Tag: inuits

Ken Kirkby – Warrior Painter

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I took my rowboat and paddled out from shore to start the process of
familiarization. I observed the mouth of the creeks, the curve of the
beaches, the blend of driftwood and rock, the colour of the sky. I met
people with aircraft and begged rides off them. And, do you know?
This vast island is totally different than you might think. At one time the
bulk of the land between the seashore and the mountains was actively
farmed. The climate was favourable, and after clearing, the land was
fertile.
If you walk through it—there are still roads in the process of being
reclaimed by nature—you’d be amazed at how much of it had been
cultivated. Some of the parcels were very large, others just enough
to maintain a family or two. Then along came the Boer War, which
consumed a bunch of the young men, and then World Wars I & II
finished the job. Without the next generation to continue what had been
started, the forest grew back, roofs caved in, machinery rusted.
Once I got the feel of it, I decided I’d try to tell the story of this part
of the country—not the history, not the ‘big’ story, but the sense I had
of the size and shape of the island. The wind wracked trees and snowcrusted
mountains stirred my blood. And I found I was once again a
painter.
By the end of 2002, Ken was producing paintings to his satisfaction
and was pleased to find the attitude of the island galleries more amenable
than he’d experienced when he first returned to Vancouver. He came across
galleries dealing in second-market sales where a Kirkby oil of a solitary
Inukshuk standing proud on the tundra, or a parade of Inuksuit backed with
Arctic snows would be on display. He’d introduce himself and was pleased
to see that his name was recognised. He’d tell them that he was now in
business on the west coast. Might they be interested in fresh pieces?
The reaction was always positive. But when he laid out his canvases of
coppery grasses, water-worn granite boulders, wind-bowed trees or perhaps
a lonely lighthouse blinking eerily behind a rising ocean fog, he was met
with consternation.
“What’s this? Where are the icebergs? The Inuksuit? We can’t sell
these. That’s not you.”

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Ken Kirkby, A Painter’s Quest for Canada

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Keith nodded. “Well, that’s something I want to talk to you about. I can
help you and I want you to help me.” His room bookings for the following
year, when the lodge would be completed, were with Americans and
a handful of Europeans – not a single Canadian on the reservation list.
“You seem to have a great capacity for publicity and getting media attention,
and I’d like you to help me. In return, you can come and stay here,
have the use of airplanes – anything you want. But I need you to help me
to get people to come.”
Ken thought about the problem and suggested a slide show in his studio
with multiple projectors. He enlisted the help of Avril and Roberto;
they commandeered Tergey, the young Norwegian pilot who worked for
the lodge.
As Keith had predicted it wasn’t long before they heard the sound of
an approaching float plane that glided to a landing on the lake. It pulled
up to the dock and two men stepped out. They shook hands and asked
Ken what he was doing at the lodge. “Fishing with my son,” he said, and
excused himself, explaining that it had been a long trip and they were
tired.
They crawled into their sleeping bags, pulled caribou hides over them,
and drifted blissfully off to sleep. Too soon, a hand shaking his arm woke
him. “There’s someone I want you to meet,” Keith said.
Joan Scottie, a reserved and beautiful Inuk woman, had been born
about two miles down Ferguson Lake. “Joan has been a friend for years,”
Keith said. “She’s here to help us finish building the lodge. She is the most
capable human being you will ever encounter. There isn’t anything she
can’t do. She was born in an igloo and is a computer expert. She is also
the finest hunter and fisher you will ever meet.”
Joan was also a photography buff. She took Ken to her hut near Keith’s
home and showed him a collection of photographs. Her Scot and Inuk,
father, Basil Scottie, who was almost totally deaf and dumb, glared fiercely
at the camera. Another photo showed her family, two men, and seven
women, standing formally in a row, dressed in bleached white hides with
intricate designs.
“I think I have been where these pictures were taken,” Ken said, studying
them. “But I can’t be sure.”
“Yes,” she said. “They were taken near here and you were there.”
“How do you know?”
“I heard.”
“Who told you?”
“Old folks.”
“I had an incredible experience – a horrible experience that never left
me. It was somewhere in this region – a lot of people died.”
“Yes, I know.”

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Ken Kirkby, A Painter’s Quest for Canada

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“I mean no disrespect, whatsoever,” Ken said. “I know the symbol well.
But that is the wall.”
Albert exchanged a few words with Leon and then nodded. The painting
would go on that wall. Then Ken and Leon tackled the problem of
hanging the massive painting on a marble wall. The maintenance staff
concluded they would have to drill into the ceiling beams and suspend
the painting from thin stainless steel wires.
They hung the painting after business hours. Ken invited the media.
He had the panels delivered to the lobby where he bolted them together.
Salvador and his staff came along to help. Many members of the young
professionals group also arrived on the scene. The media asked how much
the painting had sold for. “No comment,” Ken said.
“Was it a lot of money?”
“No comment.”
“How did you contact Mr. Reichmann?”
“No comment.”
“You’re an artist,” one of them said. “How do you know how to do
all these other things? Artists don’t know how to be entrepreneurs. Who
helps you?”
“That’s a big question,” Ken said. “It’s a spiritual matter. I don’t wish
to discuss it.”
“What do you mean it’s a spiritual matter?”
“Just that. I get my knowledge, inspiration, and advice from a higher
authority and beyond that, I don’t want to discuss it. But, I will say one
thing – my advisor is Mr. Albert Reichmann.”
“Yes,” Albert said, when a reporter asked. “I am honoured to be Mr.
Kirkby’s advisor. He is doing wonderful work.”
Those few words gave Ken the credibility he’d been looking for. He had
achieved what his father had always had – the power to command respect
and attention wherever he went.
Later that night, when he was one of the last to leave, he paused to look
at the painting that he had envisioned hanging in that space so many
times. It looked exactly as he had imagined. It was in perfect proportion
to the immense lobby. It wasn’t until one walked closer to it that one felt
the full impact of its size.
His greatest debt was to Salvador, who had arranged the meeting, but
when he told him that he wanted to give him several paintings, he refused.
Ken painted several canvases regardless and delivered them to his home.
Before getting back to the task of Isumataq, Ken returned to the Arctic.
Keith Sharp, the burly Englishman, had moved to a parcel of land near
Rankin Inlet and extended an invitation. Ken included Michael as well as
Avril the photographer, and Roberto and Egidio, the filmmakers, in his
entourage; in mid-July, the somewhat motley crew – loaded down with…

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Ken Kirkby – Warrior Painter

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is this illusion…you and I can go for a walk wherever you choose and
I challenge you to show me where money grows. It is a man-made
convenience, but we have turned it into God and the almighty banks
into the churches.
Money in itself is a nonentity, a paper mirage. But if you understand
how it functions you realise currency can be artificially created—
MasterCard and Visa are good examples. It no longer needs to be
printed by the Mint. I wish people would realise it is only a tool, to be
used like any other implement, and no more mysterious.
As the two men worked, Harris proposed assorted schemes to make money.
These were discussed, dissected and for one reason or another, discarded
at the end of the workday. Perhaps, like crossword puzzles or Sudoku, they
served to keep the workers’ mental juices flowing.
~~
Ken Kirkby is a particularly fine cook and, having been raised in
Francisco’s kitchen, can turn the simplest ingredients into a dish to be
savoured and praised. As his circle of friends expanded, he resurrected his
long-dormant culinary skills.
Portuguese meals would not be complete without a bottle of fullbodied
red or crisp white on the table. When Ken left Portugal, he had been
selective as to what he took with him, but one of his prized possessions
then and now, is the family wine recipe dating back several centuries. He
continually has a batch on the go although he is a moderate drinker himself.
It was likely a day or so after a well-spiced supper of clams, shrimp and
prawns cooked in Kirkby’s special fish stock prepared from flounder, too
small in themselves to eat. While spreading topsoil for the eventual seeding
of the lawn, Harris says, “You know, Kenny, that’s a damn fine wine you
make. You could probably make a pile of money if you set yourself up to
produce and sell it.”
“Probably,” says Kirkby.
Harris does some mental calculations. “How much do you think you
could make?”
“Money, or wine?” Kirkby quips.
“You’ve got a few racks there—how much do you usually make?”

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Ken Kirkby, A Painter’s Quest for Canada

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excerpt

A short while later, a tall man came to the kitchen door. Salvador
greeted him and the two men talked quietly together for a few minutes.
Then Salvador pointed, and Ken heard him say, “This is the man I told
you about. He is the man who has been sent.”
Albert waved Ken toward him. “If you’ve been sent, you’d better come in.”
Ken shook his hand and entered the kitchen.
“Who sent you?” Albert asked.
“It isn’t a who; it’s a what. An idea sent me and the idea starts with
one human being asking another human being for one hour of his life to
listen to a story, and the story is of a man you may have some familiarity
with. His name is Lorenzo de Medici. Are you familiar with him?”
“Yes I am.”
“I want one hour of your life.”
Albert sat at the kitchen table, quiet and composed. Even his eyes were
still. His hands rested motionlessly on the tabletop, his fingers curled
comfortably inward.
Ken sat, took off his watch, and placed it on the table where he could
see the time ticking away. He told Albert his understanding of Lorenzo
de Medici’s life. He drifted away on his words, just as he had when he had
made his speech at the Columbus Centre. He lost himself in the intensity
of the moment – rushing down the white water of ideas like a kayaker
tumbling down a raging river.
“There are parts of that story I wasn’t familiar with,” Albert said, when
Ken had finished. “Where did you get your information?”
He told Albert about his birthday trip to Florence to see the statue of
David and how on another birthday his father had given him a beautifully
bound book of Michelangelo’s letters to Popes, kings and princes.
The letters, he told him, described his relationship to the Medicis in his
own words.
“So you are an artist?”
“I am a painter. Michelangelo was a sculptor who was made to paint.
I am a politician who is made to paint. I have a job to do, and I have a
mission to carry out that has to do with the people of the Arctic and the
soul of a nation. We in Canada wander around very confused as to our
identity. Our subjects of conversation are the weather, Quebec, and our
identity. I have found the soul of this nation, and in the process, I found
many wonderful stories and many wonderful symbols. At the same time,
I discovered hell on earth – hell is what is happening to those people. I
have been asked by the grandmothers to please tell the world about this.
The first thing I want to do is tell you about it.”
“Why would you want to tell me about it?”
“In Michelangelo’s time there were Popes, queens, and princes. There
were people who could sponsor great ideas.

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Ken Kirkby, A Painter’s Quest for Canada

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Ken called and told the story of Isumataq. He offered a painting for the
paper, clinching the deal by telling them that everyone involved in the
project would very likely win an award and be exposed in some way to
massive media coverage. He also threw in some dubious oratory that was
so over the top that many people laughed. “Don’t worry about this moment,”
he said. “One day you’ll be in paradise with me.” If they snickered
behind his back, he didn’t care because by the time he was done he had
bartered for every service he needed – ninety thousand dollars worth. His
friends called the money he had used to pay for the brochure “Ken dollars”
and it was a term that stuck.
Elias Vanvakis, another of the young professionals who was a successful
insurance broker, commissioned a small pencil drawing of an Inukshuk.
“I’ll give it to you,” Ken said.
“No, I want to buy it.”
“Why would you want to buy it?”
“You’re painting the largest Inukshuk – I want the smallest,” he said.
Ken pocketed the five hundred dollars Elias offered and drew an Inukshuk,
which he handed to him. A few weeks later, on Ken’s forty-fifth
birthday, Elias presented him with a small jeweller’s box. Inside was a
small gold pin, a perfect replica of the pencil drawing.
Ken pinned it to his shirt. Minutes later he was struck by an idea. A
larger version of the pin was exactly what the front cover of the brochure
needed – but not in gold paint of even gold leaf – a pure gold Inukshuk.
The pin inspired yet another idea. The nation’s highest honour for its
citizens was The Order of Canada. He wanted something even more prestigious
– an honour that was almost impossible to receive – The Order
of the Inukshuk. He ordered a dozen more from the jeweller who had
designed it.
Whenever someone asked about the pin, he smiled and inferred that
it was special and only a chosen few would ever have the honour of receiving
one. To Rocco he said, “Anyone who buys a ten thousand dollar
painting, gets one.”
Ken was invited to the Columbus Centre again to give the keynote
speech at a dinner honouring Premier Peterson. At the end of the speech
he was to give him a painting of an Inukshuk. But instead of doing a
simple presentation, he told the story of the Order of the Inukshuk –
that the pin was the result of a visionary flood of alcohol consumed in
the land of the midnight sun on June 21, the longest day of the year. He
explained that they were almost impossible to get and only a few very
special people would ever be aware of The Order of the Inukshuk. “They
come to certain people who are magic,” he said. “They come to people
like me. Everyone else has to fight for them.”

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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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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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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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