Virtual Exhibition

One aim of the Fallen Leaves project is to raise awareness in Ottawa. This project employs aerial photography, typologies, and archival reference, to reflect on the loss of these spaces. It intends to frame these lived spaces and clearing actions not only as ecological events, but as moments that reshape our shared identity and memory as a community and nation. As a component of that dissemination, I will be looking to showcase the work in galleries and art spaces. In my planning and outreach efforts I have developed a virtual exhibition as both a concept and example of what such an exhibition might look like.

These forests have long stood as a backdrop to daily life for thousands of residents, and their removal raises important questions about what is gained, and what is quietly lost, in the name of growth. In designing an online platform with integrated links to this site, social media platforms, and the associated zines which are in development, I intend to engage viewers from a variety of means.

Further, as urban expansion is a far broader global issue, employing broader and publicly accessible means of dissemination enable it to anchor the work in contemporary ecological dialogues. Please feel free to visit the space. 

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A sole tree standing in a cold Kanata field

““When the town fathers proposed lobbying for city status in 1852, William Stewart petitioned council to have is farm excluded from the new city limits. He argued that ‘the present limit of the Town is large enough for the next half-century.’

Stewart was not entirely right, however.

The land then within the limits would not contain the city’s expansion for five years let alone fifty.””

— -Bruce S. Elliott - The City Beyond: A History of Nepean, Birthplace of Canada’s Capital

Fallen Leaves Project

Our little family lives in Kanata, a suburb along the western edge of Ottawa, Canada’s capital.  Each morning I drive my kids to school along roads bordered by lush maple and mixed coniferous-deciduous forests.  For years, those woods felt beautifully seasonal, vibrant but at the same time fixed. They have been a silent and calming backdrop to our daily moments of connection in the few years I have before they find roads of their own.

The leaves of these sugar maple trees have become a defining symbol for Canadians.  Bright, iconic, enduring, they unite us. Their five-lobed leaves wave on our flag - not only stitched into the army uniform I wore most of my life, but stitched into our national identity.  Yet the living source of that symbol is being steadily erased.  The trees which gave rise to that symbol are increasingly fragile.  Large swathes of these spaces along our route, and across our capital, are being cleared in the name of urban expansion.  This project stares straight at that quiet erasure.  

James Ballantyne

While tracing the history of the maple leaf in Ottawa, I came upon The Village Maple.  Captured in 1892 by James Ballantyne, its tree grew long before I was born - in a place that I now call home.  It was a living witness to the birth of our nation, growing with us in the capital, a symbol of pride and strength.

That tree no longer exists - removed to make way for a seven-lane highway.

Village Without a Tree sits between those two points, a single tree lost in the past, and the measured sections being swept away presently.  These images, their sequencing, their dissemination and social engagement, all seek to ask what it means to belong to a nation that clears its emblem from its land.

Village Maple Tree

James Ballantyne

Where Ballantyne’s Tree Once Stood

Andrew Wesley

The project explores one of many sections identified under Ottawa’s urban expansion plan C-17. These sections, developed natural spaces with lived histories, will be wiped clear to make space for new townhouses, singles, and infrastructure. To see more of this project, please feel free to visit the virtual exhibition found HERE.

Fallen Leaves Virtual Exhibit