Moose Jaw Riverbank

Oil on canvas               $425

11 October 2014 found us 9.5 km east of Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, approaching the north bank of the Moose Jaw River on foot. We forced a path through waist-high vegetation, downhill toward the riverbank. It seemed that everything was growing there, not mixed together, but in patches. Clumps of wild

20 October 2014 found me painting in late afternoon sunshine on the north bank of the Assiniboine River at Long Plain First Nations Reserve, southwest of Edwin, Manitoba. I sit on a rock amidst short grassy Carex, about 2 metres above the current water level, my feet making prints in the damp mud growing with scrambling Knotweed, at the edge of a small stand of reed-like Sandbar Willow.

Bend in the Assiniboine (oil on canvas 6 x 12 in.)

18 October 2014 finds me painting a bend in the Assiniboine River 5 km south of Miniota, Manitoba, 7.5km downstream of the planned Energy East pipeline crossing.  A Bald Eagle flies across the river and I paint it into the scene where it lands to sit briefly, high in one of the tall Ash trees that reach their split, scarred trunks through the tangle of the riverine forest on the far bank.

Eagle River Hatchling (oil on canvas 7 x 9 in.)

24 October 2014 finds me clambering down the steep embankment from Highway 17 beside the bridge over the Eagle River, a little over two kilometres north of the town of Eagle River, Ontario. 

This is a broad, clay-bed river with boulders scattered along its edges and also emerging from the flat yellow-grassed clay and gravel shores.  A tall crest of Pines and Spruces reflects darkly from the far shore. I am searching for a scene.  

The soft wet sandy shore looks like a highway for wildlife. Deer tracks predominate, large and small cloven hoof prints - added to them are fox mink and Racoon, duck and Heron. The water is not quite clear, and olive brown.  An overcast day with a light breeze that one would call quiet if it

Rideau Crossing (oil on canvas 12 x 16)

26 December 2014 found me out painting on my birthday, on the east shore of the Rideau River at  Gideon Adams Park, 3.3 kilometres south of Osgoode, Ontario. This spot is a little over 1.5 kilometres downstream from where the Energy East pipeline route crosses the Rideau River. Having chosen my scene from the vantage point of a small boulder beside the boat launch ramp, I sat with my canvas on my knees and my boots in the sun-melted black muck. Its surface was covered with a felt of bleached and drifted Star Duckweed sprinkled with tiny white snail shells. To my right rose a winter-bleached screen of Narrow-leaved Cattails, and to my right bulged a shape rather like my boulder, but Fred identified it as a hump of old foam rubber with grass growing through it. 

Fred moved along the shore as I scrubbed on the burnt sienna

On 16 December 2014, Fred wrote to botanists and the NatureList, and posted on the Ottawa Field Naturalists and Ontario Field Botanists facebook pages:

“Botanists! After a field season spent exploring streams and pipelines from Saint John, New Brunswick, to Fort McMurray, Alberta, we've accumulated a 60 cm stack of plant specimens which seemed interesting to us at the time, some of which are are identified with stunning accuracy ("Pinus strobus L.") and others of which are denominated more laxly ("<mystery herb>"). So we've wondered if, over the holiday season, we could assemble a group of botanical identifiers to work through the stack. It would be nice to get a fair-sized group together in a party-like atmosphere, but it will be hard to synchronize schedules... I will print out labels for all the database entries labelled as plant specimens, and as the stack is worked through I'll crouch over the computer and sluice the identification and identifiers into the database. Authoritative identifications will improve the quality of our survey of the Energy East pipeline route.”

Owen Clarkin, Lis Allison, Clayton Shearer, Eleanor Thomson, Mathieu Bélisle, and Bettina Henkelman replied affirmatively, and the date was set for Saturday, 27 December. 

Mathieu wasn't able to come, Bettina had the flu, but four would make a lively enough party so we set up tables in the

Winter's Work

Fred and I after our interview at CBC in Thunder Bay on 27 October 2014

After three months on the road, chasing Energy East from Fort McMurray to the Bay of Fundy for 14,632 kilometres, we wonder if any Transcanada personnel now have our experience of the entire pipeline route from Hardisty to Saint John...

When we think of how much we've seen and experienced through all this, it nearly makes us dizzy. There comes a time when you've

Aidie Creek Winter Coming (oil on canvas 12 x 16) Sold

31 October 2014 found me watching rhythms in the rushing water of Aidie Creek at Highway 11, 9.5 km north north-west of Englehart. The air was calm and new snow clung to branches, whitening the leaf litter and melting on the rocks.

In May of 2002 Fred and I stopped briefly here, taking note of the lovely rapids, but since we were hurrying up to cover our Cochrane area study site for the James Bay Expedition it was a short visit, with a shelly drift sample and photos of the low stepped falls. This time again our stop was brief, as we were headed south along Highway 11 to a meeting of the Ontario Rivers Alliance in North Bay.

We pulled into the entrance to the picnic area just upstream of the Highway 11 bridge, and toured the extensive network of laneways among the rocks and trees, to find a spot to park near the river. We

Fragile Crossings 2015 calendar is out!

Here is the essay we wrote to "illustrate" the 13th month of the calendar:

Fragile Crossings – our Energy East Project

On 18 Sept 2013, Sustainable North Grenville held a meeting about the proposed Energy East Pipeline, which would

Winnipeg River and Tunnel Island (oil on canvas 7 x 9 in.)

23 October 2014 finds me at a boat launch on the Winnipeg River, at the end of the Miller Rapids Road, north of Kenora, Ontario, looking upstream toward "Tunnel Island" and admiring the contrasting colour bands of the late afternoon sky to the west. Fred and Teika Newton are inspecting the shore of the bay on my left, picking up handsfulls of rich snail drift and observing Deer, Beaver, Raccoon, and

Pipestone Creek Marsh (oil on canvas 8 x 8 in.)

16 October 2014 found me astonished at the broad swath of cattail marsh that is Pipestone Creek, hemmed in by its forested valley wall, southwest of Broadview, Saskatchewan. The high sharp line of the flat prairie outside of this valley world is visible on the horizon though a gap in the trees. We are a little over a kilometre upstream of where the Transcanada pipeline crosses the Pipestone. We are past the places where we have the pipeline route mapped - so today we navigated by dead reckoning and were pleased to find

South Saskatchewan Bluffs (oil on canvas 7 x 9 in.)

8 October 2014 finds me gazing at the castellate bluffs of eroded loess along the South Saskatchewan River upstream of Alberta Hwy 41, west of Burstall Saskatchewan. We could see that there were interesting bluffs as we gradually descended along the highway toward the bridge, but here at river level, they are much more impressive - and the river itself is clear and green, ruffled by the wind into wavelets that weave green and blue into a new intensity of colour that even in a narrow strip, balances the strange bold shapes and stark contrasts of the wind-carved bluffs. We drove from the bridge to a kilometre-long area of campsites to a broad rutted area at the river that serves as a boat-launch.

The Transcanada Pipeline crosses the South Saskatchewan River 8.2 km upstream of here. I settle on a view of castle-like formations directly across the river and perch my folding chair on a low

Distant Bluffs on the Red Deer (oil on canvas 6 x 12 in.)

7 October 2014 finds me sitting behind the guard rail in a camp chair, at the bridge over the Red Deer River, 3 kilometres northwest of where the Transcanada pipeline crosses it at Bindloss, Alberta.  We came here past the village of Bindloss, which is a compact island of treed buildings in an oceanic expanse of prairie. There at the top of the bluffs, the prairie appears vast and slightly rolling, hiding its creeks and rivers in the creases of the landscape. Coming to the bridge we find the Red Deer River again, and I'm taken by the way the evening sun guilds the edges of the distant bluffs that wall this valley. 

Red Deer River Sandbars (oil on canvas 8 x 16 in.)

4 October 2014 finds me on a long, wood-plank bridge over the Red Deer River, 16.3 kilometres upstream of the Transcanada Pipeline crossing. The bridge is just north of a tiny place named Buffalo, near a smallish oil drilling operation, a couple of hours north of Medicine Hat, Alberta.  I am, again, enjoying sandbars, looking downriver with the prairie wind and the afternoon sun both

Athabasca Evening (oil on canvas 12 x 24 in.)

20 September 2014 finds me looking over the Athabasca River from the "highload bypass" of the Thickwood exit from Highway 63 in Fort McMurray, Alberta.  We checked this site out yesterday evening at dusk, our first day in Fort McMurray, and found a good parking spot for me to paint from against the guardrail on the broad plateau of the ramp that curves high above the Sandbar Willows which line the river.

Shadow of the Bridge to Nowhere

21 September 2014 finds me sitting against a towering cement pier, beneath what's been called the "the bridge to nowhere" south of Fort MacKay, Alberta, painting the long dark shadow of the bridge over the river flats. Just beyond the horizon, north, south, east, and west, are big tar sands operations. As each

Across the Country!

Our scheme for this project was to parallel the pipeline route to the New Brunswick Museum's August bioblitz in Gagetown and then to the Canadian Herpetological Society's September meetings in Calgary. 

After a winter of planning, with one winter painting of the crossing at Hoople Creek, and a number of other projects that

Coles Island (oil on canvas 5 x 7 in.) Sold

21 August 2014 finds me perched on the trunk of one of a number of leaning Red Maples that overhang the south shore of Coles Island, on the north side of the south channel of the Caanan River, in south central New Brunswick. 

Yesterday we were shown around this special part of the country and told its history. My parents' friend Hazen Hughes

Muskrat's Island (oil on canvas, 7 x 9) Sold

9 September 2014 finds me in the bow of Scott Haig's canoe, exploring the perimeter of a small island in the Mattawa River, east of North Bay, Ontario. Scott has brought us through the eastern tip of the deep, spring-fed Trout Lake, to the Trans Canada Pipeline crossing at "The Narrows" of the Mattawa, where it flows into Turtle Lake.  

The island is pictureque - a pyramid of rock and trees, backlit by the afternoon sun. Paddling over to visit it, we find Leatherleaf and Sweetgale, leaning out to their reflections from lichen patterned rocks. Golden green mosses flow down over the shoulders of the granite rocks at the feet of tall slim White Pines and Cedars. As we paddle along the shaded north east side of the island, I notice open mussel shells glimmering submerged among the

St Lawrence Boulders (oil on canvas 8 x 8 in.) Sold

1 September 2014 finds me perched among licheny boulders looking over the marshy shore of the St Lawrence River, 17 kilometres southwest of Quebec City.  At the end of Rue Moisan, west of Saint-Augustin-de-Desmaures, Quebec, there is a path that goes down to the right of the fire hydrant and through an Ash and Maple woods with scattered Butternuts, and along the edge of a field beside a wall of tree-grown stones and crowded with invasive Goutweed and Comfrey - to the end of the wall where there is a little green and white sign nailed to a tree, saying something in French about hunting. There the St Lawrence River is revealed through a low opening in the trees.  We sogg over wet scirpus stem drift and clamber over boulders to the edge of the marsh. There beside us is the most inviting pile of companionable boulders that I have ever seen! Softened by patterns of rain-moistened lichens, the pile seems to be viewing the broad aspect of marsh and river and I climb up on one to view it too.