Black Pioneers (c.1990)

A couple days ago I sat down to watch the October 3 digital launch of Canadian Art's "Chroma" issue, featuring co-editors Denise Ryner and Yaniya Lee, along with David Woods, Kelsey Adams and host Alex Bowron, whose opening "moment of reflection" is both a land acknowledgement and a recognition of the systems and structures that define our contradictory cultural present.

As the elder member of the panel, Woods has much to say about his work in -- and on -- Black Maritime Canada. As Woods spoke of the importance of the artist Harold Cromwell, I went looking for what wasn't pictured and found among other works Cromwell's Black Pioneers (c. 1990), a marker and ink on paper drawing of 19th century Black settlers arriving by sail from the U.S. (see above).

There's lots to say about Cromwell's drawing, from its minimal markings beyond the bodies of those arriving at a less-coloured-in and undefined land, sea and sky to the ship in the distance (pointed in the opposite direction) to the title itself (why "Pioneers" and not "Settlers"?). Here too Woods has lots to say on Black Maritime cultural production, but not at the expense of those on the panel who are working in other parts of the country, and whom he asks at one point to speak about their understanding of the Black cultural experience as represented in Toronto and Vancouver.

As a Vancouver resident with an interest in -- and some understanding of -- local histories, I was curious to hear how Ryner, who directs and curates Vancouver's Or Gallery, would respond, what she would highlight; if she would speak of Andrea Fatona and Cornelia Wyngaarden's Hogan's Alley (1994) or Stan Douglas's Circa 1948 (2014) or indeed Cecily Nicholson's essay on The Cheeky Proletariat art space in the current "Chroma" issue. That she chose instead to mention "the work Michelle Jacques and Charles Campbell are doing in Victoria" is fine by me, because the story of Black migration to -- and through -- the former HBC fort is important. But that choice -- I wonder what informed it?