This past week, I was getting bored walking my 3-month-old twins around our suburban neighbourhood. I needed something more interesting, more city life humming around me. And then I remembered that one of the reasons we chose the rental we have in Coquitlam is its proximity to the SkyTrain. Not so much out of bravery but desperation for a change of scenery, I put one babe in a carrier, buckled the other into a single stroller, and walked to Inlet Centre to catch the Millennium Line eastbound to the last stop: Lafarge Lake-Douglas. (For some reason, public transit felt less intimidating than buckling two babies into car seats, hauling them up our formidable basement steps, and driving somewhere).
I was an urban flâneuse again, reading people (à la David Zeiroth in his recent poetry book) and spaces in my new-to-me city, a city I might be exploring more during this maternity leave than if I was still working.
Mostly everyone knows Lafarge Lake for its spectacular Christmas light display. Located in Town Centre Park, the lake is one of many sights and amenities that also includes a track and field (where I competed at track meets as a kid), tennis courts, sand volleyball courts, a playground, spray park, amphitheatre, and Evergreen Cultural Centre, to name a few.
The man-made lake is great in summer too. I watched kids in canoes shriek in delight as they paddled under the fountain while I ate some delicious ice cream (cookie dough and chocolate) from Rocky Point Ice Cream.
I looped around the lake and saw a young boy jump up and down with excitement when he caught a fish (the lake is stocked with rainbow trout from March to November). I chatted with a lovely stranger who asked about my boys and genuinely seemed to care about how I was doing. As I looked around, I was struck by how many people came here to play.
Since I work at an art gallery (when not taking care of babies), I always love visiting other ones. Unfortunately, the Art Gallery at Evergreen was closed for installation but I did get to wander around the stunning performing arts lobby.
I was surprised there wasn’t more public art in and around the building but I did enjoy stopping to reflect on Janet Wang‘s two-part window installation.
To Exit is to Enter shows a large portrait of the artist turning away and moving up a stairwell. The didactic panel says:
Is she coming or going? Was she asked to leave or invited in? What lies beyond? With these questions in mind the doorway becomes a portal, a mysterious passageway into the unknown. This metaphor continues Wang’s exploration of identity from her perspective as a second-generation Chinese-Canadian settler, artist and mother. Like many people living in this country, the notion of longing is complicated by histories of exclusion.
If you have Instagram (unlike me), you can point your phone at the QR code and activate the filter. Curious what this would look like. Anyone seen it who could tell me? Does the figure move?
The other part of the installation also features a door, showing a procession of figures moving in parallel lines, with one line heading towards a yellow door. The didactic panel talks about the Chinese Exclusion Act from 1923-1947, a federal policy that banned Chinese immigration to Canada. With this history in mind, the artwork brings up themes of belonging, identity, migration, and conformity, even in the present day. Are the figures walking willingly or involuntarily? Rather than a golden archway (or country) of opportunity, I interpret the door ominously. It reminded me of Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time where all the residents of Camazotz move and speak the same way because they are controlled by IT, a gigantic disembodied brain. Doors are liminal, in-between spaces that typically represent change, hope, and new beginnings, but as this artwork shows, that is not necessarily the case.
The artwork doesn’t really jive with the leisure and play surrounding the lake on a summer day, but perhaps it is all the more striking because of this incongruity. And like good public art, it got me thinking. It made me aware of the privilege I enjoy as a Canadian citizen whose government gives mothers a 12-or 18-month maternity leave and as a white settler who hasn’t faced policies of exclusion like the artist and people of minority groups. It also made me grateful for where I live (despite the soaring coast of living) and my capacity to walk out the door of my home with babies and do outings like this.
I wonder how long this artwork will stay up and what other installation might be there the next time I visit. Any ideas for other destinations or experiences to try with the twins over the next year?