Bob Mackin
It was the autumn of ’99 when the “Summer of ’69” singer made a bold career move.
Rocker Bryan Adams added photographer to his resume with the publication of Made in Canada, a book of portraits of 89 Canadian women. In late October 1999, during a hiatus from recording and touring, Adams launched Made in Canada at Toronto’s Royal Ontario Museum. Adams-photographed Margaret Trudeau and astronaut Roberta Bondar were among the attendees. I was there to cover it, for the North Shore News.
West Vancouver painter and poet Jane Clark, the mother of Bryan Adams, at the Ferry Building Gallery on Sept. 15, 2019 (Mackin)
After my story hit doorsteps across North and West Vancouver, a handwritten note arrived at the newsroom. A proud local mother was absolutely delighted that her local newspaper had profiled her son’s new creative endeavour. The letter was from Jane Clark of West Vancouver. A painter and poet. The mother of Bryan Adams.
Fast forward to the last Sunday of the summer of ’19. It was the final day of Clark’s Changing Landscape of B.C. exhibit at the Ferry Building Gallery near Ambleside Beach.
I sat down with her to learn about her art and her travels to Northern British Columbia. The centrepiece of the exhibit was a pair of paintings done a generation apart of the Great Glacier. Clark, 91, chronicled stark evidence of climate change.
“I don’t think it lost any of its beauty, it has its own beauty, so from the point of view of an artist it’s still beautiful,” Clark said. “If you went there and haven’t been there 25 years ago, you’d still say it’s an absolutely stunning area to see. But having been there 25 years ago, I know that it’s a sad sight in many ways.”
Like her son Bryan did in 1999, Clark wants to take her work to Toronto.
“The people in Ontario have very little concept of what it is like here, and yet it is quite powerful what we have here,” she said. “We are the other side of the Rockies, if you like, so they don’t think of looking to us. But from our perspective they should look at it, because we are on the edge and we are going to feel the movement and the changes rapidly, probably more than they will in Ontario. They will get it later.”
On this week’s edition of theBreaker.news Podcast, listen to the interview with Jane Clark, in which she also discusses her relationship with sons Bryan and biochemical engineer brother Bruce.
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