HAZEL FULFORD and ROBERT LAVACK
ROBERT S STORY It all started with a letter from home, pushed through the mail slot of my Swedish address with the usual flood of junk mail. Enclosed was a MacLean s magazine article featuring Norval Morrisseau, a Canadian Ojibwa artist and my nemesis of almost thirty years ago. An old friend had sent me the article, no doubt to stir up memories of experiences we had shared with Norval. Having been out of contact with my Canadian roots for many years, I assumed that Norval s destructive life style had sent him to The Happy Hunting Ground long since. I was grudgingly pleased to read that he was still alive. The MacLean s article recalled for me a hilarious yet often perilous association that began in the mid 1960s and continued for almost ten years. At that time, I was a consultant for the Ontario Department of Education, covering a territory that stretched from the American border in the south to Hudson s Bay in the north, and from about twenty miles west of the Lakehead (now Thunder Bay) to the Manitoba border more than 300 miles further west. About ten percent of the population of the area was Ojibwa and Cree Indian, most of vi.
them living in isolated communities north of the gold mining towns of Red Lake and Pickle Crow. Access was only by air. I was an experienced pilot certified to maintain my own aircraft. My first meeting with Norval occurred at a Chief and Councilor s training course sponsored by the Ontario Department of Education and the Federal Department of Indian Affairs. He was living on his wife Harriet s Sandy Lake Reserve, and the band elders selected him for the course. My branch of the Department was responsible for sports and art for both Indian and white communities. Thus I was destined to see a lot of Norval, whose artistic growth was obviously being restricted by the isolation of Sandy Lake. His hand-to-mouth existence and growing family responsibilities aggravated the restriction. However, it was the problem of obtaining art supplies that tipped the scales, along with Norval s wish to be in contact with other artists. And so he adopted an itinerant lifestyle, putting great stress on his family relations. However, it was a step towards his goal of becoming a famous artist, a goal he achieved at great personal cost. When in 1970 I convinced the Department to sponsor an art circuit to bring an appreciation of Indian art and culture to northern communities, I vii.
didn t realize what a task it would be. Had I known that I would eventually become Norval s and Carl Ray s pilot, keeper, marriage counselor and general fixer I would have fled the scene on winged heels. As it was, Norval and Carl changed my routine civil service life into a series of madcap adventures. I like to think that I influenced Norval s life by bringing him back, time and time again, to the path that led him to international recognition. He paid his debt to me by providing escape from a life that held little happiness. I left Canada in 1972 and lost track of Norval. Many years later, settled in Sweden, I regained possession of the three thick files I d assembled, long ago, on my association with him. I had once entertained the thought of writing about this period in Norval s growth as an artist. As I scanned these files, the idea re-surfaced and I enlisted an email correspondent, Hazel Fulford, as co-author. However, Norval s power of attorney refused permission to reproduce the artist s letters and paintings. We dropped the project for two years. Now we have decided to tell the story in our own way. Robert Lavack Prague, 2006 viii.
HAZEL S NOTE In April, 2004, I received a package from Robert Lavack, an email correspondent living in Sweden. The package contained ninety-nine letters and other papers pertaining to his former association with the native Canadian artist, Norval Morrisseau. Robert suggested that he and I collaborate on a book based on these letters. I agreed to give it a try, and then the fun began. In order to illustrate the book with copies of his paintings, we had to contact Morrisseau for permission. We finally located him in Nanaimo, British Columbia. He was delighted to hear from his old friend Robby; however, permission to use any of his work would have to come from his business manager, Gabor Vadas, who held Norval s power of attorney. After long and frustrating attempts to obtain the necessary permission, Robert and I felt we could not meet conditions imposed and gave up the project. In this year of 2006, we have taken an alternate route in recording unrevealed episodes in the life of Canada s first aboriginal artist to achieve national and international fame. As the story begins, Norval is relatively ix.
unknown and working in a gold mine in Cochenour, Ontario, near Red Lake. By the mid 1960s, Robert Lavack has become Norval s unpaid agent. Sales improve in Northern Ontario, and within a few years Norval s art has appeared in galleries in Winnipeg, Vancouver, New York, and then in Paris, France. In 1970, Robert Lavack, an employee of the Ontario Department of Education, began to make arrangements for Norval and his Cree friend, Carl Ray, to visit white secondary schools in various communities in the hope that they would not only teach art but foster knowledge of aboriginal culture. Robert monitored these expeditions from his office in North Bay, intervening only when a situation arose that could not be handled locally. However, he was personally involved in flying Norval and Carl to remote native communities like Big Trout Lake, where Robert s mandate was to meet with chiefs and councilors and apprise them of the secondary school and adult education services available to them through the Provincial Department of Education. The antics of Norval and Carl kept Robert on an emotional seesaw, as revealed in his letters to Norval s wife Harriet, to the Department of Education, and to court officials. The chapters that refer to these episodes are true accounts of x.
adventures Robert shared with Norval and Carl. Letters written by Norval Morrisseau and his wife Harriet have been paraphrased. As for the bulk of the letters, some have been retyped and others have been reproduced in their original form in order to preserve letterheads and signatures. A number of these letters carry blots, smudges and even the odd hand correction. Warts and all, they tell an authentic story. Hazel Fulford Thunder Bay, Ontario 2006 xi.
CHAPTER THREE Speak of the Devil Norval and Robert sit in the bar of the Red Lake Inn. The month is May, the year, 1970. Robert wants to talk business; he has had no reply to recent letters. If he wants a discussion, he has to catch Norval in a favourite watering hole. Norval is not in the mood for serious talk. He downs his drink, calls for another, and says to Robert, What s that bump on your forehead? Did you run into a door? Robert fingers the benign growth on his forehead. He hasn t found time to have it removed, and the doctors say there is no hurry. No, he says, I am not supposed to tell. But, since you are in the danger zone, I will tell you. Just because we are friends. What the hell are you talking about? says Norval, gulping down the drink that has just been 16.
set on the table. Robert leans across and looks into Norval s eyes. You were on the right track that day in Quetico, he says. Remember when you dropped out of the Chiefs and Councilors course to invade Jack Pollock s art course? The elders of the Sandy Lake band had sponsored you but that was a mere detail. I hounded you to get back to your own classroom, and you said, Bugger off! Only an evil spirit would come between a man and his art. Well, as I said, you were on the right track. As it happens, I am an assistant to the Devil. I haven t quite earned my horn yet. My job is to harvest souls for Satan and I need a lot more of them before my horn will grow to proper size. He rubs the bump on his forehead, trying to look regretful. Assistants only get one horn. Norval laughs. His face wears the blurred look it assumes when he reaches a certain stage of inebriation. Tell me another one, he says. I wasn t going to tell you this one, Robert says. But, since you are bound and determined to go to Hell, I thought I d better warn you. As I said, we are friends, and I would hate to have to steal your soul. Still, he says, thoughtfully, I am behind in my quota. Norval rubs his head as if to clear his thoughts. 17.
He and Robert are the same height, and he stares across the table directly into Robert s eyes, which remain steady and serious. Norval looks uneasy. In his world, such things are possible. He rubs his head again. Hey, he says. I got a great idea. Your John and my Victoria are growing up. I think, in a few years, they should get married. They d make a great couple, and you and me would be family. Robert appears to give this some thought. Okay, he says. Victoria is a pretty nice girl. He s not comfortable with this kidding around, not today, Robert says to himself. They often communicate through banter, but Norval is more than a bit superstitious. After a few beers, Robert gives up his plan to talk business, and persuades Norval to go with him to the restaurant. Later, the John/Victoria alliance becomes a running joke, second only to the allusions to Satan. As a child, Norval Morrisseau absorbed Ojibwa spiritual beliefs from his grandfather s teaching. His grandmother countered with the tenets of Roman Catholicism. Thus he knew conflict from his earliest days. As an adult, Norval retained the innate spirituality that pervades much of his work. 18.
However, he constantly struggled to reconcile the belief systems he grew up with. The Ojibwa creation story instilled a reverence for the natural world and a strong sense of connection to the mystical and the divine. The story asserts that each substance and creature on earth was given an individual power and nature, but humanity alone was given the power to dream. In native life, great significance is attached to the place of dreams and visions these are the connection to the spirit world. Norval, raised in this environment, experienced dreams and visions glowing with the images he was bidden to capture with paint and brush. He believed in the protective power of the Indian name he was given, a name combining the potent metal copper and a powerful creature, the Thunderbird. He referred often to his Thunderbird God in correspondence. He produced several Thunderbird paintings his major depiction of that image is the essence of energy and majesty. This signature painting, as it hangs on a gallery wall, represents both the Ojibwa world of his birth and his current world of painting for profit. Norval, with a foot in each of these conflicting realities, could not get his bearings. 19.
To sell his art, he was required to present a public persona that heavily exploited his background. This commercial milieu he inhabited most of the time was in stark opposition to the Ojibwa world of nature and the spirit in which he had grown up. In a letter to Robert Lavak, he expressed this dilemma in one sentence: You know I have a dual personality. While Copper Thunderbird was his shield against the evils of the outside world, it could not protect him from the devil within. Over the years he attempted recovery from alcoholism with the support of various religions. Periodically he spent time in the addiction ward of St Joseph s Hospital in Thunder Bay, a Roman Catholic institution. Another time, he dried out with the support of Baptists. He allied himself with Pentecostals during another attempt to drive out his demon. In 1976, he embraced the Eckankar religion, which offered direct experience of God s kingdom through soul travel, or astral projection. It is clear Norval did not have well-defined, built-on-a-rock Christian convictions. With his superstitious mindset and Grade Four education, almost anything was credible. Thus Lavack s tongue-in-cheek claim of being the Devil s agent became a game played on the edge. On the 20.
surface, Norval accepted it as a game, and he played it to the hilt. However, sometimes his deep brown eyes took on a haunted look. Were dark forces playing with him? Robert, time and again, forgave his outrageous behaviour and continued to help him. Why? Was Norval being set up for a plunge into hell s eternal flame? Time and again, when these doubts surfaced, Norval would call on the genie in the whiskey bottle, who would assure him once again that all was well. 21.
The story of Norval Morrisseau s life is the story of a man whose inner self was lost in the wilderness between two worlds that each had a claim on him. From this wilderness emerged a brilliant array of images that captivated the art world. He was awarded the highest tribute of the Ojibwa, The Great Eagle Feather, and from our government he received the Order of Canada. Norval reaped many other honours. However, the spotlight that attends fame could not penetrate the dark core where conflicts lurked that he could not resolve. Genius is often referred to as a gift. Yet Norval paid a heavy price to become one of the greatest Canadian artists of the twentieth century. Robert Lavack has been, among other things, a combat pilot in the Second World War, a flying geologist, an employee of the Ontario Department of Education, and a member of the World Health Organization s drive to eradicate smallpox. He lives in Prague, the Czech Republic, with his wife Ingela and his beagle, Thelma. Hazel Fulford graduated from Lakehead University as a mature student in 1979. She is the author of When Trains Stopped in Dinorwic, Yellow Brick Roads to Gold Rock, The Gold Rock Letters, and Sign From Above: A Red Lake Mystery. She lives in Thunder Bay, Ontario with her husband Don. E-mail address: fulhouse3@shaw.ca ISBN 0-9731567-3-7