I applied and got into the program. I was looking to get my grade 12 and perhaps get into university. I liked to write, and photography was a big hobby of mine, so I thought perhaps journalism would be a good choice. After all, it’s not new to our family; my uncle Terry had been a war correspondent during the Vietnam War, and after that, he signed on with CBC Radio, eventually becoming the Executive Director of CBC Radio International. A position he held until he retired. His wife, my aunty Anna was an ambassador who had been deployed to a number of countries as our amassador, her last posting was to the new (at the time)Emassy in outer mongolia.
I grew up on the stories my mom told us about my uncle and aunty Anna. I thought that if he could do this, so could I. The program leader gave me the go-ahead for this, covering all costs.
I challenged the exams for grade 12, wrote the first-year university tests and passed them both easily. A particular piece of the exam had me write an essay about something that changed the course of my life. This was easy, I wrote about my childhood and my dad’s alcoholism and how even after having gotten away from it. It still changed me in profound ways. I was truthful and did not leave anything out; it was pretty gritty. My teacher called me into her office to talk about my tests. She had my essay on her desk, and she was teary-eyed. She said that I needed to get some experience working at a newspaper so I could learn the different cogs of journalism involving newspapers and magazines. She felt I had what it would take to be a writer.
It was up to me to find a newspaper willing to give me the training. The Courier-Islander in Campbell River offered me the training. The first thing I learned was darkroom development. I was incharge of developing all film, both mine as well as other repoters. I loved this. Then I was put out as a photographer, getting photos for the various stories. I finaly got the chance to write, and it opened up something inside of me. This putting into words the best way to tell a story was incredible. While working on a story that was quite interesting, I drew a graphic to go along with it. My editor liked it and put it in with the story. I started doing more for other stories, next thing you know, people were calling in to try and buy the drawings. I soon realized that I could make a living selling my art. They let me be a graphic artist to finish out my time on the job training. Seems a new career opportunity has presented itself.
There were forty of us who graduated from this course, and I had become friends with them all and was going to miss them. I had tried to help each of them the best I could in achieving their goals, and when graduation came, I was informed that I was voted valedictorian. It was both terrifying and an honour, terrifying because I would be giving a speech to and about my fellow students, who would be joined by family and friends. And an honour because all my fellow students who voted for me. My teacher told me later that I was the only one they all voted for. This left me speechless.
I began selling tons of art after working at the newspaper. I had somehow just become an artist, and I never knew I was an artist. It was a complete surprise. I remember as a kid how Dad loved art and would always talk about Norval Morrisseau as being his favourite artist. When I started doing graphics for the newspaper, Norval’s art always came to mind. I, too, loved his art and would have loved to create art in his style, but there was one big problem: I am colour-blind in a big way. For the first couple of years, I only created black-and-white art. I was painting as many as 15 pieces a month and selling them for as much as 250 dollars apiece.
An owner of a local First Nations gallery took me on as my agent. She got me a contract with a clothing business that would take art and embroider it onto limited edition pieces of clothing; they were from Alberta. A year after signing with them, they phoned me up and asked if they could use my designs to create some special leather jackets to be presented to the Calgary Stampede Queen and Princesses. I thought this was pretty cool and said to go ahead, this was not for money, just a very great honour. She also lined me up with a company in Victoria that produced a line of clothing with my images.
Another company in Victoria contacted me about doing a series of art prints, but they felt that all black and white would not work and requested that I send them some colour images. So there I was, sitting in front of a canvas, looking at various containers of paint in colours that I could not see well. Then I thought, what the hell, I can see the names of the paint, so I knew what colours they were, and my wife said she would help. So I just went for it. The print company was quite impressed and expressed how the yellow sky and green oceans worked together. They printed 10 images. I stayed with them for several years until I was contacted by a person in Germany who had seen my art for sale there and was interested in buying an original. He sent me a couple of photo samples of the art he had seen to let me know what he was interested in. These were images that the print company had stolen from me. It took me a year to stop these sales, and it would have taken more money than I had to sue them. I marked it up as a lesson learned and began using a couple of different silk screeners to produce my own prints. After that, I was in full control of marketing my art, and as such, all profits were mine. The downside was a lot more time on the road, away from my family.
I began to create drums, and then I took up carving paddles. The creativity was flowing out of me, and sometimes I would get into a painting, a drum and work right through the night. I was literally on fire. It was all very exciting. I built a 4-foot pow-wow drum and got it entered into the BC Festival Of The Arts. I made it through the preliminary bouts and wound up in the BC Finals.
By the time my drum reached there, there were 7 of us First Nations artists who were working together, not just in art but had created a dance troupe and were performing at various venues around the island. All 7 of us made it into the finals of the BC Festival Of The Arts. One of us won first place, and the rest of us took home various other awards.
