Cornelius Krieghoff was the first artist to capture the Canadian landscape in oil paint. That’s what my Canadian Art History teacher told me in art school, anyway. She also told us that the landscape somehow informs all Canadian cultural output. My family is from Hong Kong. I grew up in the city. The first time I was east of Oshawa was when Greg suggested I look for a house out here. I don’t get the big deal. I’m a graphic designer in the gaming industry and these are quaint landscape paintings.
The thing about Krieghoff and Eastern Ontario is that not much has changed and people seem to like it that way. I don’t really like Krieghoff. Neither did my art history teacher, she said he was a middling artist that Canadians only liked because he was the first to paint Canada. He was technically very good but he’s not doing anything interesting. Krieghoff was a tourism illustrator not an artist but I guess it’s special when someone paints you for the first time and you look better than you think you did.
I didn’t pay much attention to Krieghoff in school, I just wanted to get through a required course. I never thought of him after that class until I moved here but one of my neighbours’ property looks just like a Krieghoff painting. It’s not as nice as a Krieghoff painting but neither was Krieghoff’s time. The snow wasn’t that creamy off-white that makes it look like it’s not colder than a witch’s tit and it’s not today either. My neighbour has old cars and trailers and stuff but there’s piles of equipment in Krieghoff’s paintings too, it just looks quaint because it’s stuff we don’t use anymore. Besides, painting is the ultimate photoshop. You don’t have to erase the blemish, you just don’t paint it in the first place.
I’m no historian but I’ve spent the last year listening to Greg and Jules fan-girl about local history and the only thing I’ve learned is that everyone had cholera. There’s this book called The Backwoods of Canada and I’ll save you reading it: everyone hates Canada because it’s just mosquitoes and cholera. It was written around the same time as Krieghoff was painting these idyllic little scenes and all it’s about is people dying of cholera. They die of cholera on their way to their land. They spend the winter in a shed dying of cholera. They die of cholera on their way back to Europe. They die of cholera after watching their family die of cholera. Meanwhile fucking Krieghoff over here is like “hey man, you know what’s better than poverty in Ireland? Totally not having cholera in some hovel in the woods. Look at how happy these kids on toboggans are! Come to Canada!” I don’t know what they called him in Upper Canada but I’d call him a fucking traitor.
But like…to talk to my neighbours they’re all “well if we could just get back to the Cornelius Krieghoff days life would be better.” No. Everyone had fucking cholera. And if they didn’t they were busy intermarrying because they hadn’t seen anyone but family in the last eight months. If anyone did visit they probably all got infected with cholera and died.
When something is so beautiful that it becomes threatening the term is “sublime.” Look at those trees in Algonquin Park growing out of cracks in the rock and all bent over from the wind and you’ll see what I mean. The Rocky Mountains are the classic example. It’s thought that this sense of the sublime is the foundation of Canadian cultural output. Canadians are very good at bringing a sense of beauty and intimidation together and it probably does come from all your ancestors moving to the woods and getting cholera. I see it. Cornelius Krieghoff did not. Even in his paintings that portray the harshness of the climate it’s with the sense of triumph you’d feel at the ho-tel afterwards (I’m told that pronunciation is how you distinguish a rural Canadian drinking establishment from the Howard Johnsons’s) not the sense of dread you’d have when you’re actually doing it.
I enjoyed my first country winter but only because I was very much not in a Krieghoff painting, or maybe because in some ways I was. My house is very modern with lots of windows. I spend most of my day behind a powerful internet-connected computer with multiple monitors next to a gas fireplace drinking the green tea brought back from a trip I took to China and eating snacks early immigrants couldn’t even comprehend. I spend my evenings gaming on an eighty-inch television from a leather couch. If it gets too cold I can get on a plane to the Caribbean and warm up for a week. It’s very nice to be able to look out the window at winter without having to actually experience it. My neighbours up the road have it easier than the people who built their house but they still spend all winter moving firewood to heat a home with single paned windows and no insulation. So maybe today is closer to Krieghoff’s vision than when he was painting after all. And it still sucks.
It’s strange to me that so many of my neighbours are committed to Krieghoff’s vision. I get that communities each have their own unique culture and I understand that some people really like old houses but I want to be comfortable. I built my house, I could have built anything I wanted so I built something I liked. But the more neighbours I meet the more I notice they can’t see past Krieghoff’s vision and I don’t think it was ever true.
-Walter
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