Justin Trudeau congratulates Donald Trump on his U.S. presidential win

CALGARY – There’s a darkness in the work of venerated Canadian war artist Bill MacDonnell, who has spent three decades travelling the world as a self-described silent witness.

MacDonnell’s paintings document the impact of conflict from Bosnia to Afghanistan as well as revisiting atrocities of the past.

He has inspired other artists to follow in his footsteps, and an exhibit of his work is on display at the Military Museums in Calgary through Remembrance Day and into 2025.

“Bill’s very much into the idea of watching, very quietly. You don’t see many people in his works,” said curator Dick Averns, who has met and written about MacDonnell, and was inspired to travel to the Middle East as part of the Canadian Forces War Artists Program.

“A lot of Bill MacDonnell’s work is around the theme of cultural amnesia. They draw attention to histories that are in danger of being forgotten.”

Averns said it was MacDonnell’s example that encouraged him to apply.

“My drive was to have that first-hand experience. My theory in making the art and having a critical eye similar to Bill’s is ‘What are the unseen areas?’ I was interested in relationships between oil, the war in Iraq and 9/11.”

Lt.-Col. Bill Bewick, now retired from Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry, had taken over as commander of the Loyal Edmonton Regiment when he took MacDonnell to Croatia with the United Nations Protective Force in 1994.

“He’d been over to Europe and various places before, but I think that was his first combat experience,” said Bewick, who took art lessons from MacDonnell years later at what was then called the Alberta College of Art and Design.

“We found a stone building that collapsed with old people and some others incapacitated in it.

“It was a low priority to dig the people out because they were all deceased and we saw that, and the odours associated with that. Those kind of experiences for an artist are pretty intense.”

MacDonnell went back on his own a few months later and visited Sarajevo.

MacDonnell could not be reached for an interview and was unable to attend the opening of his exhibit.

Of the two dozen paintings on display, many depict the aftermath of war with destroyed buildings.

His 1995 painting “Mined Churchyard” show a bombed Serbian church in Bosnia.

“They’re all rather depressing. They’re not happy paintings. There’s no happy paintings,” said Bewick.

“There’s a couple with colour. There’s a nice green grass over there but there’s some other stuff that’s not so happy.”

Averns said the two patches of colour are both of mass graves from eastern Europe and Kyiv when it was part of the former Soviet Union.

In Babi Yar, almost 34,000 Jews were murdered and dumped in a ravine by the Nazis in 1941 as they made their way through Europe.

“They were either shot at the edge of the ravine or they were marched in to lie one on top of the other and shot in the back of the neck,” said Averns.

The mass grave is now a memorial site.

“There was no marker at this site for decades. You can see (on the canvas) here one of the monuments — a ramp with tumbling figures meeting their demise as they went down into the ravine.”

Averns said the second painting shows the mass graves commemorating the German siege of Leningrad, which lasted 900 days and saw 800,000 deaths.

The exhibit is MacDonnell’s first in Western Canada since 2006.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 6, 2024.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

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More than two dozen paintings from respected Canadian war artist Bill MacDonnell are on display at the Military Museums in Calgary. MacDonnell spent three decades recording conflicts in Europe, Bosnia and Afghanistan but also looked back at atrocities from the past. Two of his paintings depict mass graves from the Second World War in Kyiv and Russia. Curator Dick Averns says MacDonnell considered himself to be a silent witness to some of the atrocities of war and usually involved destroyed buildings and the aftermath of war. The exhibit at the Military Museums in Calgary is the first for the artist since 2006.

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This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 6, 2024.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

WASHINGTON – Donald Trump clinched the United States election after a tumultuous campaign as Canadians officials espoused the important relationship between neighbours in congratulations to the former president on his extraordinary comeback.

“I will govern by a simple motto: promises made, promises kept,” Trump said to cheering party faithful at a Florida watch party.

Trump was elected the 47th president of the U.S. amidst a deeply divided America by prevailing among voters in the key battleground states.

Tuesday’s election saw Trump post early wins in critical states by taking North Carolina and Georgia. His path to victory became clear when he won the campaign’s most sought after 19 electoral college votes in Pennsylvania.

Vice-President Kamala Harris did not appear at her election night party at her alma mater Howard University in Washington.

Top aides told the audience that Democrats would continue overnight to fight to make sure that every vote is counted.

However, with a win in Wisconsin, Trump cleared the 270 electoral votes needed to clinch the presidency early Wednesday morning.

The Republicans also looked to take control of the U.S. Senate after flipping several Democrat seats. Results for control of the House of Representatives remained undecided.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau congratulated Trump on seizing a second term in office. He said Canada and the U.S. have the world’s most successful partnership.

“The friendship between Canada and the U.S. is the envy of the world,” he said on X. “I know President Trump and I will work together to create more opportunity, prosperity, and security for both of our nations.”

In a statement, Trudeau said the two countries are “neighbours and friends, united by a shared history, common values, and steadfast ties between our peoples.”

“We are also each other’s largest trade partners and our economies are deeply intertwined.”

Canada will not be able to escape the geopolitical pull from the change in administration of its closest neighbour.

Trump has proposed 10 per cent across-the-board tariffs, making the duties the centrepiece of his platform. A Canadian Chamber of Commerce report suggests those tariffs would shrink the Canadian economy, resulting in around $30 billion per year in economic costs.

“I would say it’s code red in Canada-U.S. relations,” said Fen Hampson, a professor of international affairs at Carleton University in Ottawa and co-chair of the Expert Group on Canada-U.S. Relations.

Hampson said Canada should not panic but must be prepared to double-down on efforts to build relationships with U.S. lawmakers at all levels and move away from strategies of quiet diplomacy.

Canadian officials have been reaching out to members of the Republican leader’s team for months ahead of the election, making clear the importance of the bilateral relationship.

Kirsten Hillman, Canada’s ambassador to the U.S., also sent her congratulations to Trump and his running mate JD Vance.

“We have the great fortune of being neighbours, and the U.S. has no closer partner and ally than Canada,” Hillman posted on social media. “Looking forward to working together towards a more prosperous and secure future.”

The first Trump administration demonstrated how vulnerable Canada can be when the former president scrapped the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Negotiating its successor, the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement, was a key test for Ottawa after Trump’s 2016 victory. The trilateral agreement will come under review in 2026.

Trump is the first former president to return to power since Grover Cleveland regained the White House in the 1892 election. He is the first person convicted of a felony to be elected president and, at 78, is the oldest person elected to the office. Vance will become the highest-ranking member of the millennial generation in the U.S. government.

But right up to the moments Americans cast their ballots, polls showed the race was razor-thin.

The tumultuous campaign season saw Biden remove himself from the top of the Democrats’ ticket following a disastrous debate performance against Trump. The party quickly rallied support around Harris a little more than three months before election day.

The vice-president’s campaign kicked off with the idea of joy and charting a new path forward, but Harris was never able to fully shake off the criticism from many Americans about immigration, inflation and the economy directed at Biden’s administration.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 6, 2024.

— With files from The Associated Press