Strange things happen in bogs, especially in northern Europe where all kinds of rituals and magical rites went on during the Iron Age. I just wrote about visiting a bog, or muskeg, just near Waskesiu Lake in northern Saskatchewan. Read it here. As far as I know, no rites or sacrificial offerings have ever been made in a northern Saskatchewan bog, but there is still some of that mysterious otherwordly atmosphere. And while the 2-km loop Boundary Bog Trail near Waskesiu is a popular well-marked hike, there are many other less-explored bogs up there in the gorgeous boreal forest. Along with bears, coyotes, cougars and timber wolves, of course.

As a child I spent summers at nearby Emma Lake, about 30 miles away from Waskesiu, and my sisters and I used to make regular forays into a dark mossy area we called the Enchanted Forest. There are no neat trails or paths there at all, you just enter this crazy forest that’s coated in sphagnum moss and sink up to your ankles in the stuff and know that you’re in another world. And because there are no signs or markers and it’s not on any maps, there’s no danger of crowds or tourists. I can truly say that I have never ever seen a tourist in the Enchanted Forest.

It can, however, be dangerously confusing. One summer John Cage got lost in there. Yes, I said JOHN CAGE. The famous New York composer. What was he doing up there, you ask? He was there at the Emma Lake Artists Workshop, a rustic art camp that drew a number of famous New York artists and critics like Clement Greenberg and Kenneth Noland and even Frank Stella. (Now it’s called the Kenderdine Campus but it still has artists’ workshops.)

I have never quite figured why John Cage, who is obviously a composer rather than, like, a painting artist was at Emma Lake but there he was. And then he was gone. Lost in the muskeg. Handily he happened to be a mushroom expert so he gathered wild mushrooms to eat while he waited to be saved. It didn’t take too long for someone to find him. I thought he was out all night, but my mom says she thought he was found in the evening. When he did finally get back to the art camp he cooked up the mushrooms he’d gathered and served them to the other artists, my mother, Dorothy Knowles, included.

Maybe while he was lost in the forest he was thinking a lot about art and nature because while he was serving the mushrooms he stopped in front of my mom, a landscape painter. “Did you paint those beautiful paintings in the studio?” he asked her.

“Yes,” she said and ate her mushrooms, feeling very pleased. You might, in fact, even say it was music to her ears.

Note: There is some good information and pictures of artists during the 60′s in their studios at Emma Lake (including a couple of my mom) on the Art Gallery of Prince Albert website.

Isn’t it supposed to be the other way around? Who doesn’t remember being mortified by their parents in high school? It’s the nature of growing up. (Or am I abnormal? Wait – don’t answer that.) But over the years things have changed – and now it’s my  poor mother who can expect to be embarrassed by her daughters. I mean, so my sisters and I are a little protective. But it was a tiring trip for mom, flying from Saskatoon to Toronto on Friday and dealing with two openings, one at Miriam Shiell Gallery in Yorkville on Saturday and then the Dorothy Knowles Land Marks show at the McMichael Collection on Sunday. How could we help but watch out after her?

It started with the talk she had to participate in, a three-way discussion between Terry Fenton, who wrote a book on mom, and Tom Smart, the Executive Director and CEO of the McMichael. Mom didn’t have her own mike so after Tom asked a question he’d pass it over to her. And then she’d hold it too far away.

“Mom!” I yelled out (loud enough that I didn’t need a mike), “Hold the mike closer to your mouth?”

Well, that kind of stopped the discussion for a moment, but if she’s going to go all that way to do a talk I wanted people to hear her. I think I did it 3 more times. By the end of the talk, my sister, Rebecca, her daughter, Molly, and I were all leaning forward, perched on the edge of our chairs, miming shoving a mike in our faces. But mom sailed on. She had the audience laughing – she’s far funnier than we gave her credit for.

And then during the Q&A my other sister, Catherine, leapt up and continued the talk, saying, “I know mom wanted to say …” But the thing is that she and mom had been talking about key points she wanted to mention, namely that mom, who is known as a prairie painter from Saskatchewan, has in fact painted Ontario. I can vouch for this because I was with her. We took a trip to Muskoka together to trace her family’s roots. And on another occasion we went to Elora for a wedding. All the while photographing and/or watercolouring. So naturally Catherine wanted to squeeze this fact in.

After the talk at the McMichael and we’d had a chance to see mom’s show, which is huge by the way, I’d had no idea – it takes over at least 3 or 4 rooms, the sun came out and we were able to go outside and have a glass of wine with some friends who had flown in for the occasion.

“Mom!” I barked. “Get out of the sun! Come and sit in the shade.”

“We’ve been freezing in Saskatchewan,” she said. “This feels great.”

“Mom!” I said, half an hour later. “Come and sit in the shade.”

“I’m fine,” she said, for the umpteenth time. “I’m having fun.”

But I was sure she’d be exhausted the next day, and I was worried that she’d overdone it when I dashed over to the hotel to see her off the next morning. It’s bound to affect a person – the air travel, the stress, the standing, the pressure of giving a talk in front of more than 100 people. She’ll be glad to get home, I thought.

I walked into the hotel room and peered at her anxiously, but there she was, bright and chipper. “I wish I had another day here,” she said. The moral of the story? Never underestimate your mom.

For more information on Dorothy Knowles Land Marks read this article by cultural reporter, Lesley Peterson. She also wrote about the McMichael Collection.

I’m not one to brag (okay, I kind of am) but I feel I simply must bring the world’s attention to the fact that my mother, Dorothy Knowles, is having an art show Dorothy Knowles Land Marks at the McMichael Collection in Kleinburg, Ontario this weekend. She’s flown in for the opening on Sunday along with my sister Catherine from Saskatoon and my other sister Rebecca and her daughter Molly from Chicago. Now this is extremely fun, not least because it means a lot of shopping, though luckily I managed to desist from buying that $1095 gorgeous black leather jacket at TNT on Eglinton West this afternoon, where we stopped in after visiting the Nikola Rukaj Gallery. I didn’t want to desist – but I thought paying my rent next month might be fun, too.

The action-packed weekend starts on Saturday (June 5) with a small retrospective of my mom’s paintings, including work from the 60′s, at Miriam Shiell Fine Art Ltd, a gallery in Yorkville. And luckily I managed to fit in some shopping yesterday – although it wasn’t a black leather jacket at TNT – so now at least I have something to wear. And so does my sister Catherine who did buy a lovely top at TNT, which wasn’t nearly $1095, and I tried it on first but unfortunately it didn’t suit me. Waah.

Also included on this weekend itinerary will be much eating. Possibly Il Posto and One at the Hazelton Hotel. Oh, I hope it’s nice enough to sit on the patio and drink white wine. Not that I can’t drink white wine if it rains, but it’s not the same.

Back to the McMichael. There are big doin’s on Sunday, with three different art shows happening: 1) a Group of Seven exhibit (big surprise there, the McMichael is the spiritual home of the Group of Seven) called The Group of Seven: Revelations and Changing Perspectives; 2) a Group of Seven-influenced show called Following in the Footsteps of the Group of Seven; and then, of course, the exhibition of Dorothy Knowles, an artist who, I can say with some certainty, wasn’t influenced by the Group of Seven at all, since we looked at other things out West during our influencial years. Not that we wouldn’t have looked at the Group of Seven if we’d had the option, I’m just saying that they weren’t quite as omnipresent in the prairies as they seem to be here.

So there you have it, the perfect weekend planned.