Field Notes from the Ravine

Description

When you go looking for others' stories you can't help but find your own.

Intrigued by the absence of history about a local ravine in Saskatoon’s Northeast Swale, Carmen Gilmore sought to uncover its reclusive namesake, Mr. Petursson, and pieced together his kaleidoscopic history. As she studied the plants and birds of the ravine, she explored how storytelling is connected to the land even as she was making her own stories while raising her children there.

Carmen and her children explored Petursson’s Ravine, foraging salvage which she transformed into inks, and created a series of maps — tiny topographies to connect stories — like the chemical dump that contaminated the ravine’s water but preserved this wild space and the history of Mr. Petursson himself. In her search for old maps of the ravine, she stumbled onto evidence of pre-settlement river lots and deepened her personal journey towards reconciliation as she explored what a map can reveal or obscure.

Written as a series of braided essays, Carmen weaves together Mr. Petursson’s history, her own unfurling connection to place, and uncovers her family’s long connection to Indigenous sovereignty.