Gold of Another Kind: The Lost Legacy of Georgian Bay
Enjoy an evening with Allen Smutylo and his new book layered with story-telling, photographs, paintings, and adventure from his 55 years of living, painting and travelling on Georgian Bay.
Governor General’s nominee and award-winning artist Allen Smutylo’s new book, Gold of Another Kind – The Lost Legacy of Georgian Bay, is a historical, as well as a personal, account of the once staggering quality and quantity of three natural resources that were native to Georgian Bay waters and vicinity.
A special event featuring a book talk by Allen, hosted by The Ginger Press, will take place at the Rumpus Room in Owen Sound at 7:00pm on Wednesday, June 25.
Based in Tobermory for many years, Allen’s writing and artwork have focused on experiences around Georgian Bay as well as some of the most remote places in the world including the Canadian Arctic as well as the west, east, and south coasts of Greenland, Iceland, Alaska, Labrador, the Amazon, Antarctica, the Himalaya, the Ganges, Baja, Rajasthan, Patagonia, West Africa, Morocco and Mongolia.
In his new book, Allen reaches back into Georgian Bay history through the memoirs and journals of early explorers, fur traders, Jesuits, shanty men, river runners, lumber barons, commercial fishermen, and Native accounts, to uncover a story of an unbridled frenzy, driven by obsessive greed for the ‘unclaimed’ resources of a virgin land.
However, as he points out, this coveting and exploiting a natural resource is hardly unique to Georgian Bay. Although the details are different, what happened here, has happened, and continues to happen, almost everywhere.
By better understanding this, the author hopes to give readers a clearer perspective on how to navigate the future. From his experiences in Newfoundland, Antarctica and West Africa, he concludes that the human appetite for abusing an ‘open’ resource isn’t confined to any one area or people, or to the distant past.
Gold of Another Kind – The Lost Legacy is layered with storytelling, photographs, paintings, humour, and adventure from Allen’s 55 years of living, painting and travelling on Georgian Bay.
Autographed copies ($40) are available now at The Ginger Press. Tickets for an Evening with Allen Smutylo ($40) include a copy of the book and are available instore and online at www.gingerpress.com.
Originally published in The Owen Sounder