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Naden Band skips beat to honour Chemainus vet


May 8th is a special day for World War II veteran Fred Durrand. Not only is it his birthday, but it’s also the day Germany surrendered, ending the war in Europe; and it’s the day he got married to his war bride Josie, the love of his life.

So not to many squares on the calendar can match May 8. But July 23, 2019 might be in the running for a prize too, because on that day he was honoured by the Naden Band, in front of a packed audience at the Chemainus Band Shell in Water Wheel Park.

Fred is among the few WWII veterans still alive, but his memories of the war years are keen. He hadn’t strayed very far from his hometown of Revelstoke, B.C., when he boarded a train for Calgary to enlist in the Canadian armed forces in October, 1942 at the age of 18. It was a different man who returned home, via Vancouver in 1946.

The second biggest birthday gift Fred can remember in his 95-year history was VE-Day on May 8, 1945; the biggest, his marriage to Josie – the beautiful young Dutch woman he met as a soldier in Amsterdam, and married in Revelstoke on May 8, 1947.

Fred served with the 8th Brigade, in the 3rd Canadian Infantry Division. As a signals dispatch rider, he delivered vital information to commanders advancing from the beachhead in Normandy, through Brussels, and on to Amsterdam.

His experiences of war have made Fred a fervent advocate for peace as the only sensible way of resolving global conflicts.

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The inspired whimsy of Morgan Bristol

Clocks with feathered hands, birds that ‘could be’ crows with four legs and stiletto beaks… Morgan Bristol, who will be featured artist at Rainforest Arts for the months of July and August, gets lost for hours at a time in a world of insightful whimsy, where he discovers art that delights and informs.

“I like to have a bit of character, comedy, in there so that people may have a little laugh, or see something in there that they can identify with,” he said at his studio, next to La Petite Auction House at 9686 Chemainus road, which he and wife Dawn Geddie operate.

To the uninitiated Bristol’s modest work space seems a combination repair shop, of some sort, and painter’s studio. That reflects his dual artistic persona: as a metal artist on the one hand; painter on the other, the painter in him only having emerged in the last year-and-a-half.

“I was trained as a metal artist, a jeweller” he explained, “and everything was sort of tactile and 3D, so this is kind of a new venture for me and I’m thoroughly enjoying it,” he said of his 2D debut.

There’s a sense of joy in most of his works, be they three-dimensional, or two. Clocks aren’t meant to measure time, really, so much as to make light of it; crows – if indeed the birds depicted in his recent works are of the Corvine family – aren’t meant to fly, so much as make us ask how flight is even possible.

Purposeful whimsy might be a good phrase to capture the spirit of Bristol’s work.

He’s especially excited to have his paintings featured. For someone who picked up the brush and spatula such a short time ago, he has created pieces that are innovative and captivating. You can’t help trying to imagine the world these creatures might inhabit – a world that’s an expression of Bristol’s own imagination.

“I seem to channel something when I’m painting,” he said. “It’s something that happens, and I can lose two or three hours in a second, and almost come-to and it’s done. It’s all intuitive in that sense.”

Intuitive, but worked with an almost sculptural passion. For Bristol the process is as important as what emerges out of it. “As far as the paintings go, I was never a lover of flat images. I always wanted to do something to those flat paintings, so that said, in this batch, I work in texture.”

His paintings are built up in many layers, Bristol explained, using just about any material that comes to hand. He listed paint, caulking material, gyprock mud, even tar as ingredients he uses to change the ‘contours’ of his paintings ‘until I get something that I like.”

Morgan Bristol’s art will be featured at Rainforest Arts, 9781 Willow Street, Chemainus, in July and August. The gallery is open from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily. More information at RainforestArts.ca or info@rainforestarts.ca.

Asked if the birds depicted on his canvases were crows, Bristol replied, “Could be,” and laughed. “It’s a hybrid, definitely a hybrid, open to interpretation.” Come see for yourself and take some flights of serious fancy interpreting his works. His July 1 opening will feature live music and, of course, Bristol himself.

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CRA Chooses new Board for 2019-2020

The Chemainus Residents Association chose board members for 2019-2020 at their Annual General Meeting, held June 3 at St. Michael’s Anglican Church hall.

About 30 people attended the meeting, and nominated a new six-member board. Lia Versaevel, Bernie Jones, Lana Halme and Craig Spence, who were already board member, will be joined by Lorraine Taylor and Carolyn Jerome.

No vote was necessary, as up to nine people can sit on the CRA board. Positions and roles will be determined at an inaugural board meeting.

The meeting also approved a motion requiring board nominees at future AGMs to be CRA members for at least six months before the meeting.

Chair Lia Versaevel acknowledged several guests: Nanaimo – North Cowichan MLA Doug Routley; Doug Fenton Islands Trust trustee for Thetis Island; Kate Marsh, Councillor with the Municipality of North Cowichan; and Sybille Sanderson, Emergency Coordinator with the Cowichan Valley Regional District.

Marsh made a presentation on a Climate Action and Energy Plan for North Cowichan (story upcoming); Sanderson did a presentation on Emergency Preparedness (story upcoming).

“Thank you for being here this evening,” Versaevel said. She also had a special note of thanks for people who served on the outgoing board, but are stepping down: Webster Parker, Mary Dolan and Don Merwin.

Jones noted that the board can invite people to join them, if there are fewer than nine board members sitting, a step that might be taken as issues emerge and new voices and talents are needed.

In her report, Versaevel recapped a busy year for the CRA:

  • following up on the winter storm that hammered Vancouver Island in December;
  • attending North Cowichan council meetings, and responding to issues of concern to Chemainus;
  • monitoring and advocating for better air quality in Chemainus;
  • re-establishing a CRA Land Use & Planning Committee;
  • supporting initiatives to increase child care funding and services.

“It’s also been encouraging that, when we’ve held fundraising events, like the one we did at the Riot Brew Pub on St. Patrick’s Day, that we’ve had a great turnout, and that we were able to talk a lot about what we do as a local committee in terms of keeping issues alive and following through on concerns of local land-owners and residents,” Versaevel said.

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Dandelions ‘eulogized’ by Rainforest featured artist


American philosopher and naturist Ralph Waldo Emerson eulogized weeds as plants ‘whose virtues have not been discovered.

It’s in that spirit that Artist Diana Durrand portrays the common dandelion (Taraxacum Officinale), using bold paintings, delicate drawings and elegant sculptures, all intended to override our entrenched suburban bias against this much maligned species.

Her tribute, 100 Sleeping Dandelions, will be on display at Rainforest Arts, Chemainus, B.C. where Diana Durrand will be Featured Artist  for the months of March and April.

“From root to flower the dandelion is an edible, useful plant, its medicinal properties common knowledge among herbalists the world over,” Durrand says.

Yet, universally categorized as a noxious weed by homeowners and gardeners, the dandelion is mown down, poisoned and uprooted whenever it pops up on North American lawns, its hardy, prolific and incredibly adaptable nature the only things keeping the species from eradication.

“With this eclectic body of work my goal is to represent the many aspects of the dandelion I have experienced, from my earliest delights as a child, to the nihilistic adult attitude that has been cultivated by the home & garden industry,” Durrand says.

“I’m hoping viewers can tap into some of their own childhood memories of picking, smelling, tasting and exchanging dandelions.”

Is the dandelion an ‘invasive species’, introduced to North America and the rest of the world by the planet’s most pervasive invader, European Homo Sapiens; or is it a hardy, totally edible plant that has adapted to its new environments and flourished against all odds, to the benefit of human kind?

100 Sleeping Dandelions will shed some golden light on that question. You can preview the works at DianaDurrand.com

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Artist draws viewers Into the Stillness

Arts & Culture

Who knows where the wellsprings of creativity might be found? Growing up on a farm near the hamlet of Carlea, Saskatchewan, Patt Scrivener used to cycle to spot where a culvert flowed under the Canadian National Railway tracks, forming a pond that stayed throughout the summer. It was her ‘secret place,’ where she could go and ‘reflect’.

Into the Stillness, her feature exhibit at Rainforest Arts, which runs from Jan. 11 to Feb. 28, reminds her of that place, which is to say, even if it’s not the sole source of inspiration, it’s certainly a tributary she can trace, inviting people to join in her meditations.

“Water, for me anyways, takes me to a place of calmness and stillness, and a place of inner reflection, and I would hope with the paintings, that people will be able to look into them and be able to go to that place themselves,” Scrivener said. “Into the Stillnessis about going on that journey to that quiet, reflective place.”

Getting there on canvas isn’t the same as jumping on your bike and pedaling down the road. In fact, Scrivener says her scenes are more a geography of mind than representations of actual places. Her techniques bear that out.

She rarely works from photographs, and her process isn’t representational. The first step she takes, confronted with whitespace, is to ‘activate the canvas’. “I work very freely and loosely to begin with,” she said. “It just means taking the canvas from pure, blank white to having some action-marks on it.”

Brushes, pencils, spatulas, scrapers – Scriveners’ ‘mark-making’ tool kit is just as likely to include implements you’d buy at Canadian Tire as Opus Art Supplies. That’s not to say she’s just spreading paint randomly. Before the paint goes down, she sets her intentions, bringing to mind what she wants to emerge. “Those things are going to start showing up, because you’re thinking about it and you’re putting down paint in such a way that it might lead to where you’re going.”

‘Might’ is the operative word. You have to have a lot of faith in the process, and a willingness to let go. Asked if the process is sort of like jumping out of an airplane, without a parachute, hoping one will materialize, she said: “That would be a pretty good analogy.” The trick is to ‘not worry about the results,’ trust in the process, and have some fun pushing paint around, believing what you’re looking for will emerge.

She calls it ‘getting into the flow.’

“Once I get the canvas covered in lots of information, I start homing into my intuition to see if I see something, or a feeling, and then I start developing the painting based on that.” The artist’s intentions materialize through a process that opens up to their possibilities.  “I believe that the paintings come through me, if I allow it and that’s a lot about allowing, and trusting, and believing, and allowing you to get into that flow state.”

Scrivener is the featured artist at Rainforest Arts – 9871 Willow Street, Chemainus in the Coastal Community Credit Union building – from Jan. 11 through to the end of February. Rainforest Arts is open seven days a week, 11a.m. to 4p.m. She will be holding an artist’s talk Jan 17 at 11 a.m., and demos Jan. 17 and Feb. 14 from 12:30 to 3 p.m. (in the Coastal Community Credit Union). More at RainforestArts.caor 250-246-4861.

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Pitch for Arts & Culture Centre made by CVCAS

It’s time for the rubber to hit the road, or rather, brushes to meet big-picture canvas, for supporters of an Arts & Cultural Centre in Chemainus.

Spearheaded by the Chemainus Valley Cultural Arts Society Past President Peggy Grigor, who has talked to just about anyone who would listen, the concept of an A&CC will be put the test at a March 6, 7 p.m. meeting in the Chemainus Legion Hall, with a pitch to people with the skills, persuasiveness and drive to make the dream come true, to get behind the initiative.

“All the people I’ve talked to have told me that they love the idea, and that they are in support of it,” Grigor told MIF. “So now we’re asking them to step up with us, and make it happen together.” More to the point, Grigor will be looking for people to volunteer for a board that will be formed to continue pressing forward with a project proponents say will benefit not only Mural Town, but the whole Cowichan Valley Regional District. Continue reading “Pitch for Arts & Culture Centre made by CVCAS”

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Fred Durrand, Veteran

A lot of people in Chemainus know Fred Durrand, my father-in-law. At 93, he’s slowed down some, but still shoulders his pack a few times each week and makes the kilometre-and-a-half trek into town to do his shopping. Fred’s always busy, always out-and-about.

So I thought it would be appreciated, especially as Remembrance Day approaches, to attach some backstory to the amiable, dignified, gentle man who is so kindly treated at the grocery story checkout, the pharmacy and everywhere else he goes in town.

Fred was born in Revelstoke, BC. When you see him sitting in our front yard, his daily pint of warm ale to hand, watching the sun sail over Mount Brenton, or sink behind it, you know he’s reminded of his youth hiking in the mountainous backcountry of the Selkirks, or ski jumping on the lower slope of Mount Revelstoke. Many of Fred’s best stories are from his early Revelstoke days.

But the event that shaped him as a young man was World War II. He enlisted at 18 years-old, fooling the recruiting officer by memorizing the eye chart before taking his physical. He wanted to be a pilot, but when he was rejected for that duty, signed on as a dispatch motorcycle rider. He remembers most the camaraderie of the war, the characters he rode with, made friends with, socialized with.

Without a doubt, though, the most important story of all was his flirtatious encounter with a young Dutch woman Josie Gaarenstroom, the woman who would eventually come to Canada, leaving her family in Amsterdam to marry the man she loved.

Eventually Fred and Josie would have two daughters – Johanna and Diana; he would embark on a career in municipal administration – he worked in Revelstoke’s city hall for many years, then moved to the Coast to become Administrator of Central Saanich; then retire to Victoria, and – two-and-a-half years ago – join us in the move the Chemainus.

Every year Fred attends Remembrance Day services on Nov. 11. His comrades have almost all passed away, but his memories of them, their determination, discipline, sacrifices and antics are vivid. Fred is a man who cherishes his own stories and thinks deeply about the history he’s lived. During his minute’s silence he honours those young soldiers. But his reminisces are always counterbalanced by a deep sense of sadness and anger at the viciousness, futility and senselessness of war.

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A fair strategy for dealing with feral cats

There’s a seeming contradiction in the mandate of organizations like Cowichan Cat Rescue and a recently formed group called Chemainus CATastrophe, which look out for the welfare of feral cats: on the one hand, they love these shy animals, feed them, get them to the vet when they are injured or sick and find foster homes for their kittens; on the other, their long-term goal is to humanely depopulate and eliminate the colonies where ferals congregate.

Dee Kinnee of CATastrophe said the life of a feral cat is often nasty, brutish and short, an existence foisted on them by humans, who for one reason or another have either not been responsible pet owners, or who have been outright callous, abandoning domestic cats to an outdoor life on the fringes of our communities.

“It’s pretty rough. A lot of cats die from starvation if a colony’s not managed, and that’s not a nice way to go. They have to scrabble for existence, and they’re terrified of humans, so they spend a lot of time in fear.” Add to that the possibility of disease, predation, and accelerated aging – feral cats live two to three years – and what emerges is a portrait of abuse for animals that have the imprint of domestication in their genes, but have been lost or outcast into back allies and vacant lots.

Continue reading “A fair strategy for dealing with feral cats”

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McMonos an artsy wrap for fast-food

Chemainus artist sees kimonos in fry boxes – Diana Durrand, while out walking her dog one day, came across a McDonald’s french fry box that had been opened and flattened. It reminded her of a kimono. From that moment of inspiration 15 unique works of ‘McMono’ art, which will be at the Excellent Frameworks gallery in August, have sprung. The McMono show opening is August 12 from 1 to 3 p.m. at Excellent Frameworks, 28 Station Street, Duncan.