I set up my stool on the sidewalk and was sketching when I overheard a pedicab driver who had stopped on the street behind me. He was regaling his clients with stories about the Empress Hotel, and how Churchill once gave a speech there, and how they have a Royal Suite, etc. It sounded like baloney, but the tourists were eating up. Oddly, earlier on my ride into town I found a commemorative series of slides from the 1971 Royal Visit to BC. The original price was one dollar, and I got it for 90 cents, still wrapped in the original plastic!
St, Ann’s Academy, Victoria BC (now govt offices) – 33 years ago I spent a month surveying the whole building, which was completely empty. It was a girl’s school for a century.quick study sketch on scrap
Emily Carr’s boarding house – The House of All Sorts – built 1913
Emily Carr was born in Victoria in 1871. She was a painter first, but it was her books that made her famous before her art was widely appreciated. She had a hard time making a living and so in 1913 she had a boarding house constructed for herself, built on a corner of the family acreage. There she passed the next 20 years or so, eking out a meagre living as a landlady, and painting in her top floor studio. Eventually she became too ill to be a landlady, so she traded the house for a smaller one and rented it out for the income. She rented a small cottage for herself elsewhere in town. A number of years ago I designed the top floor renovation of the house Emily traded her boarding house for.
Emily Carr traded The House of All Sorts for this one, but never lived here.
While I was filing my latest negatives I chanced to take a look at the first page of my files. I decided to scan that film, which I shot in 1970 in Montreal. There among other things were pictures of two different domes, built 120 years apart. The first was the Bonsecours Market, c. 1847, a building that was not only a market but briefly the Parliament of Canada.
Bonsecours Market
Fortunately this building was saved from demolition in the 1960’s. Countless other treasure like it were demolished to make room for atrocious apartment buildings, etc. Another world class marvel was this:
US Pavilion – Expo 67
The 1967 Montreal World’s Fair was the greatest fair ever held, if you count the attendance; over 50,000,000 visitors! I was there, lucky for me, and visited almost everything, including this building, the American pavilion. It was designed by Bucky Fuller, and is the largest and most spectacular dome of its kind ever built, and is still in existence – minus the acrylic skin, which burned off. The structure survived. They were planning to dismantle this one too, but somehow it was saved. I recall the fact that if they were to raise the temperature several degrees inside, the whole thing would have easily floated away like a hot air balloon.
Film: Kodak Tri-X 400, developed by me in unknown developer, probably Kodak D76 powder.
North America was “discovered”, in a manner of speaking, by Lief Erikson, about 1000 years ago.
Seattle’s Leif Erikson memorial statue at Shilshole Bay Marina.
Lief got here first, and yet Chris Columbus and Amerigo Vespucci got all the glory. This must be corrected! Here are some suggestions to correct the injustice.
First, the USA shall become the USE (United States of Erika) and Canada will become SUPER, (Somewhat United Provinces of ERikland). When referring to what was previously called America, the new term shall be USESUPER.
All references to the term Columbia will henceforth be replace with the word Erika, since Chris Columbus was not first, and therefore by all logic, second rate, explorer-wise.
The Columbia River will become the Erika, and the province of British Columbia will henceforth be known as Icelandic Erikland, i.e. IE. The District of Columbia will become the District of Erika, etc.
Washington DC will become Washington DE, or Duh for short.
Now is also the opportune moment to replace all those missing and soon to be melted statues with new ones, of Lief the Lucky. We can use the bronze in an environmentally sensitive manner by recycling it in electric furnaces powered by solar energy. Those bare and empty podiums need something! Fortunately, statues of Lief already exist in many cities throughout North Erika, such as Duluth and St. Paul, Minn., as well as Seattle, Boston, Milwaukee and Chicago. Cities that can’t afford new statues, shall replace the head of the offensive existing ones with Lief’s head, change the plaques and call it a day.
The man had guts, good looks and was a damned fine sailor. His name has a natural sound, like an electric car; environmentally friendly and zero pollution.
Apart from statues, the USE (United States of Erika) already has a national holiday for Lief; October 9th.
nathanguitars 