Art
Gordie Howe Bridge to feature art that commemorates the Underground Railroad
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The Gordie Howe International Bridge project team plans to commission a piece of art that commemorates the Underground Railroad.
The piece will be a free-standing work of art located in an accessible area outside the Canadian port of entry. It will reflect the themes of hope and freedom, says a news release from the Windsor-Detroit Bridge Authority.
“I think it’s good,” said Lana Talbot, who is heritage coordinator at Sandwich First Baptist Church, treasurer of the Windsor Essex Black Council, and vice chair of the Artists of Colour.
“I think that Black artists here — I think we deserve that. That’s the least they could [do]: show respect to us. … they’re going to name the bridge after an American.”
Talbot would prefer that the bridge itself be named in honour of the railroad, she said.
“It feels like it would be fitting because it’s coming right into Sandwich.”
The community of Sandwich, which is located near the Gordie Howe International Bridge project site, was a destination for thousands of people who escaped slavery in the U.S. and made their way to freedom in Canada.
The area is still home to descendants of many of those who made that journey, including Talbot.
The project team will launch a request for qualifications this month for professional Canadian artists of the Black, African and Caribbean diaspora living and working in Canada who are interested in doing the work.
It includes a mentorship opportunity for a local youth identifying as a member of the Black, African and Caribbean diaspora from Sandwich/west Windsor to work with the artist.
I want people to know that there are excellent Black Canadian artists that are from right here, this region– Lana Talbot
Talbot said it’s appropriate that the art be created by a Black artist but felt that the commission itself should also go to an artist from the region.
“When they do things in Toronto or if they do things in Niagara Falls or if they do things in Hamilton, I don’t ever recall ever receiving any invitation to be part of that,” she said.
“I want people to know that there are excellent Black Canadian artists that are from right here, this region.”
Details on the request for qualifications are available at GordieHoweInternationalBridge.com.
The juried artist selection process will follow Canadian Heritage’s guidelines for public artist selection, the bridge authority said.
The project team plans to complete artist selection this summer and unveil the final art concept late this year. The final art piece will be installed in conjunction with the opening of the bridge, which is currently slated for late 2024 or early 2025.
The bridge team developed the commission in response to community feedback and in conjunction with the Detroit River Project and the Essex County Black Historical Research Society, it said.
Windsor West MP Brian Masse congratulated the city’s Black community for successfully persuading the bridge authority to include the artwork as part of the project.
The bridge team plans to gather input from local members of the Black, African and Caribbean diaspora and broader Windsor-Essex community to share with the artist once identified, it said.
‘That bridge was a place where freedom started for many of us’
African Canadian heritage consultant and the former Amherstburg Freedom Museum curator Elise Harding-Davis said in a statement that she is thrilled that the WDBA will be featuring African Canadian art, particularly focused on the Underground Railroad.
“The African Caribbean and pioneering black Canadians have contributed a lot,” Harding-Davis said in the statement, issued by the bridge authority.
“And that bridge was a place where freedom started for many of us.”
A trio plays a cover of The Eagles hit Take it Easy as a dozen people settle in for an intimate open mic night inside Derrick McCandless and Dawn Mills’s cozy spot off highways 6 and 68 in Manitoba’s Interlake.
Strings of antique-style light bulbs cast a soft glow over the mandolin, banjo and dobro guitar that hang on a wall behind the band. An array of pottery shaped in-house by Mills dots the shelves behind the audience.
The Eriksdale Music & Custom Frame Shop is full of tchotchkes — like an Elvis Presley Boulevard street sign and vintage Orange Crush ad — that create the rustic country-living vibe the couple dreamt up before buying and transforming the vacant space over the past three years.
“I have met so many people in this community through them that I probably wouldn’t have … because of this hub,” says Mills’s cousin Dana-Jo Burdett.
Mills and McCandless are bringing people together in their rural community in more ways than one — though a return to Mills’s hometown wasn’t always in the cards.
The couple met in Winnipeg in 2011 while McCandless was playing a party at Mills’s cousin’s place. They had plans to settle in the Okanagan in McCandless’s home province of B.C. until he suffered a health scare. After that, they decided to head back to the Prairies.
WATCH | McCandless and Mills channel creative spirit into Eriksdale community:
Dawn Mills and Derrick McCandless host the RogerKimLee Music Festival in the Manitoba Interlake community of Eriksdale. They also turned a long-vacant space in town into a live music venue, instrument repair and sales store, and pottery and framing services shop.
It was the height of the pandemic in fall 2020 when the pair relocated to Eriksdale, about 130 km northwest of Winnipeg. They bought the old Big Al’s shop, once a local sharpening business that was sitting vacant.
“He was an icon in the community. He was a school teacher. He did a drama program here,” said Mills. “He brought a lot to the town.”
The building has become their own personal playground and live-in studio.
“It keeps evolving and we keep changing it and every room has to serve multi-function,” says Mills. “It’s a meeting place.”
While they love the quiet life of their community, they’re also a busy couple.
McCandless is a multi-instrumentalist with a former career in the Armed Forces that took him all over. Now, he’s a shop teacher in Ashern who sells and fixes instruments out of the music shop.
WATCH | McCandless plays an original song:
Derrick McCandless plays one of his original songs on acoustic guitar at the Eriksdale Music & Custom Frame Shop in March 2024.
Mills helped found Stoneware Gallery in 1978 — the longest running pottery collective in Canada. She offers professional framing services and sells pottery creations that she throws in-studio.
They put on open mic nights and host a summer concert series on a stage next door they built together themselves. They’re trying to start up a musicians memorial park in Eriksdale too.
One of their bigger labours of love is in honour of McCandless’s good friends Roger Leonard Young, David Kim Russell and Tony “Leon” — or Lee — Oreniuk. All died within months of each other in 2020-2021.
“That was a heart-wrenching year,” McCandless says.
They channeled their grief into something good for the community and started the RogerKimLee Music Festival.
Friends from Winnipeg and the Interlake helped them put on a weekend of “lovely music, lovely food, lovely companionship” as a sort of heart-felt send off, said Mills.
That weekend it poured rain. Festival-goers ended up in soggy dog piles on the floor of the music shop to dry out while Mills and McCandless cooked them sausages and eggs to warm up.
“It was just a great weekend,” says McCandless. “At the end of that, that Sunday, we just said that’s it, we got to do this.”
Mills says the homey community spirit on display during that inaugural year is what the couple has been trying to “encourage in people getting together” ever since.
The festival has grown to include a makers’ market, car show, kids activities, workshops, camping, beer gardens, good food and live music.
This summer, Manitoba acts The Solutions, Sweet Alibi and The JD Edwards Band are on the lineup Aug. 16-18.
Burdett has been a part of the growth, helping with branding, social media and marketing. McCandless and Mills’s habit of bringing people together has also rubbed off on Burdett.
“There’s more of my people out here than I thought, and I am very grateful for that,” says Burdett.
Their efforts to breathe new artistic life into Eriksdale caught the attention of their local MLA.
“The response from family and friend and community has been outstanding,” Derek Johnston (Interlake-Gimli) said during question period at the Manitoba Legislature in March.
“The RogerKimLee Music Festival believes music to be a powerful force for positive social change.”
Dolly Lindell, who has lived in Eriksdale for about three decades, said the couple is adding something valuable that wasn’t quite there before.
“There’s a lot of people that we didn’t even know had musical talent and aspirations and this has definitely helped bring it out,” Lindell says from the audience as McCandless, Dave Greene and Mark Chuchie wrap their rendition of Take it Easy.
McCandless, 61, said there was a time in his youth where he dreamed of a becoming a folk music star. Now his musical ambitions have changed. He’s focused on using that part of himself to bring people together.
“I think it’s that gift that I was given that that needs to be shared,” he says. “I don’t think I could live without sharing it.”
WATCH | Trio plays song at Eriksdale music shop:
Derrick McCandless, Dave Greene and Mark Chuchie play a cover of The Eagles hit Take it Easy at McCandless and Dawn Mills’s music shop in Eriksdale in March 2024.
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