If a picture’s worth a thousand words, to Jim and Sue Waddington, a painting’s worth a thousand miles.
For nearly five decades, Jim and Sue Waddington have hiked, portaged and paddled rapids around Canada, all to track down and photograph over 800 landscapes that inspired the Group of Seven’s works.
They’ve given more than 300 talks on their travels, published a best-selling book, and are now the subject of a short documentary narrated by their granddaughter Emma.
Now, in their eighties, the two are still at it.
“It keeps us busy,” Sue told CBC Radio’s The Current this week.
The Current16:49Tracking down real-life views that inspired iconic paintings
Jim and Sue Waddington took their first whitewater canoe trip in their 70s, in order to reach the real-life location of a painting by J.E.H. MacDonald. The couple has spent decades following clues all over Canada to find the vistas that inspired iconic works from the Group of Seven.
The Group of Seven were Canadian landscape painters who formed from 1920 to 1933, often depicting the country’s raw, natural beauty in their works. They included A.Y. Jackson, Lawren Harris, Franklin Carmichael, Frank Johnston, Arthur Lismer, J.E.H. MacDonald and Frederick Varley.
A passion formed from a love of the outdoors, not painting
Neither Sue nor Jim come from an art background. But like the famous painters, they love to canoe and camp, and in 1977, they set out with a specific goal in mind.
Sue says the first location they found was the subject of A.Y. Jackson’s 1933 painting, “Hills Killarney, (Nellie Park)”. She’d discovered the painting during a course at Mohawk College, and wondered if the place really existed.
“And we looked at the map of Killarney Park where we had been canoeing a couple of years and saw Nellie Lake and decided maybe we better go and see if it was there,” she said.
After a week of portaging, they found it.
“We were quite surprised that we could actually find it and that it actually looked almost identical,” Sue said.
That began a lifelong obsession.
“After we found that first place, we thought, well, there must be a lot more that we could find,” said Jim.
The couple consulted art galleries, topographic maps and artist notes to narrow down where they might find the artists’ original vantage points. They carried the artists’ sketches on their trips, which were more realistic than the paintings the artists later produced in studio, Jim says. He says the puzzle of it has kept them going.
“The artists often gave us enough clues to show where the painting might be,” Jim said.
A country-wide hobby
The pair have since travelled all around the country in search of these places, even returning to Nellie Lake for their new documentary, Hidden Secrets of the Canvas: One Couple’s Lifetime Quest to Uncover a Century, available on YouTube.
After decades of trips, Jim says they’ve been lucky to have experienced so much rare beauty they wouldn’t have without their unusual hobby.
“Canadians have grown up with these paintings and it’s their idea of what Canada is,” Jim said. “The Canada that most of us are familiar with is not like that at all; it’s cities and towns.”
Of all the places they’ve been, Jim says one trip to Algoma in northern Ontario stands out. At 75, he says a friend convinced them to take their first whitewater canoe trip in order to find a landscape painted by J.E.H. MacDonald.
“It was really exciting for us,” Jim said. “He could take us exactly to the places that they sat. We could see exactly the same rocks in the river.”
Still going strong
Artist and art historian Michael Burtch says the Waddingtons will likely be able to continue their hobby for as long as they’re physically able.
“It could take several lifetimes,” he said in an interview. “They were extraordinarily prolific.”
Burtch was part of a similar documentary to the Waddingtons’, Painted Land: In Search of the Group of Seven, that also followed pilgrimages to the spots the Group of Seven painted.
Not only are there thousands of sketches and paintings, he notes they depict landscapes from coast to coast to coast and everywhere in between.
“Parts of the country where footprints can’t be found,” he said.
But the Waddingtons are still trying to find them. They take off for another canoe trip in Ontario’s Killarney Provincial Park on Thursday.
Asked how the couple manages the trips now that they’re in their eighties, Sue said, “Jim carries the lightweight canoe and I carry the wine.”