I usually make a yearly trip to my childhood home of Summerside, PEI, taking in as much arts and culture as I can manage between beach trips and card games. This trip, ending last week, reminded me again of what a small art town Canada is...

Landing in Halifax, I took in something like 5 music shows in 2 days. My music highlight was the band, Immaculate Machine (Victoria), at Gus's Pub. (I read on Facebook that they played a few days later in Calgary at The Marquee Room.) I stopped in at The Khyber Institute of Contemporary Art on Barrington and chatted with the Director, Brian MacNevin, whom I met at ACAD when he was instructing a few years ago. Afterwards, I visited the AGNS (featuring work by Eric Cameron (Calgary), Gary Neill Kennedy (Halifax) and a terrific quilt exhibition).

From Halifax, some artist friends and I met in Sackville, New Brunswick, the smallest giant visual art spot in Canada. We had coffee with John Murchie, the Director of the artist-run centre, Struts. We were just a couple of days too late to catch Chad Van Gaalen (Calgary) who performed in the OK Quoi Festival. At Struts, we ran into the two artists in residence, Goodie B. Wiseman (Los Angeles) and Kenny Doren (living in Guelph now, but lived in Calgary until only a couple of years ago). We visited Owens Art Gallery at Mount Allison University and saw some fantastic Alex Colville and Mary Pratt works before stopping in at the beautiful home of the Owens Director/Curator Gemey Kelly and John Murchie, complete with a tour of their duck pond.

After a bottle of Moosehead at Ducky's Pub, we carried on over the Confederation Bridge to the jewel of the Maritimes (I would argue), Prince Edward Island. At the Confederation Centre for the Arts we saw work by Annie Pootoogook, Yousuf Karsch, Charles Comfort, and a fantastic contemporary textile exhibit. There I visited Jon Tupper, Art Gallery Director (formerly of the Walter Philips Gallery at The Banff Centre), and Siobhan Wiggans, Senior Curator.

In Summerside, I was jogging along the waterfront when I ran into my former art teacher and PEI's most successful commercial artist, Maurice Bernard. It has been 20 years since I took my first class with him. (That makes me feel old.) I missed seeing island musician, Rose Cousins (based in Halifax), by a day or so. After all that, there was still time to swim in the salty ocean and win some card games.