Children of tiny Port Simpson pack big punch in art exhibit

From The Vancouver Sun
Yvonne Zacharias
October 27, 2006

Few people in the Vancouver area have heard of the Lax Kw’alaams, which translates as “the place of wild roses.”

They probably know very little about the tiny Indian village of Port Simpson, once described by a band manager as being “at the forgotten end of the road.”

Yet curator Julie Lee has embarked on a project that brings a little of their world to the big, bustling city.

It is a world that is as starkly beautiful as it is remote. Fifty km north of Prince Rupert, Port Simpson is accessible only by boat and float plane. It is a pristine world of overturned boats, weathered totem poles, shimmering horizons and shattered dreams, of upended tree stumps that send spidery silhouettes up into the sky.

All of that is captured in an unusual art exhibit called Regeneration in the most unlikely place of an auto dealership at Burrard and Third Avenue in the South Granville area.

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