Canada 150
Canada 150
The Canadian! Friendly, somewhat shy, and always apologetic, the Canadian spends most of the winter clumped together in cities along the southern border of Canada. It is not so much that Canadians hibernate in the wintertime. Rather they are busy working, shovelling snow and gathering up holidays for the upcoming summer. Yes, occasionally, during the winter, you will find a Canadian out playing in the bleak frozen landscape. However, as the snow melts and ice again turn to water, Canadians will emerge in large numbers from their winter dwelling, ready to take on Canada's vast and magnificent landscape. The Canadian is especially fond of water and likes to play near or in the water, be it the oceans, the great rivers or the millions of lakes dotting the planes. Where there is water, you will often find Canadians frolicking about, making up for the long cold winters spent indoors.
On a more serious note, there can be no doubt that Canadians have a unique relationship with the land. Being a Canadian means living with contradictions that can’t help but shape us as a nation. As the second-largest and thirty-eight most populous country in the world, Canada comes close to the bottom of the list in population density. Being a Canadian also means access to a diversity of landscapes and climates unparalleled anywhere else in the world. From oceans to deserts, mountains to prairies, and glaciers to lakes – it is all part of a massive country larger than Western and Northern Europe combined. The Paradox is that our choices of where we live and play become both liberating and limiting simultaneously—liberating because Canadians have an almost infinite choice of the landscape they want to live in and limiting because many places can be nearly inaccessible and out of reach due to size and lack of infrastructure.
Add to this vast landscape one of the world's most culturally diverse groups of people, and a mosaic of enormous cultural and geographic dimensions begins to emerge. In this exhibition on the 150th anniversary of Canada, I explored the relationship Canadians have with the land they live and play in. With such diversity, I was especially interested in the duality of how the land shapes Canadians and how, in turn, we shape the land.
Jannik Plaetner
July 2017
Read MoreThe Canadian! Friendly, somewhat shy, and always apologetic, the Canadian spends most of the winter clumped together in cities along the southern border of Canada. It is not so much that Canadians hibernate in the wintertime. Rather they are busy working, shovelling snow and gathering up holidays for the upcoming summer. Yes, occasionally, during the winter, you will find a Canadian out playing in the bleak frozen landscape. However, as the snow melts and ice again turn to water, Canadians will emerge in large numbers from their winter dwelling, ready to take on Canada's vast and magnificent landscape. The Canadian is especially fond of water and likes to play near or in the water, be it the oceans, the great rivers or the millions of lakes dotting the planes. Where there is water, you will often find Canadians frolicking about, making up for the long cold winters spent indoors.
On a more serious note, there can be no doubt that Canadians have a unique relationship with the land. Being a Canadian means living with contradictions that can’t help but shape us as a nation. As the second-largest and thirty-eight most populous country in the world, Canada comes close to the bottom of the list in population density. Being a Canadian also means access to a diversity of landscapes and climates unparalleled anywhere else in the world. From oceans to deserts, mountains to prairies, and glaciers to lakes – it is all part of a massive country larger than Western and Northern Europe combined. The Paradox is that our choices of where we live and play become both liberating and limiting simultaneously—liberating because Canadians have an almost infinite choice of the landscape they want to live in and limiting because many places can be nearly inaccessible and out of reach due to size and lack of infrastructure.
Add to this vast landscape one of the world's most culturally diverse groups of people, and a mosaic of enormous cultural and geographic dimensions begins to emerge. In this exhibition on the 150th anniversary of Canada, I explored the relationship Canadians have with the land they live and play in. With such diversity, I was especially interested in the duality of how the land shapes Canadians and how, in turn, we shape the land.
Jannik Plaetner
July 2017
