VAREY o@ca.on.manitoulin.howland.little_current.manitoulin_expositor 2003-01-08 published
Margaret Velma
ROWE
In loving memory of Margaret Velma
ROWE at Manitoulin Health Centre
in Little Current on Sunday, January 5, 2003 at the age of 85 years.
Predeceased by husband Frank
ROWE (WW2 Oct 27, 1944.)
Loving mother of Kenneth and Dorothy
ROWE,
Joan and Matt
COTE.
Cherished grandmother of Michael and Angela, Kim
HARRIS,
Lori
Robert, Tim and Carol, Dave Brenda. Special great grandmother of
Dylan, twins Brianna and Kierra, Brianna, Alanna, Stephen and Devin.
Will be missed by sisters Mildred
VAREY and Ivy
COWAN and brother
Cliff VAREY, predeceased by Milf and Manely. Aunt of many nieces and
nephews.
Visitation was on Tuesday, January 7, 2003. Funeral Service is at
2: 00 p.m. Wednesday January 8, 2003 both at Island Funeral Home.
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VAREY o@ca.on.manitoulin.howland.little_current.manitoulin_expositor 2003-10-22 published
Jean (NORQUAY)
MORRISON
On Sunday, October 5, 2003 at the Henderson Hospital. Beloved wife
of John for 32 years, cherished mother of Ian and his wife Francine
of Calgary, AB., Scott and his wife Sue of Ottawa. She will be sadly
missed by her grandchildren Monique, Stephanie and Jason. Fondly
remembered by her sisters Dorothy
SUGGITT of Sunderland and Kathleen
VAREY of Little Current. The family received Friends at Dodsworth and
Brown Funeral Home, Ancaster. Chapel service was held on Thursday. Cremation to follow.
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VAREY o@ca.on.manitoulin.howland.little_current.manitoulin_expositor 2003-10-22 published
Mina Hazel
VAREY
In loving memory of Mina Hazel
VAREY who passed away peacefully on
Wednesday, October 15, 2003 at the Manitoulin Health Centre at the age of 84 years.
Cherished wife of Clifford of Little Current. Loved mother of Janet
and husband Don
IRVINE of Grafton. Special grandmother of Michael
and wife Doris
IRVINE,
Wendy and husband Jim
MORRISON, Melissa
Irvine, Marsha
IRVINE, all of Toronto. Will be greatly missed by
great grandchildren Bruce and Claire. Predeceased by brothers Elias,
Cecil,
Elmer,
Clare, Albert and sister Lillian
BUFFEY.
Visitation was held on Friday, October 17, 2003 at Island Funeral
Home. Funeral Service was held on Saturday, October 18, 2003 at
Grace Bible Church, Little Current, Ontario with pastor John
VANKESTEREN officiating. Burial in Mountainview Cemetery.
Island Funeral Home.
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VAREY o@ca.on.manitoulin.howland.little_current.manitoulin_expositor 2003-12-03 published
Clifford Charles
VAREY
Tragically, north of Barrie on Monday, November 17, 2003, age 88 years.
Predeceased by his cherished wife
Mina (née
AELICK) on October 15, 2003.
Loved by daughter Janet and husband Don
IRVING of Grafton. Special grandfather of Michael and wife
Doris IRVINE, Wendy and husband Jim
MORRISON, Melissa
IRVINE, Marsha
IRVINE, all of Toronto.
Will be missed by great grandchildren Bruce and Claire. Forever
remembered by siblings Mildred
VAREY,
Ivy and husband Marvin
COWAN,
Milford (predeceased) and wife Kay
VAREY, Margaret and Frank
ROWE (both
predeceased) and Manley and wife
Frances
VAREY (both predeceased.)
Visitation Thursday, November 27 at Island Funeral Home. Funeral service Friday, November 28, 2003
at Grace Bible Church. Pastor John
VANKESTEREN officiated . Burial in Mountainview Cemetery.
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VARLEY o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-09-04 published
Artist and portraitist refused to compromise
Works in his trademark use of colour hang in the Art Gallery
of Ontario, Toronto's Mount Sinai Hospital and in private collections
By Carol COOPER
Special to The Globe and Mail Thursday, September
4, 2003 - Page R9
When the director of the University of Toronto's Hart House Gallery
needed a portrait of Hart House warden Dr. Jean
LENGELLÉ, she
called artist Gerald
SCOTT.
"In this case, Gerry was a perfect fit for Jean, because Jean
wanted something that was not staid and traditional, which is
certainly Gerry," said the director, Judi
SCHWARTZ.
"He [Dr. LENGELLÉ] liked the patterning approach that Gerry took,
and the two of them got along very well."
Mr. SCOTT painted the 1977
LENGELLÉ portrait and countless others
in the manner of his friend and mentor, Group of Seven artist Fred
VARLEY.
"Gerry placed colours together that you wouldn't think of, and
when you stand back from the painting, you get the effect of
the work, and when you get closer to it, you start to notice
the colours," Ms.
SCHWARTZ said of the
LENGELLÉ portrait.
One of the foremost Canadian portrait painters, whose works hung
in the inaugural exhibition of Toronto's prominent Greenwich
Gallery along with those of Michael Snow, Graham Coughtry and
William Ronald and are found in the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto's
Mount
Sinai
Hospital and numerous private collections, Mr.
SCOTT
died of cancer at the age of 76. Along with Dr.
LENGELLÉ,
Mr.
SCOTT's subjects included a Bermudan prime minister and a Baroness
Rothschild. One of six children, whose father worked as a building
engineer and car salesman, Gerald William
SCOTT was born in Saint
John. Although his birth certificate reads September 30, 1926,
Mr. SCOTT always said it was wrong and he was born in 1925. To
help support his family during the Depression, Mr.
SCOTT danced
on the city's docks, missing school to do so. After service in
the Canadian army during the Second World War, he returned to
Toronto where his family had settled.
There he met and married the Italian countess Josephine Maria
INVIDIATTA. An
English teacher who recognized her husband's gifts,
she taught Mr.
SCOTT to read. Thereafter, he read incessantly,
devouring all types of material. Countess
INVIDIATTA also encouraged
Mr. SCOTT to attend the Ontario College of Art, now named the
Ontario College of Art and Design.
Graduating from the college in 1949, Mr.
SCOTT won the Reeves
Award for all-round technical proficiency in drawing and painting.
After a short career in advertising and turning down an opportunity
to do a cover for Time magazine, he focused on fine art.
Mr. SCOTT taught at his alma mater part-time from 1952 to 1958
and full-time for a period beginning in 1963. And he participated
in shows at both The Roberts Gallery and The Greenwich Gallery,
later renamed The Isaacs Gallery.
While other artistic styles, such as abstract expressionism came
and went, Mr.
SCOTT continued with portraiture. "He didn't want
to compromise his style," said his son Paul
SCOTT. "He didn't
follow trends."
Lacking the time to develop a body of work for a show, and with
a self-effacing temperament which disliked the gallery scene,
by the mid-eighties Mr.
SCOTT no longer exhibited his work, sticking
to commissions and teaching, and writing plays and poetry.
Teaching took up much of Mr.
SCOTT's time, and he was known as
a good one. For 25 years, he taught at the Three Schools of Art
and later at the Forest Hill Art Club, both in Toronto.
"He was an inspirational teacher," said Michael
GERRY, a student
of Mr. SCOTT for six years and now an instructor at Central Technical
High School in Toronto.
"He was one of the few people around who understands the vocabulary.
He really knew his lessons. Not only was he skillful, he was
thoughtful, unusually thoughtful. Colour and temperature were
his specialty."
Said his friend and fellow artist Telford
FENTON, "He had wonderful
use of colour. It spoke to you."
A deliberate, patient and methodical instructor, popular with
Rosedale matrons, Mr.
SCOTT taught his students to observe colour.
"He could see colour everywhere," said Joan
CONOVER, who served
as a portrait model for Mr.
SCOTT. 'They're [the colours] there,
Joanie,' he would say to me. 'All you have to do is stop looking.
Close your eyes and then open them, very quickly. Close them,
open them again, and you'll get a brief glimpse [of the colours].'"
Mr. SCOTT also demonstrated painting for his students. "Most
teachers would not demonstrate," said another
SCOTT student Roger
BABCOCK. "
His demonstrations were like a Polaroid picture. They
would form before your eyes."
When students complained of lack of subjects, Mr.
SCOTT told
them how he stayed up nights painting works of his hand.
As he taught, Mr.
SCOTT discussed the Bible, religion or politics.
But he would not discuss his war experiences, according to Ms.
CONOVER. "It made his stomach hurt," she said.
Mr. SCOTT used his right thumb for certain strokes, and was highly
critical of his work, only signing it with persuasion.
Good
Friends since the fifties with Mr.
FENTON, the pair was
known as the Laurel and Hardy of the art world.
Once, they sold the same painting to three different clients,
eventually making good to all three. Another time while sailing,
Mr. SCOTT's boat crashed into the dock of the Royal Canadian
Yacht
Club.
Always charming Mr.
SCOTT ended up in the club's
bar, along with those of his party, treated to a round of drinks.
Mr. SCOTT continued working until he suffered a heart attack
three years ago.
He died on July 13 and leaves his partner Joyce, two ex-wives,
children Paul, Sarah, Hannah, Rebecca, Aaron, Amelia Jordan,
Jarod and Dana, and five grandchildren. His first wife, Josephine,
and a son, Simon, predeceased him.
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VARLEY o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-11-15 published
Sculptor 'entirely original'
A wood carver from a young age who made many public works, he
was befriended by the Group of Seven and later carved their tombstone
epitaphs
By Bill GLADSTONE,
Special to The Globe and Mail Saturday, November
15, 2003 - Page F10
A Canadian sculptor who as a young man was adopted by the Group
of Seven has died in Toronto. E. B.
COX, who prided himself on
achieving artistic and commercial success without ever taking
a penny in government grants, was 89.
Mr. COX was a young associate, of some of the Group of Seven
with whom he went on northern sketching trips; A. Y.
JACKSON
once complimented him on his "good sense of form." He later carved
their tombstone epitaphs.
A wood carver from a young age, he came to master stone and even
the delicate art of faceting and carving precious stones; he
also tried metal, ceramics and glass. Because he liked to work
fast, he pioneered the use of power tools to quicken the chiselling
process, a technique that purists initially disdained as a form
of cheating.
According to one 1990s guide-book, he had "more sculpture on
view in Toronto's public places than any other single artist."
His 20-piece Garden of the Greek Gods, originally installed in
the 1950s on the Georgian Peaks near Collingwood, Ontario, was
later relocated to the far more populous grounds of the Canadian
National Exhibition near the Dufferin Gate. The only fully human
representation in the group, an 11-foot-high statue of Hercules,
was carved from a six-tonne piece of Indiana limestone -- "the
biggest piece of stone used by a sculptor in Canada," according
to friend and patron, Ken
SMITH.
Among his many other public works are a fish fountain for a courtyard
at the former Park Plaza Hotel, a stone bear for the Guild Inn,
a stone Orpheus for Victoria College, lavish countertops and
railings for historic bank buildings, a large seated lady for
McMaster University and whimsical creatures for a school yard
in Milton, Ontario
Having mastered big, he also excelled at small: He used to claim
that he invented coffee-table art. He carved little totem poles
to put himself through university, and became known for his small
bear sculptures, which he sold at popular prices, especially
at Christmas. "At university, I damned near starved," he would
explain. "I don't believe in starving artists."
Influenced by Iroquois and West Coast Haida art, he focused on
bears, beavers, birds and other animals as well as human torsos,
masks and heads; he often caught the animals in quirky fluid
poses and never failed to capture their essential natures. He
once crafted an all-Canadian limited-edition chess set for the
Hudson's Bay Co., with beavers as pawns, coureurs de bois as
knights, Indian princesses as queens, and so on. He was "the
great bridge between aboriginal art and modern art," according
to Mr. SMITH and others. A picture book about him, featuring
an essay by Gary Michael
DAULT, was published by Boston Mills
Press in 1999.
"He was entirely original," said Toronto sculptor Dora DE
PEDERY-
HUNT.
"Absolutely nobody else did what he did. What style he had was
entirely his. I call him a real good sculptor, a real good artist."
The younger of two brothers, Elford Bradley
COX was born on July
16, 1914, in Botha, Alberta., where his family made a short-lived
attempt at farming; he learned to carve by watching his maternal
grandfather whittle kindling by the fireside. He persisted in
sculpting even though his pious father was vehemently opposed
to the creation of "graven images," he told Toronto Life magazine
in 1997. The family returned to Bowmanville, Ontario, where E.
B. spent most of his childhood, and where his mother died suddenly
after an epileptic attack when her favoured son was a young teenager.
When it was time for him to go to university, "his father sent
him off with $5, a suitcase and a wish of good luck," said Kathy
SUTTON, the younger of his two daughters.
Studying languages at the University of Toronto from 1934 to
1938, Mr. COX was befriended by German professor and painter
Barker FAIRLEY, who introduced him to A. Y.
JACKSON,
Fred
VARLEY
and Arthur
LISMER of the Group of Seven.
Mr. COX started teaching languages at Upper Canada College, but
soon left to join the war effort as an intelligence officer,
interrogating prisoners of war in Europe.
Afterward, he resumed teaching at Upper Canada College, and devoted
part of a summer to a school canoe trip on the Mississauga River
the next summer he escorted a group of boys on an even more adventurous
trip down the Churchill River in the barren lands. "That was
just unheard-of in those years," recalled Terence A.
WARDROP,
who joined that expedition and became Mr.
COX's lifelong friend
and solicitor. "It was a big trip and it was almost historic
the rivers and some of the lakes were unmapped in 1948."
Quitting his teaching job in 1949, Mr.
COX married the former
Betty CAMPBELL, bought a farm near Palgrave, Ontario, and discovered
that he could survive as a full-time artist. (Although he considered
government subsidies poisonous, he once applied for a government
grant to study Canadian stones suitable for sculpting -- and
was turned down. "I did my stone research without their damn-fool
money," he told The Globe and Mail in 1970.) Moving to a rural
property in north Toronto and later to a Victorian house in eastern
Toronto, he separated from his wife but remained on excellent
terms with her and their daughters.
Being partial to pranks, he once purchased a canoe for his wife
as a gift and, to achieve maximum surprise, paddled it to the
dock at the family cottage in a rented disguise. Along with his
love of humour, Friends recall his sharp wit and his ability
to cut through social pretense. "He said he wanted his gravestone
to read, 'I told you I was sick,' " recalled art dealer John
INGRAM. "
That's what I remember about him -- his great sense
of humour and just what a wonderful compassionate guy he was.
He tried to give this air of being an old curmudgeon, but in
fact, he was anything but."
Becoming a mentor to many young artists, Mr.
COX generously shared
his tools and experience with them. "He didn't have much mentoring
when he was learning to be an artist -- people didn't help him
so he took the opposite tack," said his daughter Kathy.
Always enthusiastic and full of ideas, he was usually in his
workshop early in the morning -- and kept on working even after
losing his sight in his final years. His home was full of fine
sculpture and painting, including a portrait of Mr.
COX by Mr.
FAIRLEY that hung over the mantel. "It was a lovely place, and
by the time you got out of there, you were in a buying fever,"
Mr. SMITH recalled. "E.B. himself was part of the fun of buying
stuff. People were just charmed by the atmosphere he created."
He was also famously not particular about the prices he asked
from genuine admirers of his work.
As for his art's place in the world, he was confident it would
last, at least in the physical sense. "We'd have these long philosophical
talks about whether there was an afterlife and what legacy to
leave behind," friend Eric
CONROY recalled. "He'd say that his
stone works would be there long after Rembrandt's paintings had
crumbled."
E. B. COX died in Toronto on July 29, leaving his wife
Betty,
daughters Sally
SPROULE and Kathy
SUTTON, two grandchildren and
two great-grandchildren.
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