breathedout | Two fun research byproducts (Reply)

Today I learned that...

During WWI, tiny Elizabeth Bishop was living in Nova Scotia! Apparently she lived with her grandparents in Great Village, NS, from 1915-1917, aged four to six, and thereafter returned often for holidays. Great Village is west and slightly south of the Antigonish/Trenton/New Glasgow area where my characters Rebecca and Katherine grew up and where Emma lives; and situated on the Minas Basin north of Halifax, where Maisie and Rowland live. This has no practical applications for me as even Bishop at six years old was, you know, still a six-year-old; she wasn't running around falling in love with Canadian maidens and writing sonnets about loss. But I thought it was a cool connection.

The artist Mildred Valley Thornton, of whom I had never heard, sounds like a force to be reckoned with (from Shay Wilson's "Portrait of a Vanishing Artist)":

At the age of seventy-seven, Mildred Valley Thornton looked back on her achievements. Her oeuvre was impressive-- hundreds of paintings, most of them striking portraits of First Nations people from the Plains and the West Coast, dating from the 1920s to the 1960s. She'd received honours and recognition. She was a fellow of the British Royal Society of Arts. She was a respected art critic. She had published a book (a second book was published posthumously). Her paintings had been internationally exhibited.

Another person might have felt satisfied with these accomplishments, but Thornton was bitterly disappointed. Since the beginning of her career, she had refused to sell any of her portraits, even though they were in high demand. She wanted the Canadian government to one day purchase the entire collection on behalf of the public and to acknowledge the historical importance of her contribution. [Thornton intended to pass on the proceeds from this sale to the First Nations people who had been the subjects of her portraiture.] But when that day came, the Canadian government refused to buy it. Angry and hurt, Thornton made a drastic decision--she would have every last painting in the collection burned.

This last did not actually happen because this codicil to Thornton's will wasn't properly witnessed; instead her works were sold into private collections and the money went to her estate rather than back to the First Nations people whom she wanted to benefit. Womp womp.

Honestly I also learned a TON more things today; it was kind of a breakthrough research day followed by a super productive talking-about-my-novel session with

greywash; I feel like I'm much further along in this restructuring process than I was at the beginning of the weekend despite the fact that I am PLAGUE-STRICKEN; LO I HAVE A COLD; MISERY IS ME.

I physically feel like a slug and yearn for a return to my gym/yoga routine, but otherwise: not too bad, considering.