Tag: aurora-borealis

Ken Kirkby – Warrior Painter

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excerpt

For the first time since he’d been a kid, Ken had no deadlines or other
people’s needs to accommodate. He could sit, smoke and enjoy the flavours
of the sea air, the sound of the gulls, the calm mornings filled with a distant
hum of passing cars filtering down from the Old Island Highway. The
constant rhythm of waves on the pebble beach soothed him as he read late
into the night. The mental kinks slowly started to release.
The luxury of pursuing my thoughts in an academic fashion, waking
when I chose and stopping when I liked was heaven. Initially I was
spinning from Karen’s rejection and had to regiment my mind or the
pain would have driven me crazy. The pain was still there, but now I
was no longer hiding from my thoughts and I took pleasure in the way
one thought could morph into something else incredibly interesting,
but totally unrelated.
We humans fancy that we have evolved this elevated thing called
‘reason’ when compared to ‘sense’—that is, coming from the senses,
which has been developing over millions of years—reasoning is in the
kindergarten stages. When we talk of premonitions, or gut feel, that
also relates to our senses. We have survived from the beginning as
single cell organisms to this time and place, no thanks to reason, but
through our senses.
When Ken Kirkby moved to Bowser at the end of 2001, he was seeking
complete anonymity. His landlords, Ken and Jeanine Harris, were pleasant
and helpful but respectful of his desire for privacy. If Kirkby appeared in the
yard, they were quick to open a conversation, but other than that, they didn’t
intrude. Over the months, the three became friends as well as neighbours
and the Harris’s encouraged him as he established his programme to gain
back his health.
Ken Harris had retired from a high-pressure career in Vancouver. He
was a physically active person, who kept an eye on the community and
occupied his enquiring mind through study. He enjoyed engaging Kirkby
in conversations, which bordered on debates, and ranged far and wide. As
spring approached and the weather warmed, the two Kens would sit together
in the morning sipping their coffee, and sharing Kirkby’s cigarettes (Harris
claimed he had given up smoking) while discussing whatever surfaced …

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Ken Kirkby – Warrior Painter

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years old, they were taken south and lost to their families as they were given
an education that could not be applied to their northern way of life.
The soft voice of the Grandmother ended the story by saying, “Perhaps
it would be good to have Isumataq.”
Isumataq, Ken learned, also meant many things—big, or spokesperson—
but the most accurate definition seemed to be “an object or a person in
whose presence wisdom might reveal itself.”
This was the exact point at which he discovered the meaning of his
life in Canada—the unknown purpose for which he’d embarked on this
mysterious and gruelling quest.
The idea that wisdom was a thing that existed on its own and could
only show its value if one was prepared to allow that to happen, was
electrifying. I felt a driving urgency to gather as much information
as possible—a burning need to disseminate that knowledge to those
who could not otherwise experience it for themselves. I had a definable
purpose.
The time came when the Grandmother took Ken aside. She sat on the
floor in front of him and pronounced, “In our mind you are Inuk. You are
learning our language and eating our food and you are a part of us. Our wish
is that you will stay with us, but you tell us that you have to go back to your
world, and that is as it must be. It is our wish that you tell the people in your
world of the many things you have seen—all of the things you know.”
And that was when Ken made the promise to the Grandmother that
would shape, drive and guide him for the next thirty plus years of his life.
I felt I was equipped with the knowledge of something unique. The
spirit of Isumataq had become a living thing in my heart! And as an
artist I had absorbed stunning material at the cellular level. It would
never leave me.
By his own calculations, Ken spent thirty-one years, several million
dollars, ended a marriage and lost numerous friends to his fixation on
keeping his promise to bring the story of the desperate plight of these
indigenous peoples to the 90% of Canadians who lived, totally unaware, in
the southern portion of the nation.

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https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CB8W4CG

Ken Kirkby, A Painter’s Quest for Canada

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sexual gratification of a bunch of perverts. If this happened to your family,
wouldn’t you want someone to care? Wouldn’t you want someone to
raise a stink? Wouldn’t you want someone to help? That’s all I’m trying
to do. Apparently, to my surprise, it seems this painting was the two by
four needed to apply to the side of your head to get you to pay attention.
My job is to announce to you what has gone on and what continues to
go on. I’m robbing you of your innocence. I’m not going to give you the
chance to say, ‘If only I had known’. Now you know. What are you going
to do about it?”
The mood of the public changed. People began calling to agree with
him. Battle lines were drawn and half – or perhaps even the magic fiftyone
percent – agreed with him.
Ken spent an hour or more each day, at the Columbus Centre, talking
to people who lined up to see the painting and talk to the artist. Thousands
of people came – far more than had attended his opening night.
Ken finished each of his stories with a plea for help. He urged people
not to simply believe his stories, but to investigate and make up their own
minds. And if they discovered that what he said was true, let the government
know how they felt. This was what democracy was about – and he
was appalled at how lightly most people took the democracy they lived in.
“No one that is born here really takes it seriously,” he told them. “Do you
know how many rivers of blood were spilled to have what we have here?
How can we pretend to be this thing that we say we are when you can’t
bother to inform yourselves about what goes on in your own country?
How can you be a nation without knowing what goes on in your own
backyard?”
Ken received a phone call from Wayne Morrison, the executive director
of the Friends of Canadian Broadcasting and the stepson of Northrop
Frye. Could they meet, he asked? Ken invited him to the studio.
Wayne was a dapper and polished gentleman who expressed fascination
with the furor caused by the flag painting. The CBC was about to
suffer large financial cuts, which would seriously endanger its existence,
he said, and he wanted Ken’s help. He wanted to reproduce the flag painting
in full page magazine advertisements with Ken standing beside it
holding a paintbrush with the quote, “I haven’t been this mad in twenty
years.” Below that would be the story of the CBC cutbacks.
Ken said yes, but he was not prepared to use the painting. He would
create another similar one instead. When Diane asked why, he said, “I’m
going to give it to Canada and I don’t want it reproduced. It’s going to go
to the country pure.”
“You’re going to give it away? Good lord, we don’t have enough money to
do what we’re doing and you’re going to give paintings away! Why are you
going to give something to the government? They already take too much!”

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https://www.amazon.com/dp/0981073573

Prairie Roots

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ridiculously low prices; even the children may not have fetched
much, being offspring of immigrants. Life was indeed a struggle,
as the first four boys arrived into their care.
My initial memories of that farm include a vague vision of a gray
two-storey frame house and chickens all over the yard. The chickens
I remember looking at in some puzzlement, from an upstairs
bedroom window, and wondering as to their relationship to me. I
also remember the big blocks of “relief” cheese which mother sliced
on the kitchen table; however, I do not remember whether or not I
liked it. It seemed to me that the weather was always sunny, perhaps
because we were only let out when the sun shone.
My most vivid early memory is associated with the 1938
Beeston school Christmas concert at which time I was three and a
half years old, having been born in May of 1935. I remember not
the concert itself, having slept through most of it, but being awakened
in my Uncle Mike’s arms by the noise of Santa’s arrival. Obviously
my name was called and my Uncle hastened forward with
me to see Santa, who scared me half to death before presenting me
with a red toy truck. I have liked trucks and have been leery of
long-haired men ever since!
We lived in our home until the spring of 1940 at which time my
parents bought a 320 acre tract of virgin land from the Hudson Bay
Company, seven and one half miles north of Hubbard. Where is Hubbard,
you ask? Half way between Goodeve and Ituna or, to locate it another
way, about 100 miles northeast of Regina. The new land had not seen a
plough. The neighbors had pastured cattle on it over the years, otherwise
not a tree had been cut nor a stone picked. All this was about to change.
But first a house had to be built to …

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https://www.amazon.com/dp/0980897920

Ken Kirkby – Warrior Painter

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The Promise that Propelled a Life
“But I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep…”
(Robert Frost, Poet)
~~
Ken worked at a number of jobs on the lower mainland but never gave up
his fixation on the north. It is unlikely his sense of destiny remotely hinted
that the path he was on would directly consume thirty years and several
fortunes, the majority of which would be spent in one of the major cities of
the world. It was enough that his mind was filled with his dream of this vast
and empty land.
Many thousands of Canadians made their home in Vancouver and
environs, and it frustrated him that he’d not found anyone who had been to
the Arctic, or even expressed more than a passing interest in that inaccessible
land that made up one-third of Canada.
The city was not a good fit for him, and within a year, he was leaving
it behind. He worked for several seasons on the construction of the WAC
Bennett Dam at Hudson’s Hope—an experience that has stood him in
good stead both through the workplace challenges he met, and the lasting
connection he made with WAC Bennett himself.
This odd association resulted in a piece of useful advice offered during
Ken’s long battle on behalf of the Inuit. The Premier of British Columbia
recommended that if all else failed, Ken should practice “Legislation by
exhaustion—the last man standing wins.” Over the years, Ken found it fit
his style admirably.
While working in Hudson’s Hope, he fell in love with a beautiful First
Nations girl and crumbled in broken-hearted despair when she was taken in
a tragic accident on the eve of their wedding. Tormented and withdrawn, he
took refuge in the compelling images imprinted into his brain by Francisco’s
tales of the Canadian northland. These seemed to offer some promise of
respite and became the catalyst that drove him into the Arctic. By the time
he was twenty-five, he had lived several years with the Inuit and travelled
by foot, boat and dogsled from Coppermine, NWT to Baffin Island and
back. In the process, he gave his promise to an Inuit grandmother …

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Ken Kirkby, A Painter’s Quest for Canada

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so that the next morning there they would be – mysteriously having arrived
out of nowhere.
Salvador thought it was a marvellous plan, but his reason for the visit
was to arrange a meeting with Albert Reichmann. It had to be planned
several months in advance, but it could be done.
At last! Ken stipulated that the meeting take place at the Reichmann
home on an afternoon when Salvador and his crew were working in the
garden. “And this is what I want you to say: ‘Mr. Albert, there’s the man
in the garden – the man I told you about. He’s been sent.’ Just use those
words.”
“Why would I say that?” Salvador asked.
“Because that’s what I want you to say.”
“Why?”
“I don’t want to tell you.”
“What do you mean?”
“I promise I’ll tell you when the meeting is over, but those are the
words that have to be used.”
“Give me some idea about why those particular words.”
“Right now I can’t, but I just know that those are the right words.
They’re magic words. Merlin put them in my ear.”
Salvador promised to say the exact words, but as Ken got up to continue
painting and looked back at him, smiling enigmatically, he admitted
to himself that he had no idea whether he would say those words – or
indeed, what he would say or do.
The fundraising campaign was a flop. Most of the corporations sent no
reply and the two that came were gracious refusals. “Send more letters,”
Ken said.
“But they’re not working,” Diane protested.
“It doesn’t matter. Send more anyway!”
The Canadian Cancer Society sent a letter asking for his help in their
own fundraising campaign. Would he donate a painting of an Inukshuk
for a raffle? He and the Premier of Ontario, David Peterson, would pick
the winner at a large media event. Ken saw an opportunity for more publicity
and cheerfully said yes.
On the last day of the campaign, he met with Peterson, an affable, witty
man who was also an art lover. He told Ken that he and his wife had attended
his show at the Columbus Centre, but by the time they had arrived
every painting was sold.
Ken invited him to his studio for a private showing – and a guarantee
that some paintings there would not have a sold sticker. A few days later,
Peterson and his wife arrived and lingered in the studio, taking in the
large paintings and the sketches of Isumataq. They picked out a canvas
and, while Diane and Peterson’s wife selected a frame, …

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https://www.amazon.com/dp/0981073573

Ken Kirkby, A Painter’s Quest for Canada

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He had more canvases made that together measured twenty-five feet,
eight inches long by two feet high. By anyone’s standard, this was an immense
painting: by Ken’s yardstick, it was a miniature. However, the size
was ideal, as it allowed him to sketch in every detail and nuance he wanted
to convey.
He worked eighteen hours a day, but time had ceased to have meaning.
He physically barricaded the studio to discourage visitors. Several weeks
later, when the large model was complete, he started to calculate what it
would take to paint a portrait that was twelve feet high one hundred fiftytwo
feet long. He estimated that he would need thirty-eight panels twelve
feet high by four feet long, butted seamlessly together.
He had immense issues to deal with. First, he had to find a supplier
who could stretch canvases of that size. He also had to keep Rocco supplied
with paintings, and he had to complete them on time. And, he had
to finish the Reichmann and Yellowknife Airport paintings. In addition,
he was once again doing presentations at schools. Common sense told
him to say no to those requests, yet he felt an obligation to talk to the
children – to fire their minds with dreams. Although he should have been
tired, he was bursting with energy. It was as though the furnace of his
heart was being stoked with a fuel that burned endlessly – a fuel more
potent than food, drink or rest.
He could find no one who would stretch the canvases. Those he approached
thought he was mad. He talked to the company that supplied
their framing material, explaining that he needed stretchers double kiln
dried so they wouldn’t warp. They also had to be bevelled so that when
the panels came together the seams would disappear.
Ken wanted all the materials he used to be made in Canada. It wasn’t
possible. No one in Canada made canvas, so he ordered several rolls from
Brazil, each roll weighing hundreds of pounds. He also had to import
brushes.
With leftover canvas from the Reichmann painting, he and Diane
stretched the first panel using the device he had invented that was a combination
of canvas stretching pliers, Vise-Grips, and a torque wrench. Every
part of the canvas had to be stretched to precisely the same tension.
The canvas was perfect when he could lay it on the floor, toss a coin
on it ,and have it bounce off like a bullet. If it wasn’t right he started over
again – and he began afresh many times.
Keeping in mind his insight about quantifying the painting, he made a
precise list of every item he needed. How much glue would he need? How
much gesso for four coats on each of thirty-eight panels? How much paint?
Ken met with Mr. Stevenson, of Stevenson and Company paint manufacturers,
“I think I’m going to need two tons of paint,” Ken said.

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Ken Kirkby – Warrior Painter

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lobsters and many varieties of fish. Francisco would light a fire on the
rocky floor and the smoke would rise through the gap overhead while
we prepared a feast. Monsieur Desjardines thought this secluded spot
was heaven. We’d spend the day fishing, eating lobster over an open
fire and sharing stories. There was something deliciously daring about
being in a place feared by the locals—if the weather blew up a storm,
as it could easily do, the magical hiding spot could well become a
watery tomb.
Ken’s young life was idyllic but Portugal was changing. At the close
of three decades in power, the once-benevolent dictatorship of Antonio
de Oliveria Salazar was losing favour. In an effort to maintain control as
opposition coalesced behind the dissident Henrique Galvoa, Salazar’s
secret police grew more and more vicious, and by 1956, the country was
under siege.
Lisbon was the kind of city that attracted unusual people: the brilliant,
the demonic and those who drifted on the fringes of society. Spies abounded.
Ordinary people were recruited to inform on their friends and neighbours,
and paid according to the value of their information. Many innocent people
were ruined and the ensuing chaos heightened Ken’s determination to get
himself and his family out of the country.
Although his employees revered Kirkby, Sr. his position as a major
industrialist was unpopular with the authorities. It was no secret he had ties
with the exiled Galvoa. The contents of their ongoing correspondence was
less public and this was a double-edged sword: the Salazar supporters were
suspicious of his connection with the agitator, but totally unaware of the
extent to which Kirkby, Sr. was being kept apprised of problems brewing
within the country.
By early 1957, the Kirkby business empire was showing signs of
imploding under the intensified attentions of the secret service. Sixteen-year-
old Ken had an extensive network of friends at all social levels. When
he realised that time was running out for his dad he managed, with their
help, to orchestrate his father’s escape via a private plane in the gloom of an
early morning with government enforcers hard on their heels.
Monsieur Desjardines arranged the necessary paperwork for Kirkby, Sr.
to enter Canada. However, it took many months and the official intervention

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https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CB8W4CG

Ken Kirkby – Warrior Painter

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I’m aware that you are frequently faced with idiots and liars and
scoundrels but, in telling this story, I hope to explain that I am none of these
things. You need to know there are people in this world who actually do
give their entire lives to something bigger than themselves.”
“We have an hour,” she replied.
Fifty-nine minutes later, Ken had told the story of Isumataq and of the
cause of the Inuit. “That’s the preamble—now here’s the paperwork,” he
said, sliding neat folders of material across the table to her. “Here’s how the
money came in and here’s how it went out. For myself, I’ve always lived a
Spartan life. I’ve no real interest in possessions or material things. Money is
simply a necessary tool, like a hammer or a screwdriver—or a paintbrush.”
Some time later the Judge looked up and announced, “You don’t owe
a penny, Mr. Kirkby.”
“I know. If I did, I would pay it.”
When he emerged from the meeting, Ken felt as though his feet were
gliding above the rain-washed pavement. It had been worth the battle and
his sense of justification made him giddy. Karen was out of town again, but
when he phoned to share the good news, her bitter response was “Well, I
guess rules just don’t apply to you.”
He spent the evening in company with his long-time friend and fishing
buddy, Ron Gruber. Since Ken’s return to Vancouver, Ron had watched his
friend’s relationship deteriorate. He was increasingly concerned as he saw
Ken slide steadily into that solitary and dark place from which there seems
no escape. Ron was one of the few people in the world Ken could talk to
about personal matters and he told him of his concern that Karen seemed
determined to alienate her colleagues. As he put it, “It’s like watching
someone you care for deeply move dangerously close to the edge of the
cliff, and there’s no way to save her.” He harkened back to earlier situations
when Karen had set herself on collision course, and then dragged others
with her into disaster.
It was not Ken’s nature to give up without a fight, and it took several
months more before he would accept the end of their relationship. He’d
committed to change his life for Karen and he meant to do everything
humanly possible to retrieve the closeness he’d once had with her. But even
that steely resolve wilted when, before leaving on another business trip,
Karen voiced her opinion that they had nothing whatsoever in common…

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https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CB8W4CG

Ken Kirkby, A Painter’s Quest for Canada

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A painting that goes in hockey arenas, that is toured across the country
from one end to the other, telling the story.
Then a whole flood of ideas and memories came into my mind crystal
clear. Grandmother doing her dance and her song in the winter – becoming
mesmerized and overcome by heat and emotion – going outside and the
Northern Lights roaring overhead – and she came out and stood beside me
and put her arm in mine and told me that those were the spirits of her ancestors
dancing. And she sensed the difficulties I was having over the loss of the
two women that I had loved so profoundly. She had said, “It’s a good thing
to let them go and dance”.
During her song and her story, there had been the need of an Isumataq
– a person or an object in whose presence wisdom might show itself. The
painting would be called Isumataq. And the dream driving all of this was
Nunavut.
That was the moment in which the whole thing exploded in one clear vision.
It must have been working quietly in my brain all this time and now
here it was – all together. Now it poured out and it all came together like a
jigsaw puzzle – every piece moved into its proper slot.
Covered in sweat, Ken’s body shook with nervous energy. His whole
being thrilled and he felt himself to be outside his body – completely
outside space and time. The vision was so clear, so compelling, that it
possessed him. He knew it would come to own him – night and day – and
he didn’t care. He gave himself up to it. He paced back and forth, details
of Isumataq whirling in his mind and dropping into place like numbers
on a slot machine.
He drove home that night with a new excitement coursing through
him. When he told Marsha he was going to create a giant painting on
the scale of the Sistine Chapel, she smiled and shook her head. In the
morning he told Diane who began to plan a studio renovation to accommodate
such an enormous painting. While they were hunched over the
sketch, Salvador appeared in the doorway, a bottle of brandy in his hand,
and a smile on his face.
“I have the equipment, the idea, the staff, and the availability of rock.
How would you like a giant Inukshuk in your studio?”
Three days later, Salvador pulled up in a new Saab, followed by a flatbed
truck – groaning under the weight of massive blocks of granite – and
two extended cab pickups loaded with burly men. At two in the morning,
after hours of heavy labour, a seven-foot tall Inukshuk towered over
the studio. Salvador waved his arm at it like a magician wielding a wand.
“There. Is it to your liking?”
“It’s perfect,” Ken said.
Salvador’s next project was an Inukshuk at the Columbus Centre!
Dragging Ken and Joseph Carrier to the lobby, he gestured grandly…

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https://www.amazon.com/dp/0981073573