Art
To mark 50 years, Ecology Action Centre encourages art around Nova Scotia – CBC.ca
The Ecology Action Centre started as a student project in 1971 with a wild idea: people in Halifax should recycle stuff and not just chuck everything into the trash.
“They had a truck and they drove around and picked up people’s recyclables because there was no other recycling program,” said Joanna Bull, the organization’s community engagement manager.
“At the time, everybody thought they were nuts. It was a totally hare-brained, unrealistic, out there, radical idea. I like that story because it shows that shift really is possible and that the actions and advocacy of people — regular people, young people in this case — can actually really shift our society in significant ways.”
Those Dalhousie University students never guessed they were starting an organization that would still play an important role in Nova Scotia life 50 years later.
Over the decades, the Ecology Action Centre worked against a proposal to build the biggest nuclear power plant in the world on an island near Shag Harbour. They partnered with farm women from Centre Burlington to stop uranium mining in the province.
But Bull said it isn’t a time to look back. Like the founders, the organization has its eyes on the future and its 40 staff and 5,000 members are focusing on climate change, biodiversity collapse and environmental injustices.
“I hope that 50 years from now, we’ll look back and we’ll say, ‘I can’t believe we burned all those fossil fuels for everything. What a crazy thing it was we did back then.’ Just like throwing glass bottles into the garbage was in 1971.”
To mark this year’s 50th anniversary, EAC called on Nova Scotia’s artistic community to create some visions of the future.
More than 50 artists created 50 unique works of art all over the province.
If you download the app, 50 Things: An Art Adventure, it will tell you when you’re near one. Some are physical objects, while others reveal videos or podcasts within the app.
Respect the Sun
Walk across a Halifax bridge and listen to the Ecology Action Centre founders talk about how they started the organization, and what role the bridge itself played. Another spot features a quilt made out of the rubber bands used to hold lobster claws together.
Or if you’re passing Agricola and Willow streets, stop and take in Lorne Julian’s Respect the Sun. He’s a Mi’kmaw artist from Millbrook First Nation.
His mural, painted on 10 wood panels and attached to the building, features an eagle. The animal plays an important role in Mi’kmaw and other Indigenous cultures, Julian said.
“It’s believed that they’re able to take our prayers to the Creator, to God,” he said. “The eagle is raising one wing up toward the sun and also another wing pointing down toward Mother Earth.”
The orange represents the survivors of residential schools and the children who died at the institutions. Julian said the Mi’kmaw tendency to think of the next seven generations, not just today, naturally leads its artists to think about the deep future of the planet and the people.
“I believe right now, we’re in a time of healing, in a time of change, not just for First Nations people, but for the rest of Canada. We all talk about reconciliation; we all have to be working together,” he said.
“Nova Scotia has been through a lot. Atlantic Canada has been through a lot. I think it’s given people a chance to reflect on what’s important in your life today. And I guess that’s where I’m at too.”
He hopes his work inspires people to reflect on our shared world, and to explore their own cultural roots — especially Mi’kmaw youth. “I want to give our youth hope, and I think that’s what my work represents.”
Dancing to court cases
Ben Stone, co-artistic director with Zuppa Theatre Company, helped organize the artistic projects.
“We have craft, we have film, we have sound, we have music,” he said. There are also theatrical works, audio creations and plenty of interactive exhibits.
So if you see someone dancing beautifully alone on a Nova Scotia beach, download the app and join in.
“There’s one piece in particular that’s sort of a DIY dance performance that you do with yourself, or with a group, and the app instructs you on how to do this dance,” he said.
“It’s based on the four court cases the EAC participated in, so you sort of dance out these different court cases with a dance instructor in your ears.”
The app goes live Friday and will be up for 50 days, ending at the Nocturne weekend in October. Then, it all disappears.
“I doubt anybody will be able to see all 50. There are some as far away as the [Cape Breton Highlands National Park] all the way down to Cape Forchu in Yarmouth. There’s some in Bear River. They’re spread all over,” Stone said.
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.
- 1 day ago
- News
- Duration 4:42
Joel Jamensky’s sunny disposition explains why the artist with Down syndrome uses the name ‘J-positive’ for his online art business, started with the help of his parents two years ago. “There’s a lot more going on in [Joel’s] art than may be at first glance – just like him,” said his dad, Mark.
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Made Right Here: Woodworking art CTV News Kitchener
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