#0320 "The Tree"

Very few people have seen this painting. It tells a sad story of imposing city values on rural land. This was Peter Gzowski's white pine on the front northeast corner of his cottage on "The Hedge Road" as it appeared in the fall of 1991. His place was near the Briar's Resort on Jackson's Point. John Sibbald was the owner of the Briar's and had collected a few pieces of my art so I kind of knew John a bit. John was called the Squire by his friend Peter and he was the one who first noticed that the tree planted by his ancestor Frank Sibbald in the 1870s was sick - very sick.

On the first weekend in October my son Keith and I went for a drive after writing to Peter Gzowski to get permission to visit and photograph "The Tree". Peter had written a feature on that tree entitled "If a tree falls in a forest..". The article claimed that "someday we'll run out of nature to ruin". The essay touched a cord in me and this painting is the result. Peter and I corresponded but we never met in person. He was a busy guy and I worked long shifts and every overtime that came my way. Peter was warm and generous and "touched by (my) your interest in The Tree, which still stands as I write this, though it looks more forlorn each week." Note the power pole appearing between the branches in the upper right. The power goes underground from the base of the pole along and under the drive into Peter's getaway cottage to the left.

I felt like making the art a bit more personal as I was painting in the Watershed Farm Studio. I included the picture of Peter that was attached to his Macleans column. His visage was crafted into the bark of the huge white pine. The portrait kind of just grew there..

Peter John Gzowski was known colloquially as "Mr. Canada" or "Captain Canada" which would be a title that would bring honour to almost everyone. Peter was most famous for his work on the CBC radio shows This Country in the Morning and Morningside. His first biographer argued that Gzowski's contribution to Canadian media must be considered in the context of efforts by a generation of Canadian nationalists to understand and express Canada's cultural identity. This parallels the work more than fifty years previously by the Group of Seven. Peter passed away about a decade after The Tree was painted. I am unsure whether the white pine itself still stands.

Peter John Gzowski July 13, 1934 – January 24, 2002.

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