The Thunder Bay Museum is currently hosting an exhibit showcasing the stellar work of Sheila Burnford and Susan Ross. I admit that I am a fan of both of these local women who made their mark in their respective worlds of literary and artistic expression. They wrote and painted what they saw around them and their words and paintings are as engaging and relevant today as when they were created decades ago.
The women became friends and travelled together throughout remote communities in Northwestern Ontario and the Arctic regions of Canada. The Museum showcase features a collection of artwork, personal items and artifacts, as well as video footage, including the Hollywood-like world premiere of The Incredible Journey movie at the Odeon Theatre in Port Arthur in 1963. Some of the works exhibited are a part of the Museum’s permanent collection, while others are on loan.
My Connection with Burnford
One of the perks of retirement is travel.
A few years ago my husband and I spent a few weeks Down Under on the island of Tasmania. When we weren’t enjoying a cuppa (cup of coffee), biccie (cookie) or listening to the musos (musicians) in the local pub, we were out exploring.
On a walkabout in downtown Hobart, the second-oldest capital city in Australia after Sydney, we discovered a bookstore filled from floor to ceiling with shelved and stacked books. Wandering through Cracked and Spineless New and Used Books filled a good part of our afternoon. As a former bookstore employee, I know the effort that goes into curating the collections, hoping that someone will discover a book to take home with them. My husband spotted the hidden treasure and then handed it to me. It was a copy of Sheila Burnford’s The Fields of Noon. The book, published in 1964, comprises a series of Burnford’s autobiographical memoirs. It followed her 1961 classic, The Incredible Journey, that was set in Northwestern Ontario, written at Loon Lake, and made into the Walt Disney movie. (Young people today may know the remake of The Incredible Journey as Homeward Bound.) What made that bookstore find so remarkable was that at that time, my book club in Thunder Bay was reading The Incredible Journey as their Book of the Month! They had also watched Kelly Saxberg and Dianne Brothers’ 2017 documentary Long Walk Home: The Incredible Journey of Sheila Burnford.
What struck me about this collection of essays and stories in The Fields of Noon was the vivid descriptions of the beauty and character of our part of the world. Here we were, on the other side of the world, reading about things like Sheila’s adventures at Whitefish Lake with Susan Ross, her canary chatting with other birds at Loon Lake and mushroom picking in the boreal forest. It got me thinking about this book’s own incredible journey. Our version had been published in England. How had it gotten to Tasmania? Who had it on their book shelf? I hope that readers around the world have been enthralled by the impressions of the Northwestern Ontario landscape, the animals and the people that were so eloquently described by Sheila in her books and essays.
My Connection with Ross
I am the owner of a print by Susan Ross entitled Girls with Popsicles. In 1992, I went to a preview of the Thunder Bay Art Gallery’s art auction and was immediately in awe of a painting of two young Inuit girls holding red and yellow popsicles. The girls, probably about 8 or 10 years old, posed with the popsicles in their hands, while the adults around them busied themselves unloading a canoe. I went to the auction and bravely put my hand up. I was the successful bidder. This work has been with me for the past 30+ years and I love it. I found out later that the original was sketched in 1973 on one of Susan and Sheila’s stays in Kinngait (formerly Cape Dorset), an Inuit hamlet in the Qikiqtaaluk Region of Nunavut.
This adventurous woman loved books and nature. After her passing in 2006, she was remembered “for her love of the north and its people” and as “an avid bridge player, duck hunter and mushroomer”. She received the Order of Canada in Visual Arts in 2001. She left a body of work that is remarkable for both its’ beauty and historical and cultural significance. With her sketch book and pencils, she got to know, learn from and love the people she was sketching, like those girls with popsicles.
Sheila and Susan shared not only a friendship, but a mutual love of the natural world and our connection to it. We are fortunate that they had the ability to convey their passions through their words and illustrations. The exhibit Journeys: Stories of Sheila Burnford and Susan Ross runs until January, 2025 at the Thunder Bay Museum, 425 Donald Street East.
