodger

A new Black Community Public Library is launching in London, Ont., at the end of January, featuring books of various genres written by Black authors from Canada and around the world.  

The Where We Are Now (WEAN) Community Centre is hosting the library and aims to highlight the contributions of Black authors while creating a space for readers from marginalized communities.
 
​WEAN's founder and CEO Pastor Sandie Thomas said that growing up as a Black person, she always wondered why her community's stories weren't displayed in libraries. 

"There's no representation of who we are, and it's always in the back of your head that 'did we not do anything? Where are our stories?'" she said.

Thomas said she was inspired by the work Maya Angelou, the American poet she discovered in adulthood.   
​
"It really inspired me to let me know that we have these spaces, and there are books written about us and stories that need to be told about us," she added.  

This is a collaboration project between WEAN, the London Public Library and Western University."

​Vanessa Brown and Jason Dickson, the owners of Brown & Dickson Bookstore, have nurtured a sustained relationship with the individuals that make up the communities of London, Ontario. In my independent artist capacity, I have enjoyed their friendship and been witness to their creative endeavours years before the opening of their bookstore.

More recently, Brown & Dickson Bookstore is one of the Embassy Cultural House’s (ECH) community partners and we have had the opportunity to work together building our network of contributors. 

Our collective ECH work extends to the presentation of storefront exhibitions in our "Cloud to Street" program - especially significant during the COVID-19 pandemic - giving artists a safe context for audiences to view their art. Writing and publishing projects have also been a part of our work and made it possible to reach beyond local audiences. With its original emphasis on Canadian writing and art and distributing of artists’ catalogues, the Brown & Dickson Bookstore has a very unique energy and focus. Vanessa and Jason's individual creative practice, combined with their commitments to supporting experimental art and writing, has led to the bookstore being recognized as a cultural hub in the city.  Fondly, I remember my enjoyable walks from our studio to the bookstore on Richmond Street with Karla, our family dog, was a very welcome break from my work routine. There, Karla, a shy Saluki, would be coaxed into the store by Jason or Vanessa and eventually found a relaxed companionship with Snakkers, the bookstore's resident dog. 


For all of our team at the Embassy Cultural House, Brown & Dickson Bookstore represents the best example of a bookstore any city could wish for - welcoming to artists, writers and book lovers and especially for all those who are passionate about the word independent!

- Jamelie Hassan, January 2022

LAND/TRUST:
​A Conversation across Turtle Island and Palestine