areallygoodarchitect

Prologue

Dreamers

The paddle rests across my lap, it is made of cherrywood, very light. I can paddle all day and did. I chose the otter tail design from the rack at Trailhead in Ottawa, it looked a bit Seminole. The flat of the blade rests on shore, the wood of the tail burred up from grabbing igneous shield. I am ready in the bow, my perch, the posture is casual but still technically a brace. The River is pushy here and the canoe wants to bump against the rock shelf.
Not a choice site to launch or spend the night, it never is, that is just the way he rolls,
to paddle as long as we can, as far as we can, and make the plane on time.
The canoe lurches, I slide off the caned seat of carved ash, down to my knees, my legs pressed against the canoe to centre my gravity. Some of me is now cantilevered, leaning over the paddle, more force to hold us trim as he heaves ‘the Bastard’ into place.
We don’t have all the ultra-light stuff to do this and the gear in this unwieldly pack must weigh more than one hundred pounds. Inside the doubled-up garbage bag liner sealed with a twist tie is everything important, what will keep us warm at night.
If there is not enough warmth, we will die.

I can still see my breath and puff out some shapes while I wait for him to board and move us away from the rock. Sometimes it’s a command to me: “Okay, draw us out”.
Other times just a push by him, one leg trailing, beginning his day with a soggy sock and wet footwear. An hour ago, we could not see through the white fog all around us, now the mist unfurls above the black water. We never leave early into the murk, too dangerous.
We must see where we are going, to read every nuance of what shows up on the surface of moving water and then try to guess what is happening below. Ahead, something underwater is causing a disturbance and the river has begun to dance.
The steam has burned off the river and the morning sun splits the light into riffles over the clatter. The glints sparkle and hurt my eyes, the sound getting louder.
My paddle is back across my lap, I don’t have to do anything. His paddle, also an otter tail but in heavy maple is the rudder now at the stern, lining us up into the swift. Shallows by the sound, a sloping drop in the riverbed. What waits around the bend?

This is the way it is, always wondering what lies ahead. Maps only make note of the big events, geological obstacles to be portaged- the cliffs of waterfalls, technical galleries of boulder gardens, sudden faults in the crust- ledges that span the width of the river. Names like ‘Ledge-o-matic’ on the Waterfound in Northern Saskatchewan come to mind. These elevational drops are navigable through chutes if you stand up and scout for the downstream V’s. Best to stop on shore before the event and scout the opportunity of safe passage for a loaded canoe. Then there are the souse holes, phenomena of aeriated pits of bubbles. They be the venus flytraps of rivers, capturing hapless humans. We have seen them marked enroute, too many times, usually with a wooden cross. Whatever the river was doing when the maps were cast or wherever the river was moving through last year, or the year before, the course has surely changed. Rivers are dynamic forces of destruction tearing up the landscape. Shorelines are ripped away felling trees along the banks into “shit shows” of streamers and strainers. New channels slash through the weakness. Sand and gravel are excavated and bulldozed into aprons that will clog everything and stop your boat dead. There you sit immobile, balancing stupidly on top of the scree.
Rivers do and go where they want to be.

I know my fear at the beginning of each day. I push it away, there is much to do. Are we adrenalin junkies? not really, but maybe he is, Man-the-hunter. Modern man is able to get his fix using those innate but untested skills of getting through something like this. The paychecks keep us stable in the construct of our society, but this is different, he needs to do this and I go with him. Behind me, I trust him implicitly and know he knows what he is doing. The power of his paddle in the stern, the immediacy of the math in his head that will steer us away in the last second from a floundering mess, the river littered with our floating and sinking belongings, the broken spine of our boat, in the middle of nowhere, his medicine pack lost.
It is not going to happen, it never did.
I helped, up at my perch, putting everything I had into a desperate draw stroke as he screamed DRAW!DRAW!DRAW! There is no time for intellectual debate in the undulating uncertainty of this sensory circus. Roaring, rushing, splashing, hissing. The under current trying to nail you to the wall. Glooping echos mock the cliffs. No time to think, just react.
Ancient Instincts brought to the fore, learned again.

The aesthetics of this kind of experience, to live on the edge of make a mistake and then what, dependant on the strength of your body and what’s in your mind; skill and knowledge at full capacity, luck of course, still defies reason; What for?
Mostly it was about imagination, two dreamers standing in the darkness, naked, looking up at the insanity of all the stars in this Universe. This is where we wanted to be, under the dome of heaven in the middle of almost nowhere. We had it all to ourselves.

Rita E. Komendant
January 13, 2022
Thunder Bay

He brought me on all these Rivers. I had to write them down. I hope you enjoyed the trips with us in your comfy chair or on your pillow at night. He is gone now. The ending quietly in darkness. I was only able to see him for a few hours as Covid shut the doors to me and his wonderful dog, Kaya. The kidney worked very well, with the help of all the drugs for twenty one years. “Too many insults to his health” said the professionals. His time was up. Unplugged from the machines, the rest of us stand around. Useless. He whispers: “Is the truck close by? is Kaya with me? I have to get better,
I have to get out of here.”

The Athabasca River 1983

11:30 am. I am on shore ready to film.

My legs wobble on the uneven terrain of the stony shoreline. Nerves of anticipation.
We have borrowed the ‘Old Town’ from our Dutch friends. The ABS white water boat.
It has been stored in our garage. They are in Fort McMurray now. The Tar Sands Project.
The plastic canoe even a brighter yellow in the dazzle of noonday sun.
He has chosen to run the Athabasca where it careens around a tight right turn after churning beside the Ice Field’s Parkway south of Jasper, near Wapiti Campground.
At this corner, the river throws up a continuous line of rollers in a boulder garden.
Huge rocks tossed about willy nilly. Some you cannot see, as the white froth disguises the mass of the obstacles. How much boat can be cleared.
We shall soon see.

Here he comes, setting his line. Cool as a cucumber, sunglasses, bare head.

Sitting so straight in the centre of the craft, perfect trim.
Spray from the huge waves kicks up all along the boat.
The wide black blade held with authority, his long strong reach. The whirr of my camera. Swashbuckling freedom.
He is so beautiful.

The Hubble Telescope caught this Galaxy in its travels across the Universe. Eye-in-the-sky doesn’t even come close to the wonder of whatever this place is, or was, or what happened to it.  Theoretical Physics is up to 21 dimensions now. Really? After the fire in Notre Dame can we really turn the clock back 800 years? the same  liturgy and rebuild another spire with the saints holding it up? can we act out the same rituals? or do we look at what is happening to our Planet right now and look ahead, way ahead.

Portal to the Universe, God’s eye, Oracle of Wisdom, Church of One . . . a needle of glass, golden hued with surface chemistry that reacts to temperature changes within the Cathedral and responds through the colour spectrum of a galaxy,  a barometric signal to the external world, that the sacred space within is in compression,                                     the act of worship in a Church-of-One. We are nothing, we are everything.         

Rita E. Komendant, Architect April 20, 2019 Canada

Blue Whale Exhibit Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto Canada

‘Sentient Beings’. We are hearing those words a lot these days as we awaken to the situation regarding all life on the planet. Carlos Castaneda, an anthropologist turned shaman, first penned that the Earth itself was a sentient being and why not?Is our planet not a living entity alive with power, that molten core, a magnetic field, electricity in our atmosphere, cool forests, steamy jungles, smooth lakes, snowy mountains, raging rivers, the vast oceans?What better creature to enlighten us today than the largest ‘sentient being’ on the planet,the blue whale (Balaenoptera musculus)

Recently in Toronto, I stepped into The Royal Ontario Museum’s new exhibit: ‘OUT OF THE DEPTHS: The Blue Whale Story’ which opened officially just in time for March break. No one puts on a ‘show’ like a zoological display by the ROM.The ‘terrible lizards’ are still there, all our childhood favourites, the names we continue to recite with confidence: Tyrannosaurus Rex, Triceratops, Stegosaurus, Brontosaurus and the flying Pterodactyl but the Blue Whale, is still the largest animal to have ever lived on earth, larger than the any of the known dinosaurs of the Mesozoic Era.  Argentinosaurus weighing up to an estimated ninety tonnes is comparable to an average sized blue whale.

This exhibit of a rare marine mammal has been in the making since 2014 when nine blue whales were sighted, caught in shifting pack ice at the mouth of the St. Lawrence River. While feeding on krill, the only food these mysterious giants eat, they surfaced to breathe and found themselves trapped under thick ice, a new phenomena at this location in these times of climate chaos.

The dwindling blue whale populations of the Western North Atlantic ‘group’, are reported to have been the largest of all the ‘Blues’ in the earth’s oceans and have yet to recover having been hunted to the brink of extinction.To lose nine blue whales out of an estimated population of perhaps two hundred is a disaster and so caught the attention of our collective imagination and the world’s media.

Drs. Mark Engstrom and Burton Lim with their team from the ROM waited patiently for reports to hear if any of the whales washed up on shore. These giants usually sink and finally two whales did appear in Rocky Harbour and Trout River Newfoundland, a month after being spotted. The exhibit, is located in the depths of the museum, the story unfolding along a narrative path describes the retrieval and preparation of the bones of a twenty-three meter female blue whale. You will be in a hurry to be amazed, ready for the wow factor of your first encounter with something you will probably never see in real life from a tour ship or washed up on a beach.

A purple-blue light casts you underwater and recordings of whale vocalizations (tapping sounds) resonate from a moving backdrop, and a blue whale, captured on film (how did they do that??) appears out of the deep, fills the screen and disappears.

Everyone is unusually quiet.

A troop of small children, colour coded in red t-shirts, are hushed between the displays. The lighting, the sounds, the impact of the setting, this huge head with the small eye socket, we are all in the presence of something holy. Then, you realize that the skeleton of this animal, this Blue Whale, is of our time, they are out there now and we have done terrible things to them, the wow dissipates and my heart beats faster while I try to hold back the tears.

There is a lot to take in. After the initial shock of the scale and the sense of mass you feel from the 30 tonnes of bones that are cradled in a steel armature (no drill holes),the detailed connections designed as if holding rare jewels. You are awestruck by the immense physicality of this creature. A smart car, covered in vein graphics has been perched next to the whale’s heart, having been sent to Germany to be plasticized by those ‘Body Worlds’ folks.

It is almost too much to bear, a fellow mammal, all the dissected organs and comparisons to our humble size but deadly character, their brain (better in some departments than ours) one beseeches the question: “Are we really so different, living out our time on this planet?” Those front ‘arms’ with all the jointed fingers, those tiny little floating bones in the tail, called ‘vestigial limbs’, hind feet from fifty million years ago.

Dioramas chronicle the evolution from land dweller, a kind of ‘wolf’ creature, is now also included in the skeletal displays having been found only recently in the mountains of Pakistan some twenty years ago. ‘Pakicetus’ is the missing link to the mystery, connected by the similarity of a unique ear bone (!), illustrates that the earth was covered with water through eons of time and animals had to adapt to hunting for food in a watery landscape. The legends are true then, when the earth covered waters receded, they, on the branch from that ‘Latin Tree of Life’ by Linnaeus, the Cetaceans chose to remain in the ocean.

Before you leave and walk through a veil of dry ice you face atonement and view the past relationship with these giants. A woman’s bust propped up in corset stays is the centrepiece of a showcase filled with ‘whale products’. She is surrounded by an array of antique oil lamps, the only fuel to light our darkness just over one hundred years ago.

I avert my eyes from the knives and bladed instruments. The smooth wood handled harpoons. The ugly hooks. You will learn a new word: “flensing”, to slice the flesh, blubber or skin off in regular strips from the body.

I happen upon this text:

“. . . harpoon cannon . . . ship engines in reverse otherwise pulled into the depths . . . dragged for 28 hours . . . exhaustion . . . finished off by two men in row boat.”

Men who have dedicated their lives to the whales speak to us in the final video,about their close encounter, an existential exchange, man and whale meet eye-to-eye. They implore the visitors to join in and help. Blue Whales have not been hunted for fifty years now as they were put on the endangered list in 1966. There are about 20,000 Blues still on the planet. We learn more every day how they contribute to the web of life, to the health of oceanic ecosystems. California’s coastline, the Pacific North Eastern Group, tells us their population has recovered to 90% of pre-whaling days but good news posts are tempered by practicing Norwegian fleets still taking whales and the Japanese Antarctica fleet just returned with 100 Minke whales.

If you are in Toronto and want to experience ‘something extreme’, the Blue Whale will become a permanent exhibit at the ROM.

What does a house on one of the greatest lakes in the world look like? How close is it to the waves, is it made of wood, does it have solar panels? Is it sustainable to dwell in the North?                                                                                                              Lake Superior, the largest fresh water Lake by surface area in the world was carved out eons ago and settled into its basin after the last Ice Age, 10,000 years ago. The Ojibwe name: gitchi-gami means shining sea. Legends say a lynx type creature,  a water monster, slashes its tail about when angry.     The storms of Superior are legendary and many ships still lie intact in the frigid waters. The Edmund Fitzgerald, sank suddenly in November 1975, carrying a full cargo of iron ore when it was caught in hurricane-force winds with waves up to 35 feet. Along Lake Superior’s rocky northern shore you will find ancient granites that date back to the early history of the Earth, 4.5 billion years ago. During the Pre-Cambrian era, magma forced its way to the surface and created these granite intrusives known as the Canadian Shield. The Climate along the north shore is moderated by the lake and black spruce grows tall, amidst Birch and Aspen.  Solar panel salesmen love Thunder Bay, the port town at the Lakehead , who makes claim to be the sunniest spot in all of Canada. Winter, however is a longer story. To dwell beside Superior is to witness the energy and power of the Lake. One wakens to ethereal mists in pinks and lavender, and when you lay your head on your pillow, blazing sunsets of orange and cobalt score the vast horizon. The Lake can be found resting in a serene waveless azure and then suddenly, without warning, it can churn itself up into dangerous indigo. One wonders about that underwater Lynx, ‘Misshepeshu’ with the long spiked tail.

At Lock No. 3 of the Welland Canal rests the Monument of the Fallen Workers.                   One hundred and thirty one men died during the construction years of Canal building between 1914 and 1932.The Welland system of canals and locks is of one of Canada’s most significant engineering feats; a world wonder. This gigantic ‘ditch’, first dug out by draught horses and oxen, that side steps mighty Niagara Falls allowed Canada to prosper into economic success.The men we remember were Nation Builders. Their story is our story. Sited on the median, the visitor must cross the canal, on top of the locks, safely, a metaphor of departure to hallowed ground. The ‘procession of remembrance’ begins as the visitor descends down a grassy ramp. The ‘wall of the canal’ speaks the narrative of lives lost and lives lived. The space between the ship and the canal begins to compress you into darkness. The scale of the compositional elements magnifies the tension. Ahead, the giant doors of a lock wait for you and relief is in sight as the blue sky has opened the gates, enough to pass through. Steep stairs allow passage back up to ‘our world’. As you walk on the soft grassy lawn beside the ship’s listing steel hulk and read the names of the fallen, cut through the steel, beside you on the Canal, a towering vessel waits its turn to manoeuver through the locks. Consider the scale again- what the hand of man builds.
Finally, before we return to the ice creams and balloons and our cars, we pause at the garden and reflect. Here we remember the animals too who dragged the tons of earth, before the advent of steam shovels, the draught horses and oxen.
The grounds for the monument are covered with lawn. Wildflowers and indigenous plantings flourish alongside this composition of large scale ‘found’ elements.
Canadians from all corners of the Nation and visitors from around the World who arrive to marvel the geological wonder of Niagara Falls
will now experience a humanistic memorial, the cost of sacrifice
to build a beautiful Country.

Competition Submission by Rita Komendant January 15. 2015.

A stellar summer day at The Belluz Farm in Thunder Bay Ontario. It took me an hour to pick ONE basket of Strawberries today. Last week it took me the same amount of time to pick two. After the Strawberries I walked down and picked some Saskatoons. Upon our arrival Kaya was beside himself and got caught up with the excitement of people being directed where to go, cars parking, doors slamming, people rushing to the wagons (I missed the first one) He did his howly bark-talking thing ow-ow-owwooo, his big head out the window. I felt bad leaving him behind with a bowl of water. Us ‘early’ cars were all in the shade and the 1/2 open windows caught a breeze, he would be good, for awhile. THEN, after paying for my goodies (adding a bag of beans and fresh turnips) I got another ‘homemade’ HOT DOG as I had eaten mine waiting in line and returned to the car with a wiener for Kaya. THEN we went to walk the wagon road to the top of the Farm, a rise of land. I was 10 again on the Soomre’s Farm in Port Perry in Southern Ontario and so was Kaya. You could see how joyful he was, trotting ahead, looking back at me, walking alongside to lick my hand. When we were well away from all the action I let him off leash. Every now and then he would stop, look over the fields,(both ways) snout in the air sniffing, more existentialism aaand THEN he saw the FOX. An elongated bright orange flash racing through the pumpkins aaand Kaya was gone. Of course he wasn’t going to catch him but wanted to follow anyways. In a stern voice I had to remind him if he was a Good Dog or a BAD Dog and back he came, snuffling through the potatoes. We were now almost at the top of the Farm, a gentle rise that beckons you from the Parking area and from here one can see to the East the N’or Wester Mountains sliding down to the South. Across this glacial river valley to the western ridge of mountains are the remains of Big Thunder Ski Hill, the trails now disappearing into new forests and to the north the horizon line of the Nipigon Highlands (as I shall call them) is already a dusty blue under a welcome sun after days of gray clouds and heavy rain. The temperature is perfect and a steady breeze plays through the fallow fields of assorted wildflowers. I will always become ten years old again on any Farm I visit but I am not sure if the public is even allowed to roam up here. As we make our way down a farm truck approaches us, Kaya is back on his leash and the young bucks in the Pickup slow down and smile. “We saw a Big Orange Fox” I tell them. “You did?” A person can get away with a lot just because they are walking beside a beautiful Dog named Kaya.

We are going on Holiday. ALL of us. Mummi, Daddy, my Brother and Sister. It will be a long flight.

I am going to bring my colours, a pad of Art Paper, my DS, JuneBug- my little pony and my pillow “pinko”. We are going to B-A-L-I. I am going to see GIANT Flowers and Giant Trees in the Rain Forest. At the beach there will be big waves and maybe I will find some seashells. Amsterdam is mostly cloudy and crowded. I have never seen coloured parrots flying in a rain forest. I am so glad Daddy could come on holidays with us. I can hardly wait to get there.

FRIDAY, JUNE 15, 2012

Summer’s End from Neys Provincial Park:

The vast rugged terrain of the North Shore of Lake Superior has inspired many artists who have travelled there but it was the Group of Seven’s  Lawren Harris who reached new levels of Artistic expression.

Reduced to essential forms by the glaciers and burnt over by forest fires, this harsh land facilitated Harris’ pursuit of the expressionism of the underlying spirit of the north. At the time he was deeply interested in *Thesophy, a religious philosophy that is linked to the belief in the divine forces of Nature and the essential unifying spirit that is thought to exist in the Universe.

*[Theosophy (from Greek θεοσοφία theosophia, from θεός theos, divine + σοφία sophia, wisdom; literally “divine wisdom”), refers to systems of esoteric philosophy concerning, or investigation seeking direct knowledge of, presumed mysteries of being and nature, particularly concerning the nature of divinity.Theosophy is considered a part of the broader field of esotericism, referring to hidden knowledge or wisdom that offers the individual enlightenment and salvation. The word esoteric dates back to the 2nd century CE.[1] The theosophist seeks to understand the mysteries of the universe and the bonds that unite the universe, humanity and the divine. The goal of theosophy is to explore the origin of divinity and humanity, and the world. From investigation of those topics theosophists try to discover a coherent description of the purpose and origin of the universe.]*

The monumental paintings worked up from the sketches made during these trips are among his most powerful compositions. These increasingly abstracted works concentrate on the properties of space and light and reflect Harris’ quest for spiritual enlightenment through a profound experience with the vital forces of the northern wilderness.

‘Space and Light’ at Pic Island 1924