Centennial Farm

Centennial farm is no more. It has been replaced with suburban developments, a phenomenon happening in large parts of North America. In earlier times, our important cities were usually built in areas of good farmland. These cities have, of course, grown, and in the last few decades we have been covering up thousands of acres of some of our best farmlands with cement. We are increasing this rate of development all the time.

The year 1967 was centennial year in Canada. As a personal celebration I did a series of paintings based on those things in my home county of Halton in Ontario which had been there for at least 100 years. Some of those subjects were works of nature but many were works of man - old barns, farmhouse, fences, and so on. Although these things lasted for 100 years or more, every single one of them had been destroyed within the last decades - they were all gone by 1987.