Parks Canada honours Annora Brown

Joyce Sasse - Annora Brown would be so proud to learn that Parks Canada honoured her by naming their Waterton Park Board Room after her – and suitably installing large, framed prints of six of her landscape paintings.

Waterton Park had a major influence on her life. According to her autobiography Sketches from Life, it was here she found courage to work through hardship, see beauty and find hope.

Annora Brown: Mistress with watercolour

Annora Brown

Joyce Sasse - When we look closely at Annora Brown’s landscape paintings we see how masterfully she planned her design techniques and use of colour and light to express what she wanted to say.

Annora Brown story on YouTube

Lethbridge College Digital Communications & Media Class and Instructor George Gallant – completed the filming of dramatization of “Annora Brown: Interpreter of the Foothills”

Joyce Sasse - A dramatization of pioneer artist Annora Brown’s story can now be seen on YouTube at “Annora Brown: Interpreter of the Foothills”.

Filming this project was done by diploma-program students at Lethbridge College’s Digital Communications & Media Class this past winter. Images of Annora, some of her paintings and photos from the region are projected throughout the production. By way of expressing our gratitude, Letters of Appreciation were given to the students and their instructor George Gallant by Joyce Sasse and Gerry Alex.

The restorative powers of nature

Annora Brown

Joyce Sasse - In spite of the many hardships pioneer artist Annora Brown faced, she developed an amazing capacity for resilience. Her restorative secret, she wrote in her autobiography Sketches from Life, was the healing power found in nature.

Parks Canada has designated the Waterton Park Board Room the “Annora Brown Room”

Annora Brown 

Pioneer artist Annora Brown would be so honored to learn that Parks Canada has named the Waterton Park Board Room the “Annora Brown Room”.  Its location is on the 3rd floor of the Administrative Building in the Waterton Work Compound, looking out toward the Prince of Wales Hotel.  Enlarged prints of six of Annora’s paintings adorn the walls. A plaque indicates some of her many contributions and directs visitors to the website www.annorabrown.ca.

Annora Brown: Innovator

Annora Brown and Peter (at Moyie Lake cabin) - Photographed by Gordon Crighton, from the Galt Museum Archives

Joyce Sasse - The Annora Brown Life & Legacy Project from 2017 moves ahead with vigour on many fronts.  She was so creative and used her many artistic skills in such inspired ways, I believe Annora’s story shall find good traction with Young Innovators. Furthermore, her inspired works, reflecting the intimacy she felt for each subject, provides important templates which successors will appreciate.

Annora’s many legacy gifts to us

Joyce Sasse - When I first saw Annora Brown’s paintings in the late '50s, I was awe-struck. They were so much about us. Now we have the opportunity to hear others tell what they believe to be her legacy.

Those who knew her speak of “a wonderful person, who didn’t get the credit she deserved”. She was quiet, never promoted herself, was always dedicated to quality work and was a life-long educator. Students who carried on in the Arts were confident because of the basics she taught them.

Annora’s chest of treasures

Annora Brown

Joyce Sasse

“Annora Brown is the hand of the flower sower and the eye of time,” an art critic wrote in 1972 after viewing a Glenbow exhibit of her two hundred paintings of rare wildflowers from southwestern Alberta. “For when the lily blooms no more, should man yet be alive, she will review for him the glory that was, and advise him of the glory to be.”

A week ago, as wildfire blackened so much of Waterton Park and adjacent ranch-land, the chest of treasures overflowing with Annora’s paintings remains intact and becomes more precious than ever.

Single woman, small town

Annora Brown

Joyce Sasse - For her time, Annora Brown was a modern woman with her bobbed haircut, her decision to own and drive a second-hand car, and her plans to live on her own as an art instructor.  However, when her mother had a stroke her father called her home to Fort Macleod. She was a 31-year-old spinster. It was what was expected, and Annora came home because she felt her first responsibility was to her parents.  It was hard those first years. She had no experience care-giving and house-keeping, never mind her need to meet financial commitments.  Furthermore, this modern woman who remained single and aspired to be professional, had to face the challenges of making her way in a small, conservative, rural, couple-oriented community.

Annora Brown lectured on the Buffalo Berry

Joyce Sasse - “No berry, except the Saskatoon, is mentioned more often in the journals of travelers in the west a few generations ago (the buffalo berry).” Annora Brown said when speaking to a Fort Macleod audience in 1939.

“The Indian name of the Bull-Berry, signifying Rabbit Berries, but the fruit was so commonly used as a garnish for the buffalo roasts and steaks of that day that the voyageurs were soon calling it Buffalo Grease or Bull Fat. From there it is a natural step to the common name of Buffalo Berry and Bull Berry, when the French-Canadian population began to be outnumbered by the English-speaking population.

Annora Brown: About book collections

Joyce Sasse - Spring cleaning is a good time to search your shelves for contributions to our Annora Brown Book Box collection. It’s a delight to discover new insights about this Fort Macleod native who was such an ardent conservationist and artist.

Annora Brown: Learning through play

Joyce Sasse - Ten years after Annora Brown retired from Fort Macleod, in her autobiography she recalled how important childhood play was. In an era when introverts were considered to be inept, Annora thought herself to be mouse-like. But what a mouse! Trees and flowers and rocks talked with her, each in their own language. Rocks, particularly, could be used for throwing, for breaking open to find colours and patterns, and for building play-houses. She loved them – and there was no shortage of rocks in her neighbourhood.

Gossiping about Annora Brown

Annora Brown painting, picture courtesy of Mary-Beth Laviolette

Joyce Sasse - Annora Brown wrote, in her introduction to Old Man’s Garden, that her intention was to “gossip about the flowers of the west” because she wanted to “gather under one cover some of the legend and lore (about them) that is to be found lying in odd corners.”  Now, in our Life & Legacy Project, we want to gossip about Annora Brown. We want to bring together the bits and pieces of her life and lore and memorabilia that made her such an amazing person.

Annora Brown: Handcraft and Art

Annora Brown

Joyce Sasse - That Annora Brown received an honourary membership from the Canadian Handicraft Guild is no mere footnote to her story. It indicated a major life-long passion.  She graduated from the Ontario College of Art with a Diploma in Applied Design (Honours). This was at a time when a great National effort was being made to elevate crafts to a higher status – beautiful, useful and saleable creations.

Annora Brown - Books, boxes, and paintings

Annora Brown

Joyce Sasse - Annora Brown was profoundly inspired by the Fortnightly Club and the arrival of “Book Boxes” from McGill University, which started in Fort Macleod in 1908. From the collection of books found in those boxes, Annora’s mother and friends would use the information to share in-depth studies of a variety of subjects. The boxes arrived every two weeks and laid the foundation for the artist/writer’s later in-depth studies in history. The Club continues to meet regularly, 110 years later.

A web of mindfulness

Joyce Sasse - The situation for single, professional women in Annora Brown’s time was vibrant with opportunity – and she was more than capable of living up to the challenge.  Stimulating networks of support were quietly emerging. Members of farm women’s, church and Women’s Institute groups were seriously contributing (often from pennies saved in their sugar bowls) to send female university graduates to jobs across Canada and around the world.

Annora Brown’s pride of place

Annora Brown

Joyce Sasse - Annora Brown never disputed the request made for her to return home to care for her parents, though she felt inadequate as a nurse, home-maker and financial provider. Stoically, she carried on. A few stolen moments with her sketch pad was her only release.

Annora Brown in her time

Joyce Sasse - Annora Brown drew the illustrations for Amy Wilsons’ book No Man Stands Alone. It must have been a work of delight for someone who could so identify with the nurse and her story.  The book is an autobiography of Wilson’s career, starting in 1949, with native and non-native families along the Alaska Highway in the Yukon.

Annora Brown: Educator

Totem, Tipi and Tumpline

by Olive M. Tyner and Clara L. Fisher, illustrated by Annora Brown

image from Amazon.ca

Joyce Sasse - Annora Brown was a teacher, as was her mother. Teachers convey ideas to their students and through their students. She did this by choice of subject matter and the belief that her world was vibrant with possibility.

Annora and the Blackfoot connection

Annora Brown 1957

Joyce Sasse - Imagine overhearing Annora Brown visiting with Joe and Josephine Crowshoe, who became spiritual leaders of the Piikani people.

The ominous dust clouds of the ‘30’s hung heavy. South Alberta was being invaded by thousands of immigrants who, with a voracious appetite, were bent on trampling and claiming land, tilling and fencing fields.