The nature of art

Photo by Liz Lott

Liz Lott creates work that is easy on the eye and the environment

By Sarah Ryeland

What inspires an artist? Is it love? Life? Family?

For Liz Lott, it’s all of the above and more.

For Lott, there’s no such thing as a typical day. One day you’ll find her taking beautiful wedding photos or family portraits, and the next she’ll be painting futuristic interpretations of her city’s landscape. The day after that, you might find her selling environmentally friendly goods and handcrafted jewellery at Hibou, her boutique in North Bay.

“Every day is completely different,” she says. “I run an eco-shop, but I also do photography. I’m also an art instructor through Learning Through the Arts, I’m a mom, and I do volunteer work for different community groups.”

Obviously, she knows how to keep herself busy. But when you have a passion for art and giving back to both the community and the environment, there’s no such thing as time off.

Lott grew up in Powassan, and began travelling the world once she graduated high school. She visited many different countries and experienced life in various cities around Canada – even studying visual arts at Montreal’s Concordia University for a year – but eventually she returned to her roots.

“I moved back up north because it’s just where I feel most at home and most comfortable,” she says “with all the nature and lakes and trees.”

That love of nature is something that fuels Lott in every project she tackles. As a young girl, the artist became inspired by action the government was taking against issues like acid rain. From there, she involved herself in environmental groups in places like Barrie and Temagami and has continued to incorporate environmental issues into her art.

One of her favourite projects is a photograph of North Bay that she manipulated with paint to include an imaginary scene: giant red pines growing in the middle of the downtown core. To create the piece, Lott printed the image onto canvas and then simply set up her easel on the sidewalk, picked up her paintbrush and got to work.

“I really believe it brings all of my passions together, that painting,” says Lott. “It’s combining two of my favourite mediums, but it also combines my intense passion for the environment and wanting humanity to realize that if we don’t have healthy surroundings we’re not going to get very far. I really believe that we need to get back in touch with nature and bring it back into our lives.”

It’s a positive message, too. Lott’s vision of the future is one where our environment is healthier; where humans respect the land and live within it peacefully.

“That’s one unbelievable thing about Liz,” says Lott’s friend Yan Roberts. “All of her stuff is so positive. That painting in particular gives us the opportunity to choose a better way of doing things, without fear mongering.”

Judging from the reactions she gets, others feel the same way too.

What Lott is creating is a positive future through the power of art. Her photography focuses on capturing the innocence of youth and the simple joys in life, like new families and young love.

In fact, the decision to focus on photography was one that was made with the healthy future of her son in mind. When Lott was pregnant, she realized that her oil paints included toxins that she didn’t want to expose her young child to. So instead of focusing solely on painting, she began to develop her skill for photography.

“I decided to take a break from painting,” says Lott. “I purchased a manual camera for doing slide documentation for applying for grants and juried shows, so once my son was born I started taking pictures of him. Through encouragement from friends and family who said that I could take good pictures, I decided to try doing children’s portraiture and prenatal images.”

By the following summer, Lott had added wedding photography to the mix. Each year her business grew bigger and bigger and now her company – Snapdragon Photography – is a well-respected name in the industry.

“I really love people and I love capturing intimate moments with them,” she says. “That I can apply my artistic knowledge to my work is pretty great, too.”

She also applies her artistic knowledge to the work she does in her eco-shop. The name Hibou is French for owl – Lott sees owls as symbols of nature and wisdom, and encourages her customers to make wise and environmentally friendly decisions when it comes to making purchases.

Customers come into Hibou – located in the F.A.R.M. (fashion art and retail market) collective in North Bay – not only for her environmentally friendly items, but for the artwork as well. Lott has a well-trained artistic eye that offers her customers the opportunity to be gentle with the earth, while still being stylish.

Hibou also has another function – bringing together those who care about the environment.

“It’s such a fabulous addition to our community,” says Roberts. “It’s a place you can go and you’re guaranteed to run into someone that’s likeminded. The fact that this is right on Main Street in North Bay makes it normal and gives us all a sense that we’re not alone with these ideals.”

Lott and her friends are also advocates for the bring-your-own-bag program. Hibou Boutique has a strictly no-plastic-bag policy.

“Plastic bags get airborne and animals consume them,” says Lott. “Loons get them around their necks. That was the inspiration to not have bags. Yan (Roberts) made some great signs for having at point of sale and also at the door reminding people to bring their bags, so that was really great.”

It may seem like Lott has a lot on her plate, but it’s by focusing on what she loves that gives her the fuel she needs to create her art. And she never stops learning, either. She has taken photography courses taught by local photographers David Lewis and Jim Forsythe, and continues to work on being the best photographer, painter, environmental activist and businesswoman she can be.

“Liz is so invested and involved in every single community that we run into her everywhere we go,” says Roberts.

While she continues to grow her eco-business, Lott is also very focused on her photography and art, making sure none of her passions takes the back seat.

“I’ve been a visual artist since the time I could hold a crayon,” she says. “And I would like to pursue my visual art and the urban ecology series a bit more. But I also want to foster and grow both my photography and eco businesses.”

Clearly, Lott shows no signs of slowing down. And for the city of North Bay, the arts community and the environment, that’s a really good thing.

The hole

Canadian history deep beneath North Bay

Story and photo by Rob Learn

For sale: one large, gently used hole in the ground. Owner no longer has use for. Very secure.

That’s an ad that could be popping up sometime soon in a classified section for army surplus goods.

The space in question is “The Hole,” as it was affectionately referred to in its heyday. Near North Bay, 60 storeys beneath the Canadian Shield, it served as the nerve centre for North American air security.

Decommissioned in 2006, the military is preparing the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) base for dispersal, though what that might mean is very much up in the air.

And whatever it’s used for, the new role likely will pale in comparison to what went on in the bunker in its previous incarnation, when generals sent out their orders from the base at the height of the Cold War.

The Hole is set just off the heart of North Bay, across the road and rail line from the Ministry of Natural Resources office on the shores of Trout Lake.

It now mostly sits idle, save for the small force of maintenance staff keeping it operational and safe. It’s a tiny, tiny fraction of the 600 to 700 people who made their living keeping the base on guard for anything that looked like a threat from its enemies and their nuclear arsenal.

The Hole was a direct result of those nuclear arsenals that just kept growing after the initial deployment to end the Second World War. Started in 1959 and completed in 1963, the bunker was designed to be capable of withstanding a four-megaton nuclear warhead – a bomb 260 times larger than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

To achieve this level of protection the military employed rock, lots of rock, 60 storeys of pure, unadulterated rock.

You get to The Hole through a tunnel, a 1.2-kilometre-long tunnel that runs from the entrance at the base of a ski hill to the CFB 22 Wing base atop Airport Hill. When it was operational, access to The Hole was by a bus that dropped off military and civilian personnel deep within the earth, where they went to work in what was essentially a windowless, three-storey office building.

But it was the construction of the office building that truly made it unique. The structure was housed in a man-made cave five storeys high with a footprint of about 240 feet by 430 feet. The whole building sits on large steel girders bolted to the Canadian Shield. The effect is a building that didn’t even flinch when the area was shaken by an earthquake that registered 5.2 on the Richter scale.

Access to the cave came through three doors that opened from the tunnel. The doors are nearly two feet of thick, solid steel with heavy-duty pins locking the 19-tonne pieces shut. The military says that the doors are capable of withstanding days of direct blasting.

The size of the building was most likely dictated by the technology that was available at the time of construction. It has the same square footage as the Northgate Shopping Centre and, until 1982, almost half of that – 11,900 square feet – was taken up by a single computer dubbed SAGE (Semi-automatic Ground Environment). Hard to imagine in today’s technological age of smart-phones, tablets and the like, but it was at the time of construction in the early 1960s the most powerful computer in the world. It took up the entire third floor and a good portion of the second floor and weighed 275 tonnes. It’s computing capacity? 256 kilobytes. It was used until 1982, when solid-state computers replaced the tubes.

The computer was connected to the air defense system of North America. From a command post, generals could see all of the information available and make decisions in real time.

In fact, the command centre was used extensively during the Gulf War, with live footage from Canadian F-18s shown on the monitors.

Which was the ironic part of The Hole. Despite its isolation, the computer was connected to the world long before anyone had dreamed of a worldwide web. And more than any other place in Canada, the base was directly affected in terms of alert levels and surveillance levels by other world events. For instance, in 1959, when the Iraqi government changed from being pro-Western to pro-Soviet, the NORAD complex was thrown on high alert.

So, how did this crossroads of air defense land in North Bay? The quick answer is Trout Lake. Being underground with that much computer equipment – old-style computer equipment – the primary concern of the designers was heat. To dissipate the anticipated heat, the building was designed like a radiator with eight-inch water lines delivering cold Trout Lake water to the building to collect the unwanted heat and disperse it back into the open water.

It is one of the design features that made life in The Hole bearable for periods as long as four weeks in total isolation. The facility featured a gymnasium, medical rooms, barbershop and chaplain office and they were put to use regularly. For exercises, the base would be shut down behind the 19-tonne doors for three days at a time to make sure everything was ready “for the big one.”

Power was even self-contained with three generators sitting on stand-by, each capable of producing 1.2 megawatts of either natural gas or diesel. During an outage, the lights don’t even flicker, with instantaneous backup coming from 388 batteries that fill in before the generators are called upon.

But that capacity became more and more moot as air defense was moved above ground. The place that at times had 500 people working in it during the day-shift now only has two working toilets and a skeleton crew keeping the alarms and lights on.

Major Delta Guerard says the military budgets $400,000 to $500,000 for annual maintenance just to keep the place somewhat safe while its future is sorted out at National Defense Headquarters in Ottawa.

“That’s a lot of money going into something that is really not serving much of a purpose,” said Guerard.

Are there any offers on the table?

“Not that we’re aware of. It’s a great facility and it would be nice to hear from someone who has ideas for it.”

They call him ‘Bear Man’

Story, photo, Rob Learn

He’s arguably North Bay’s most famous resident. In fact, since Mike Harris left town for the Big Smoke he’s probably more inarguable than arguable.

But fame and fortune don’t go hand in hand, as Troy Hurtubise can tell you.

The star of the classic Canadian documentary by director Peter Lynch, Project Grizzly, never did manage to convert that fame or his driven, focused attention into something he would call success.

As an inventor, Hurtubise was proud to have one of his prized creations – a special suit designed to withstand an aggressive grizzly bear attack – featured in a documentary. Unfortunately, the success of the film didn’t translate into acclaim for the inventor.

Now almost 50, Hurtubise lives in North Bay in a small rental cabin on the Lake Nipissing shoreline with his wife Lori and 18-year-old son Brett, and is still looking for that break.

More than 14 years after he rose to fame, Hurtubise hasn’t sit still for a moment. What he has done is thrown himself into one project after another. Each endeavour has had varying degrees of success in execution he says, but always the same result – no interested buyers and crushing bills.

“We lost the house in 2005 and we’ve been around ever since,” says Hurtubise, who notes that the hard luck started even before then.

“I went bankrupt six months after the documentary came out,” says Hurtubise who, during the time of filming, was operating a scrap metal business.

“I knew before they started filming that (the documentary) was going to cost me big time. While I’m out doing this testing and going out west there was no one to run the business and it all went downhill,” he says.

But what footage!

To this day, clips of Hurtubise testing out his suit dubbed the Ursus Mark VI are some of the most viewed on the Internet. A decade-and-a-half later and each new generation gawks in awestruck wonder as Troy, inside the suit, takes blows from pickaxes, axe handle-wielding bikers, logs and even a pretty high-speed impact from a reinforced pickup truck. Through online streaming, Hurtubise’s death-defying feats make him just as popular now as he was when the film hit screens to wild acclaim in 1996.

“I understand why it went huge, why it was Quentin Tarantino’s favourite movie. I get that. Peter Lynch was a brilliant filmmaker…(Project Grizzly) set me back for a lot of years. Most people thought it was a joke.”

Hurtubise says it wasn’t. He says the intention of the suits was to do actual field testing of bear sprays to see what works and what doesn’t stop the brute force of a 900 lb grizzly intent on doing someone harm.

“I’m the only one who tests it on free range grizzly bears…that’s not what you got. What you got was me running around the Rocky Mountains trying to wrestle grizzly bears and not the science,” says Hurtubise.

Wife Lori says she liked Project Grizzly, but says she sees a character on the screen and not the man she married.

“I think they portrayed him much different than the man he is. For instance he’s constantly smoking in the movie. Every scene it seems he’s got a cigarette. He doesn’t smoke that much.”

What Lynch and the National Film Board got was a big hit. The documentary was already out on the big screen when Tarantino, at the height of his fame after Pulp Fiction’s blockbuster run, dubbed it his favourite film. The quip let Project Grizzly gain momentum and a star was born in a giant suit of armour.

“People think just cause your famous you’ve got a lot money. You don’t. I didn’t get one dime from that,” says Hurtubise, though he did make some money doing appearances on American talk shows and in consultant fees that he was always throwing into the next project.

That next project, after Project Grizzly, would be the final bear suit dubbed the Mark VII. Hurtubise says the suit was revolutionary compared to its forerunner because of a change in design that split the top piece in two vertically.

“NASA didn’t even have anything like this. Here’s this huge impervious suit and I could put it on by myself. It was revolutionary,” he says.

It also wasn’t enough to pay the bills. The Hurtubises lost their first home in 2001 and the suit went with it.

It’s a pattern that’s repeated itself again and again, with what many would deem to be mind-blowing projects that seem to fall through his hands like sand.

Troy Hurtubise says he was only supposed to be visiting North Bay for a week on his way to British Columbia when he met Lori.

“Me and my brother go to the Country Style Donuts and sat down next to the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. She says, ‘I wonder if the movie [Dances with Wolves] is an accurate portrayal of the book,’ and I had seen the movie so I open my mouth and the next thing you know I’m 20 years married to this woman who won’t leave North Bay.”

During the interview she sits back and lets her husband carry on with his rapid-fire style of talking that goes through peaks and valleys – sitting back one moment and building his momentum until he’s at the edge of his seat, eyes focused.

Over the two-hour interview he doesn’t lose that intensity as he describes the many projects he’s worked on over the past decade.

They include Angel Light, which he claims could see through walls, the ground, even clothing and flesh to look at the bones and internal organs of a person’s body.

That one, Hurtubise says he gave up because of side effects that included heavy vomiting; his hair started to fall out and he lost 30 lbs of weight in about two weeks.

But news of the discovery, says Hurtubise, spread and he soon had a German physicist making inquiries and then suggestions about how to develop the Angel Light. During the phoned-in augmentations the device went from being portable to being about 26 feet long. Hurtubise dubbed it the Godlight.

Hurtubise says the light from the machine, the Godlight, had an almost magical power and that he says, cured one person of Parkinson’s disease, another of Alzheimer’s and two cases of breast cancer.

“It didn’t even need to be that intense of a treatment. Two ten-minute sessions and they were cured,” says Hurtubise, who doesn’t recall the names of the patients he helped.

The Godlight befell the same fate, says Hurtubise, as his other inventions. In 2005 shortly after inventing it and trying to get it noticed, the Hurtubises lost their second home. He put the Godlight machine in storage, but when he couldn’t pay the bill, the facility’s owner threw the cure for Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and breast cancer into the local landfill.

“Angry? You couldn’t believe it,” says Hurtubise. “If only they had given it a chance the world would be a better place today.”

Another invention is Firepaste that Hurtubise claims almost completely stops the transfer of heat and is much more impervious than the product used by NASA on its shuttle missions.

In fact, Hurtubise says he created Firepaste after the Columbia disaster in 2003.

“I studied for 12 hours on the Internet what the top fire resistant materials were in the world and then I spent three hours of trial and error mixing them and I had Firepaste,” says Hurtubise.

Firepaste’s lack of success, says Hurtubise is that industry and science don’t want to give credit to a man working out of his house without hundreds of thousands of dollars of equipment, let alone any formal science education.

“How the hell can he do it?’ That’s the answer you get when you show them this stuff,” says Hurtubise.

His latest inventions are inspired by his younger brother Blair’s service in the Canadian military in Afghanistan.

One set is armour for vehicles that can either be attached to the outside in magnetic bags or set inside the body of the vehicle to ward off improvised explosive devices, rocket-propelled grenades and other deadly fire.

The second is a full-body exterior-skeleton suit, including full head protection that is inspired by the futuristic shoot-’em-up games popular amongst the video gaming population.

“It weighs 65 lbs. It’s a full-body armour. Not only will it cold stop a bullet, but it won’t cause blunt force trauma… it can take a 50-calibre bullet to the chest,” says Hurtubise.

Certainly the videos of Hurtubise testing out the suit look compelling. Men and women fire at close range with large handguns, shotguns and more at his creation, with ballistic clay behind it showing no sign of trauma leaking through.

But like the other creations, Hurtubise doesn’t have it either. He sent it to a lab in Ottawa for testing to convince the military to take a look at it.

Although he has some pieces of it left, Hurtubise says the rest has been blown to smithereens.

And while he may not have any other suits he built, the devices he’s created or any accolades for his achievements, Hurtubise does have the devotion of his family.

They appear unwavering in their faith that his maverick style of living is going to get them where they need to go.

Lori does work to support the family and Brett is getting ready to make decisions about his own life. Hurtubise says he can’t go to work, that it isn’t in his nature. “If I had to go work for the man after three days I’d just blow my brains out.”

Right now he’s in the midst of writing a second book about his life. He’s found a publisher and hopes to have it on the street before Christmas rolls around. The working title is The Bear Man. And while it will certainly look at his exploits and the lean times that have come in their pursuit, there are some big moments in his life.

For instance, Lori says she doesn’t get out much, but when the subject of Project Grizzly comes up she is able to rhyme off a pretty impressive list of celebrities that she and her husband have gotten to rub shoulders with.

She’s also enjoyed taking trips to Harvard University where Hurtubise has twice lectured after winning the 1998 Ig Nobel Award for safety engineering for the Mark VI.

That suit has a special place in the newly opened Toronto International Film Festival Bell Lightbox Theatre in downtown Toronto. The suit is behind glass in a proper display after the festival was able to buy it off one of the bankruptcy trustees for $2,500. Hurtubise estimates he spent $50,000 building it.

“That’s the most famous of all my suits. At least it’s in a good place,” says the inventor.

And there’s probably another suit in Troy Hurtubise yet.

“I’ve been hit by logs, run over by trucks and bulldozers…pfft. It’s all second nature to me now.”

Winter Friends

Winter has gone to the birds

By Kristen Hamilton

Winter can sometimes be long and dreary, but learning how to attract birds to your backyard can add some excitement and make for a great hobby to keep you busy this winter.

Feeding the birds is been something I’ve done since I was a little kid. It’s wonderful to watch them swoop from feeder to tree and back to the feeder. By providing the birds with food, water and shelter, you are bound to attract many lovely species.

Providing water may seem easy, but in the winter it does pose a bit of a problem because the water can freeze. It’s very important for the birds to have access to fresh water in the winter because many of their drinking sources are frozen. Simply adding a water heater to a birdbath will keep it from freezing and provide the birds with the fresh water they need.

Providing food isn’t as challenging because you can get pre-made mixes at many garden centres and hardware stores.  It’s also important to put the right feeder in the right location. Chickadees for example, spend most of their time in trees and are used to eating at higher levels, so a feeder placed up high from the ground is best. Sparrows however, tend to eat from the ground and would benefit from a feeder placed on, or close to the ground.

Birds will adjust their habit of eating if they are hungry enough to get to the seed. Placing a feeder in the middle of the lawn isn’t so appealing to birds; ideally some type of shelter close by such as a garden bed, a tree or shrub will make the feeder more attractive. Just remember to place your feeders close enough to the house so in the winter they’re easy to keep filled.

When selecting feeders you’ll want to make sure they’re squirrel-proof, unless you don’t mind letting the squirrels in on a free meal. Birds will shy away from a feeder if a squirrel occupies it. If you have a population of squirrels it’s best to provide them with a feeder that they can eat from. A few snacks that squirrels enjoy nibbling on are corn, crackers, suet and sunflower seeds.

Deer can also cause a little trouble with feeders, so it’s best to place them up high and out of reach from the deer. A large tray feeder will come in handy because you don’t have to fill it daily, and it offers plenty of seating. You can also design a tray feeder with a roof to block the snow from piling on top of the seed.

Sunflower seeds will offer food to 20 different species of birds. A pre-mixed bird seed that contains more sunflower seeds than millet will be enjoyed more by the birds and will not be wasted as much as a mix that contains more millet.

Not only can you purchase pre-made bird feed, but you can also plant different types of fruit-bearing trees and shrubs, like viburnum, Virginia creeper, service berry, junipers and dogwoods. Dogwood varieties such as the pagoda dogwood or the red osier dogwood provide some of the best-loved bird food in the fall and winter, giving birds such as the grosbeak and the woodpecker a delicious treat of shiny berries.

Believe it or not, in just a short time an entire dogwood can be stripped of all its berries once they are discovered.  Different annuals such as zinnias, bachelor’s buttons, cosmos and sunflowers will attract seed-seeking birds such as goldfinch and sparrows. Perennial garden favorites such as the black-eyed Susan seed heads are enjoyed by the common redpoll. Our favorite gold strum variety of black-eyed Susan does not produce the nutritious seeds the birds crave, so stick to the truly native species.

If you’re lucky enough to have oaks in your backyard, you’ll have a wonderful supply of acorns that will draw the birds in, especially blue jays. Also, I find crushing a few eggshells and leaving them out where the birds can get to them will provide the birds with some of their supplementary needs.

If you want the birds to enjoy the seeds from your season’s garden its best not to cut any of the perennials down. Leaving some of the tall ornamental grasses for the birds also adds some winter interest to your garden. In the spring, the dried blades of long grass are great nesting material.

Creating shelter is also very important as it lets the birds find some warmth during the winter months and also hides them from predators. Evergreens are great for providing shelter all year long. Different types of evergreens can be planted specifically to create great garden features and provide birds with the shelter they need. Don’t forget to add other shrubs to your evergreen groupings such as bayberry and bearberry.

A great way to get your children involved in bird watching is to let them help you fill the feeders, but they can also make some wonderful treats for the birds.  From your garden, gather pinecones and then smear them with peanut butter and the finally roll them in a seed mixture. This project can get a little sticky but is lots of fun and it attracts all types of birds from chickadees to woodpeckers. A great project for any age is to make simple feeders out of recycled bottles or old scraps of wood.

Whether it’s a hobby you want to develop, or if birding is an activity you’ve been enjoying for many years, it’s a wonderful way to get out and enjoy all the seasons in Muskoka.

Kristen Hamilton (nee Suddaby) has more than just a green thumb; she’s also a certified Landscape Technician. Hamilton has a BA in Applied Science as well, with a major in Landscape.