At The McMichael – From Water to Water: A Way Through the Trees

Bonnie Devine’s mural installation at the McMichael Canadian Collection is based on the Anishinaabe/Ojibwa artist ’s research on the Carrying Place Trail. This path carried Indigenous people between the shore of Lake Ontario and the Lake Simcoe-Georgian Bay Region and has a troubled and important history (see video below).

The research assembled by Devine and her assistant, Mariah Meawasige, focused on the history of the Huron-Wendat Nation, which considered the trail an important trading route. When Europeans arrived in the 1600s, also realizing the importance of the route, they dispersed the Wendat people and destroyed their ancestral lands.

Devine’s multi-media work includes a display of Wendat ceremonial pipes excavated from sites near the trail, which runs beside the Humber River and through the land surrounding the McMichael.

Bonnie Devine is an artist and professor at OCAD University (Ontario College of Art and Design) who specializes in sculpture and installation art. She is the founder of the college’s Indigenous Visual Cultural Program.

The McMichael exhibition page, here.

Bonnie Devine’s Instagram, here.