Art collection in AQ North Concourse illustrates BC colonialism

Several years ago, on a brisk and sunny autumn morning in Montreal, I walked up to the top of Mount Royal. The view of the city and Saint Lawrence River was impressive, but the sight that made the strongest impression in my memory came from inside the Mont Royal Chalet.

Hung between the ceiling’s wood beams were paintings by various artists that traced the history of Montreal. What struck me about the paintings was not the images of colonization and genocide of First Nations people — some of which were extremely violent — but that these images lacked any kind of context.

It was unclear whether these images were celebrating the conquering of a land and its first peoples or attempting to portray an uncensored account of what actually happened. With no apparent context, the former was implicit.

This experience came to mind when looking at the Charles Comfort mural, British Columbia Pageant. Installed in the Academic Quadrangle’s north concourse over 10 years ago, the 64-foot-long painting on canvas was a donation from the Toronto Dominion bank when one of its branches closed on Granville and Pender. It provoked criticism from both students and faculty almost immediately.

The mural depicts the settlement and colonization of a land and its First Nations from the point of view of the colonizers. Another similar mural painted by Comfort was rejected by UBC, 40 years before the SFU installation. As written in the Vancouver Sun, this piece was rejected because it showed Captain George Vancouver “being depicted as a conquering hero, with Native people in a demeaning position at his feet.”

On the opposite side of the hallway are a series of paintings from 1925 by John Innes that illustrate specific scenes of the “founding” of BC.

One of these paintings shows Alexander McKenzie’s arrival at the Pacific; the other, James Douglas building the Hudson’s Bay Post in Victoria. In each painting, the First Nations people are shown in what appears to be a compliant role, either assisting the white European explorers or acting as passive onlookers.

Although the Comfort mural and remaining Innes paintings still hang in the North Concourse, they are joined by a group of works that represent a conflicting view of history. As part of the Re-setting the Cedar Table conference and art contest that took place in response to SFU mounting Comfort’s mural, the three works across from the mural do not actively criticize British Columbia Pageant, which is described in the accompanying information panel for the conference as “a monument to colonization,” so much as offer context.

The artist Edgar Heap of Birds donated one of these works, titled Insurgent Messages. This confrontational poster was part of a public intervention that was placed in bus shelters around Vancouver in 2007. It questions the rights of those in power to subjugate the First Nations people by asking: “IMPERIAL CANADA WHERE IS YOUR STATUS CARD?”

The other two works — Teen BC, a mask/sculpture by Nate Woodbury, and Civilization is a Crime Scene, a print by A.S. Matta — were winning entries from the Cedar Table art contest.

These artworks, along with the Bill Reid sculptures installed with the mural, offer an Indigenous counterpoint to the colonial images of the hallway. The effect is to illustrate conflicting histories, where each must properly understand the other.

Careful consideration should be given to artworks associated with colonization. Without the context provided by Indigenous works, the display would send the wrong message about the history of intercultural relations in BC. Obviously Indigenous artworks do not require a colonial context for interpretation, but a work such as Insurgent Messages becomes even more powerful when it is placed against Comfort’s and Innes’ depiction of history.