My regular dance collaborator and dear friend Brittany Duggan invited me to join her in creating two tents for The Encampment by Thomas and Guinevere. I probably didn’t need one more thing to be involved in but oh, this has been so inspiring and intoxicating. And I have to share what we’ve come up with!

The Encampment (Toronto Version 2012) has been commissioned by City of Toronto for the War of 1812 Commemoration and Luminato, Toronto Festival of Arts and Creativity. It’s an art installation that will stand on the grounds of Toronto’s Fort York National Historic Site during Luminato from June 8-17. The Encampment will stay up at Fort York until June 24.

For The Encampment, 200 tents are being pitched to reflect the bicentennial of the War of 1812. Inside each one is an artistic interpretation of someone who lived and breathed during that period. It’s fascinating to walk around and see the care, curiosity and creativity rendered by the collaborating artists.

Brittany signed up to participate in The Encampment a while ago and has done an enormous amount of research on our two historic figures. That’s when she invited me to come along, brainstorm and create — um, that’s my favourite!

The historic people Brittany chose for us to interpret in our tents are:

Anne Powell (born in Montreal in 1787, died at sea in 1822)

William Dummer Powell (born in Boston in 1755, died in Toronto in 1834)

The Toronto Public Library’s Digital Archive has a beautiful drawing by William Dummer Powell showing proposed buildings at Caer Howell (the family house) from the 1830s. It’s location is listed “n. of Queen St. W., w. of University Ave.” If you know that area of Toronto try to stop and imagine it as bucolic as this, I am amazed at how different things looked 200 years ago! the image is in the public domain so I’ll include it here along with the link above, courtesy of the TPL: