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From the Azores to Brockton Point
One of the first pieces of Coast Salish art to be installed in Stanley Park is a 14-foot (4.2 metre) bronze-cast cedar sculpture, the subject of Suzanne Fournier's Shore to Shore: The Art of Ts'uts'umutl Luke Marston (Harbour $26.95).
"Along with Susan Point's house portals and the Squamish Albert Yelton Pole,"; says Fournier, "Shore to Shore establishes the rightful place of the Coast Salish in Stanley Park, at a site which 9.5 million people visit each year, but one which has until recently displayed only northern-style totem poles.";
In her new book, Suzanne Fournier profiles First Nations artist, Luke Marston, who created the sculpture, and describes his journey to Portugal to research the work.
The title of the Brockton Point sculpture, Shore to Shore, references Marston's great-great-grandfather, Portuguese Joe Silvey, who sailed from the Azores Islands of Portugal to the West Coast of Canada in the mid-1800s.
Silvey and his mixed race family lived at Brockton Point, where the Coast Salish had lived for millennia.
The carving equally commemorates Silvey's two First Nations wives, therefore paying tribute to the largely unwritten history of mixed-culture families in Coastal B.C.
Silvey's first wife, Khaltinaht, was a Musqueam and Squamish noblewoman who died tragically early of TB.
Silvey's second wife, Kwatleematt (Lucy), was a Sechelt First Nation matriarch who was Marston's great-great-grandmother.
Lucy raised eleven children to adulthood and her second eldest child, Elizabeth, was the first registered birth of the child of white/aboriginal parents.
The sculpture rests on a 2.5-foothigh base of black-and-white Portuguese mosaic stone. It also includes images of seine nets, whaling harpoons and Pacific coast salmon.
According to Fournier, the three First Nations who claim the park as unceded Coast Salish territory [Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh] were consulted closely throughout the project.
A celebratory feast at the Musqueam Cultural Centre followed the formal April unveiling.
The (approximately) $1 million project had to be funded by the community.
It received one federal Legacies grant, which had to be matched. The Portuguese-Canadian community raised more than $300,000, and finally, just months from the unveiling date, Vancouver City Council, Parks Board and the three First Nations contributed some financial support.
Five of Suzanne Fournier's forty years of writing about First Nations topics were spent recording the creation of Marston's Stanley Park monument.
For Shore to Shore, Fournier accompanied Marston to his ancestors' village on the Azores where Portuguese Joe Silvey was raised to be a whaler.
The Shore to Shore statue has a literary heritage beyond Suzanne Fournier's book. Jean Barman uncovered the histories of Joe Silvey and the mixed-race families of Stanley Park in two books, The Remarkable Adventures of Portuguese Joe Silvey (Harbour 2004) and Stanley Park's Secret: Forgotten Families of Whoi Whoi, Kanaka Ranch, and Brockton Point (Harbour, 2005). She has also highlighted mixed-race B.C. families with Hawaiian origins in Leaving Paradise: Indigenous Hawaiians in the Pacific Northwest, 1787-1898 (University of Hawaii Press, 2006) and Maria Mahoi of the Islands (New Star, 2004). Hence this unprecedented statue that celebrates the amalgamation of racial backgrounds symbolizes both the progressive devolution of "British"; Columbia and its evolution as a self-aware multi-racial construct.
"History is usually written by the winners,"; Jean Barman wrote in 2003. "Their lives comprise the archival collections, and historically these have been white men enjoying political and economic privilege. So long as we rely on the materials at hand, we keep telling the same old stories.";
978-1-55017-670-4
"Along with Susan Point's house portals and the Squamish Albert Yelton Pole,"; says Fournier, "Shore to Shore establishes the rightful place of the Coast Salish in Stanley Park, at a site which 9.5 million people visit each year, but one which has until recently displayed only northern-style totem poles.";
In her new book, Suzanne Fournier profiles First Nations artist, Luke Marston, who created the sculpture, and describes his journey to Portugal to research the work.
The title of the Brockton Point sculpture, Shore to Shore, references Marston's great-great-grandfather, Portuguese Joe Silvey, who sailed from the Azores Islands of Portugal to the West Coast of Canada in the mid-1800s.
Silvey and his mixed race family lived at Brockton Point, where the Coast Salish had lived for millennia.
The carving equally commemorates Silvey's two First Nations wives, therefore paying tribute to the largely unwritten history of mixed-culture families in Coastal B.C.
Silvey's first wife, Khaltinaht, was a Musqueam and Squamish noblewoman who died tragically early of TB.
Silvey's second wife, Kwatleematt (Lucy), was a Sechelt First Nation matriarch who was Marston's great-great-grandmother.
Lucy raised eleven children to adulthood and her second eldest child, Elizabeth, was the first registered birth of the child of white/aboriginal parents.
The sculpture rests on a 2.5-foothigh base of black-and-white Portuguese mosaic stone. It also includes images of seine nets, whaling harpoons and Pacific coast salmon.
According to Fournier, the three First Nations who claim the park as unceded Coast Salish territory [Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh] were consulted closely throughout the project.
A celebratory feast at the Musqueam Cultural Centre followed the formal April unveiling.
The (approximately) $1 million project had to be funded by the community.
It received one federal Legacies grant, which had to be matched. The Portuguese-Canadian community raised more than $300,000, and finally, just months from the unveiling date, Vancouver City Council, Parks Board and the three First Nations contributed some financial support.
Five of Suzanne Fournier's forty years of writing about First Nations topics were spent recording the creation of Marston's Stanley Park monument.
For Shore to Shore, Fournier accompanied Marston to his ancestors' village on the Azores where Portuguese Joe Silvey was raised to be a whaler.
The Shore to Shore statue has a literary heritage beyond Suzanne Fournier's book. Jean Barman uncovered the histories of Joe Silvey and the mixed-race families of Stanley Park in two books, The Remarkable Adventures of Portuguese Joe Silvey (Harbour 2004) and Stanley Park's Secret: Forgotten Families of Whoi Whoi, Kanaka Ranch, and Brockton Point (Harbour, 2005). She has also highlighted mixed-race B.C. families with Hawaiian origins in Leaving Paradise: Indigenous Hawaiians in the Pacific Northwest, 1787-1898 (University of Hawaii Press, 2006) and Maria Mahoi of the Islands (New Star, 2004). Hence this unprecedented statue that celebrates the amalgamation of racial backgrounds symbolizes both the progressive devolution of "British"; Columbia and its evolution as a self-aware multi-racial construct.
"History is usually written by the winners,"; Jean Barman wrote in 2003. "Their lives comprise the archival collections, and historically these have been white men enjoying political and economic privilege. So long as we rely on the materials at hand, we keep telling the same old stories.";
978-1-55017-670-4
Submitted on June 16, 2015 in By David.
