Messe de Minuit 1931

This painting is a prairie scene based on one of my mother's childhood memories when she was 8 years old. She and her two sisters attended Midnight Mass in St.Paul des Métis, Alberta, in 1931. The girls were dressed in identical coats in different colours made for them by their mother. The coats were trimmed with dark brown fur. My mother, who was a redhead, wore the green one. They wore tuques and moccasins made by Madame Laboucane, an indigenous woman, who was a family friend.

After Mass, when people poured out of the church, greeting each other in a celebratory mood, my mother briefly got lost in the flurry of the crowd, until her family spotted a flash of her green coat.

I suspect that her memory of this event is very vivid because of her impressionable age at the time, along with the beautiful new coats, the excitement of going to Midnight Mass, the Northern lights and the full moon all wrapped up into a beautiful package of wonder and appreciation to pass on to her children, grandchildren and many others.

I am ashamed to say that I have never seen the Northern Lights. Some people will travel great distances to witness these heavenly phenomena. I can only imagine what it must feel like to observe them. Fortunately, thanks to technology, I was able to research on the internet for images of the winter aurora borealis in North Central Alberta. I was amazed to see that they occur in all kinds of configurations and in all colours of the rainbow. I chose to go with one photograph that showed straight vertical streaks along the horizon, as if the lights were marching on the edge of the prairie. In the painting they seem to be lining up behind the trees which are marching in another direction and the children at the head, going in another direction. It seemed right to have all of this vertical movement over the vast, flat, expanse of the prairie. Reaching up, like the church's steeple, to an inexplicable higher power.

The following drawings are quick little sketches my mother made for me about 20 years ago, when I asked her if she could depict her account of this event. Following her lead, not long after, I did my own small sketch in preparation for a future painting that I would eventually do. At the time, I had decided that the road would be a defining part of the drawing in the shape of a cross to represent the conviction of those who lived during those very trying times, and for many, very desperate times.