MOFO
Newfoundland
Visit to Newfoundland in August 98, Globe & Mail, Oct 98
As part of my plan to Get To Know Canada Better, I have spent the last three summers travelling through PEI, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick. I loved them all, each province providing particular pleasures. This summer I chose Newfoundland. I used the Internet to find and book B&Bs, read the tourism websites, sought advice from friends who had been there and from transplanted Newfoundlanders living in Toronto. Nothing quite prepared me for the marvellous surprise that was ahead. In late August I flew with 5 friends to St. John’s. We rented a 6-passenger minivan and set off on our 8-day odyssey.
Everywhere we went we met charming, caring, friendly people, and drove through unexpectedly stunning vistas of forests, seascapes, and islands. Gros Morne National Park was the most beautiful place I think I have ever seen in Canada. At Trout River, we took a wilderness boat tour on a crystal clear lake surrounded by immense high cliffs and waterfalls. At one point along the two-hour trip, the captain slowed the boat down beside a pine-dotted hill where a magnificent bull moose stood its ground, guardedly checking us out. Then, after eyeing me intuitively, he decided we had seen enough of him. He turned and trotted off into the bush. It was my epiphany. I, of course, decided that he had anticipated my visit, posing just long enough to give moi a treasured photo-op. My friends were as excited for me as they were to see the great beast themselves. I was ecstatic. I learned later that there are more than 100000 moose roaming Newfoundland, six having been brought over from the mainland about a hundred years ago. There are moose warning signs along most of the province’s highways, and I saw one electronic sign that monitored the current number of moose/car collisions this season (12). On our Air Nova flight out of Deer Lake, Jason, our young flight attendant regaled me with his moose hunting exploits. So far he has bagged five. He cuts them up himself in the bush, and schlepps the meat back home to share with the family. Everyone helps everyone else in Newfoundland. It goes with the territory.
Here are some diary highlights of an unforgettable week:
Sunday Aug 23 Flew into St. John’s with my travelling buddies John and Susie, Marcia, Cliff and Ray. We picked up our rented minivan, checked into a cute Victorian B&B on downtown Gower Street, ran around photographing the quaint old row houses painted royal blue, hunter green, deep maroon, and lemon yellow. Toured massive serpentine Signal Hill and Cape Spear (easternmost points of North America) in brilliant sunshine overlooking cerulean blue sea. Got high gulping deep breaths of clean ocean air, watching boats scurry and putter around St. John’s harbour. Dinner at pretty Stone House Inn. We tried cod tongues with scruncheons (addictive crunchy little cubes of deep fried pork cracklings), fresh lobster and mussels. Great banter with our waiter who told us an Ontario joke: Did you hear about the guy from Toronto who bought a pair of water skis and went around looking for a pond with a hill?
Monday Aug 24 Photographed more St. John’s architecture, then checked in at another B&B called “Oh What a View” (and it was!) perched high up on a promontory overlooking all of St John’s harbour. Spectacular. Off to a great lunch and schmooze with painter Mary Pratt, a tour of her wonderful home and garden, and a peak at her latest work. Mary enchanted us with her insights on The Artist’s Life. John & Susie came back from David Ariss Gallery on Water St, said one of my Queen on Moose prints was hanging there. We went back to the gallery, met David, a young dealer originally from Guelph, schmoozed with a lively group of his friends including Montreal painter Antoine Prévost.
7:30 Dinner at The Hungry Fisherman in the carefully restored 19th century downtown warehouse complex known as the Murray Premises. A woman came over to our table, smiled, introduced herself, said she was a marine biologist living and working in St. John’s, and remembered me from Vaughan Road Collegiate in Toronto 40 years ago!
Tuesday Aug 25 We left St. John’s, drove through the beautiful seaside village of Petty Harbour down the southern shore of the Avalon peninsula to Witless Bay where Captain Murphy, straight out of Central Casting with his salt and pepper beard, pipe, and jaunty cap, took us in his boat across a pea-green sea to a group of rocky islands to observe the nesting activities of the Puffins, those skittish little black and white birds with the enormous orange beaks that are Newfoundland’s mini-version of the penguin. We were treated to a robust round of folk songs and a running commentary on the birds’ habits by Brian Doyle, a recent graduate of Memorial University who let us know how sad he felt to have to leave for Calgary to find work. Back to Mrs Murphy’s modest little café perched on wooden stilts overlooking the harbour where we lunched on hearty fish & Brewis, another local dish of chopped fried cod and potatoes. We continued down the coast to Ferryland where Sir John Calvert -Lord Baltimore first tried to establish a settlement before he went further south to found Maryland. Students were in the midst of digging up artefacts around the foundations of the Calvert mansion constructed around 1620.
A block away, we settled into Ark of Avalon, our modest but spotlessly clean B&B. We were greeted by our host Shirley Maher, a witty and effusive young mother of three, who told us her husband had gone fishing for shrimp with 6 other men from the town, and they were heading all the way up to St. Anthony’s on the northern tip of Newfoundland for a week. Just as we were preparing to go out for dinner, the power went off all over town. Something to do with Hurricane Bonnie, said Shirley. The local restaurant was closed. No problem, you’re eating here, said Shirley cheerfully. She lit some candles, invited us all to her kitchen table for a memorable meal of stewed caribou and baloney sandwiches with partridgeberry jam on her own home-made bread, accompanied of course by screech (dark rum) and various other mysterious libations. Scrumptious, in its own unique way. Her sister-in-law Kathleen, a beautiful and perky young woman whose father had died of cancer that morning regaled us between her tears with the bluest of Newfie jokes, the kind I’d been warned by a haut-bourgeois “Nyoofendlander” in Toronto never to tell, let alone use the “N” word. Kathleen was irresistibly funny and poignant. I thrilled to her stories, she to mine. We all went to bed drowsy from laughter, drink, and “newfoundcamaraderie”. Then the lights came back on.
Wednesday August 26 We bade goodbye to dear Shirley, vowing to return one day. Drove down the misty coast in the rain to Trepassy, a fishing village obviously hurting from the cod moratorium, with many For Sale signs on the empty houses. We continued around the south shore and up the scrubby coastal flatlands, stopped for a photo-op with a few grazing caribou in a treeless landscape more like a prairie mesa, then up to the verdant village of Salmonier for a visit and lunch with painter Christopher Pratt in his impeccable home and studio overlooking the rushing amber waters of the Salmonier river. Chris shared his thoughts on his abiding passion for Newfoundland, and treated us to a sneak peak at some impressive works in progress. We continued along a bumpy dirt road through dense forest and foaming rivers west to Placentia, originally the French capital of Newfoundland facing the open sea. We overnighted at Rosedale Manor, a funereal but spotless B&B next to the old French cemetery. Hung on the walls were faded photos of bewhiskered ancestors and an imperious portrait of a previous pope that spooked me a little. Our hostess Rita Power was down-home friendly, efficient, opinionated, and not shy about saying what she thought of anyone and anything. I’d gotten a traveller’s cold which was worsening. She admonished me to get some Buckley’s Mixture. I did, and nearly choked from its powerful bitter taste, but it worked! A half hour later, I was a changed person, feeling much better.
Thursday, Aug 27 Leaving Placentia, we stopped at Castle Hill, a National Historic site overlooking the bay, where the last battle between the French and English for Canada took place in 1762. An inadvertently comical display of plaster mannequins of scruffily-clad French soldiers in bad wigs gave me pause. We drove in blinding rain through an ever-changing landscape, suddenly jolted forward to 1998 by suburban Clarenville where the familiar sprawl of KFC, Tim Horton, and Walmart evoked the reassuring banality of Anywhere, North America. We sighed, headed east towards the Bonavista peninsula and the delightful village of Trinity for lunch of delicious fried capelins (like sea smelt or sardines) and a tour of restored historic cottages, jarring memories of Cape Cod, Lunenberg, NS and St Andrews, NB.
We went to see a play by the Rising Tide theatre company in the old meeting hall in which a group of women, wearing outfits like the characters in Michel Tremblay’s Les Belles Soeurs reminisced over the hardships of rural life – one woman’s ribald description of having to pee in a chamber pot in the dead cold of winter was hilarious – “I couldn’t decided what I liked more – the sound of the ice cracking in the pot from me warm pee, or the steam coming up and heating me bum”.
Our B&B, the Peace Cove Inn, was in neighbouring Trinity East, an even smaller, more thinly spread-out village with some stern but dignified wooden houses with high pitched roofs perched on the hillsides overlooking a peaceful harbour inlet. I walked around in the twilight inhaling its timeless beauty.
Friday, August 28 Colder and raining again. We drove up to Bonavista to view the famous lighthouse and statue of John Cabot on a windy promontory surrounded by stormy seas, trying to imagine the unspeakable hardships confronting the early seafarers approaching this barren coast. Into town to poke about a replica of Cabot’s little ship, the Matthew, then headed west and north through the magic carpet ride of undulating green forests and bays in Terra Nova National Park, and east to the beautiful outport fishing village of Salvage, where we stayed in a century home lovingly restored by Edythe Goodridge, former Visual Arts head of the Canada Council, now an environmental activist in the area. With the cod moratorium temporarily lifted for 3 days, we watched a bustle of fishing activity as neighbouring families chugged back into shore with their first permitted catch of 10 fish per day. You could savour the group contentment as the sea yielded up its food. We watched with silent curiosity as everyone, young and old, pitched in to gut, clean, filet and stack the day’s catch. I thought back to the late 16th century when Portuguese fishermen reported schools of fish off the coasts of Newfoundland that were so numerous they prevented the boats from moving.
Saturday August 29 Drove the Big Easy (about 4 and a half hours) across Newfoundland on the svelte Trans Canada highway bypassing Gander and Grand Falls, arriving on the West Coast in Deer Lake just in time to drop our bags at the Driftwood Inn and head an hour north up to Gros Morne for that unexpected Magnificent Moose Moment on Trout River Pond. But the car ride itself, twisting and turning, up, up, and further up, around towering tablelands, lacy cataracts, rushing rivers, dizzying vistas, higher plateaus, tiny perfect villages perched beside highland lakes, was this traveller’s dreamscape. And we didn’t get to the best-known fjords at Bonne Bay or Brook Pond which the locals told us were even more gorgeous. After travelling for a week sandwiched together inside our cosy van, our usually chatty group sat silent and awestruck by what we were witnessing. Exactly what was l feeling? It wasn’t just awe. It was the joy of discovering more of Canada’s splendour. So we missed the icebergs and the whales this time around. No matter. I’ll be back. We were all changed by what we saw, and by the people we met. I no longer feel like I come from “away”. Newfoundland is “home”.
DON ROUGE-HUMBER
When Pachter opened the Moose Factory in 1998 , he created art critic “Don Rouge-Humber” to wax lyrical about his work.
Don has been so positive in his reviews that other artists have often asked Charles if he could review their work to0.
But as we have seen, Don is pretty much focused on Charles’ oeuvre!
Succinct Don quotes on Charles’ oeuvre:
“A menemonic mimesis of metaphysical mooseness!”
This artspeak quote by Don went a little too far. I am trying to teach him to be more brief and concise!
” Pachter’s current practice integrates sociological study of relations between self, other and environment, aligned with an interdisciplinary inquiry into the intersection of boundary, category, discipline and medium.
Largely conceptual and resulting from a process of systematic selection, his current work is a careful collage, formative reduction and subtle enunciation of that which is seen and that which constructs perceived meaning that seeks to construct and reconstruct nonlinear narrative through material articulation, cross-section of medium and atmospheric installation.”
CH R O N O L O G Y
1 9 4 2
Dec 30, born in downtown Toronto at 499 Palmerston Boulevard, the second of four children. Father Harry born in Toronto 1914,d. 1998 and mother Sara (Sanders) born in Edmonton, 1915, d. 2007
1 9 4 6 – 5 0
Family moves uptown to mostly Anglican neighbourhood of 84 Chudleigh Avenue. Attends John Ross Robertson public school Spends summers at various rented cottages around south Lake Simcoe.
1 9 4 7
Stars in a National Film Board short documentary Johnny at the Fair about the Canadian National Exhibition. Meets prime minister Mackenzie King, gets kissed by skater Barbara Ann Scott, pets a moose.
1 9 5 0 – 5 5
Family moves to middle class neighbourhood at 83 Ava Road .Attends Holy Blossom Temple Sunday school and John R. Wilcox public school. Studies piano with Rachel Cavalho, painting with Ronald
1 9 5 5 – 6 0
Attends Vaughan Road Collegiate. Takes academic art course under Miss Hudgins. Gets D minus and a scolding for painting daffodils blue.
1 9 5 7
Paints large mural on his bedroom wall based on the Canadian rural landscape on the $2 bill.
1 9 5 8
Dr. Verna Curran encourages his French studies. Goes on a Visite Interprovinciale exchange program hosted by a Catholic family in east Montreal. Tours Quebec city in a horse-drawn calèche. Paints sets for musical shows at Camp Katonim, Lake Simcoe. Discovers the unused attic of the family house on Ava Road, creates a private work space called “The Pad” where he paints for two years.
1 9 5 9
Attends Saturday morning classes “for gifted adolescents” at the Art Gallery of Toronto, supervised by William Withrow. Chosen Simpson’s representative for Vaughan Road Collegiate. Paints a wall mural of a prairie road for the Home Furnishings department, models as a hockey player for Simpson’s Catalogue.
1 9 5 9 – 6 4
Summers, works at Camp White Pine, Haliburton, Ontario. Teaches arts and crafts, drama, and creates special event programming. Meets and befriends Margaret Atwood, known as “Peggy Nature”.
1 9 6 0 – 6 2
Heads the arts and crafts department at Holy Blossom religious school.
Enrols in Art and Archeology at the University of Toronto, taught by Steven Vickers, Robert Welsh, Scott Symons, Ted Bieler.
Fellow classmates include Bogomila Ovcharov and Douglas Richardson.
1 9 6 1
Takes night courses in silkscreening under Fred Hagan at Ontario College of Art. Sketches with Ed Roman in the Rouge River Valley. Makes watercolours and oils of Ontario ravine landscapes.
1 9 6 2 – 3
Studies at the Sorbonne in Paris, travels around France, Spain, Italy, and Corsica. Makes figure drawings and watercolours at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, streetscapes in and around Paris.
1 9 6 3 – 4
Returns to Canada, completes BA at University of Toronto. Visits Chicago, houses of Frank Lloyd Wright. Makes silkscreens at Camp White Pine and in studio in Mirvish Village on Markham Street.
1 9 6 4
Makes large oil paintings of Toronto houses, Grandmother’s House
1 9 6 4
February – First solo show of serigraphs at Pollock Gallery on Markham Street. Birds in Flight, Family, St. Lawrence Market
1 9 6 4 – 6 6
Attends Michigan’s Cranbrook Academy of Art. Studies papermaking, lithography, etching, painting, design. Corresponds with Margaret Atwood studying at Harvard. Prints five Limited Edition illustrated folios of her poetry.
Paints first satirical work, The Hiya Dolls. Visits Mexico, Cuernavaca, Tepotzlan.
1 9 6 6
Graduates with an MFA from Cranbrook, returns to Toronto.
Rents a former bicycle repair shop at 907 Shaw Street.
Buys an old lithography press from Tom Lapierre, sets up a printing studio.
Prints lithographs, The Winner, Funny What Love Can Do, Golem, Conflux.
Acquires fonts of old foundry type.
Makes handmade book of lithographs Notebook Pages illustrating the poems of John Newlove.
Joins Quadrat society of private press printers at Massey College.
1 9 6 7
Moves to Montreal. Works in the theme division of Expo 67, installs sculptures for the Exposition Internationale. Meets Alexander Calder, prints lithographs in the Atelier GRAFF of Pierre Ayot, Rue Rachel,
Masque, Body Politic.
Musée d’Art Contemporain buys first Atwood-Pachter portfolio,The Circle Game, 1964.
1 9 6 7 – 6 8
Returns to Toronto. Buys first house at 1232 Shaw Street. Builds a print atelier in the basement. Makes lithographs It’s Just a Flesh Wound, Invocation, Is the Pope Catholic?, handmade book of poems by Alden Nowlan, A Black Plastic Button and a Yellow Yoyo. March, exhibits lithographs at Gallery Pascal, 104 Yorkville Avenue, Toronto.
1 9 6 8
Returns to France, visits Greek Islands.
1 9 6 9 – 7 0
Invited by Dean Richard Johnston to teach at the University of Calgary. Drives across Canada in an Envoy Epic. Lives in a small frame house on 21st Avenue South West. Makes silkscreens Elegy for Bluebeard, Lookout, lithographs Model Modern Message, She’ll Be Comin’ Round the Mountain, Happy Trails to You, O Bury Me Not, Beatific Revelation, Plunge, Deluge. Works with John K. Esler, Antony Benjamin, Alexandra Haeseker.
February, exhibits new graphics at Canadian Art Galleries, Calgary.
1 9 7 0
April, returns to Toronto. Begins first renovation project, guts and rebuilds house and studio at 1232 Shaw Street. October, second exhibition of graphics at Gallery Pascal.
1 9 7 1
Makes several editions of Streetcar serigraphs in the studio at 1232 Shaw Street. December, tours the middle east, returns to Canada, flies to Cape Dorset, North West Territories to teach lithography to the Inuit. Takes ill with pneumonia and pleurisy, is flown south.
1 9 7 2
January-February, recuperates at Toronto Western Hospital.
April, large solo exhibition of Streetcar serigraphs, collages and constructions at Isaacs Gallery.
Sets type, makes lithographic collages and drawings for Dennis Lee’s book of children’s poems, Wiiggle To The Laundromat.
Participates in AGO Artists Protest with Joyce Wieland and Michael Snow.
July Visits the Gaspé coast for an eclipse of the sun.
Returns to Toronto, begins series of paintings exploring the monarchy in Canada. Procession through Landscape, Noblesse Oblige, The Visitation, Double Bubble, Rite de Passage, Clair de Lune, The Curtsey Triptych, Snow Queen.
Isaacs Gallery decides not to show the Queen on Moose paintings.
1 9 7 3
June, creates the first of many Toronto “event” opening parties, The Other Shaw Festival, for the exhibition of new paintings, Monarchs of the North at 1232 Shaw Street, which coincides with the Queen’s visit to the Shaw Festival in Niagara on the Lake. Buys old factory at 24 Ryerson Avenue near Queen and Bathurst Streets.
Continues painting and printing landscapes, moose, rocks, goats, Canadian Tire collages. Flight of The Toaster, Mooseponder, Lakemark.
1 9 7 4
August, moves to 24 Ryerson Avenue.
Starts Artists Alliance Building Limited. Renovates factory, rents out studio and living space to other artists including Gary Greenwood, Jiri Ladocha, Anton Cetin, Janet Hunter, David Pellettier.
Starts artists’ co-op gallery called Artery. Moves to top floor loft where he lives and works for 2 years. Helps director Paul Thompson purchase derelict factory next door for Theatre Passe Muraille.
Buys and renovates neighbouring warehouse buildings as extensions of Artists Alliance. October, holds huge event party to mark the opening of Artery. Coincides with opening party of Stage II, new wing of Art Gallery of Ontario.
1 9 7 5
February, exhibits LANDMARKS at Artery, paintings, Look Out Barbara Ann, Kippawa, prints and collages, Mooseponder, Bear in Mind The Light, Moosamour.
Conceives 2 notorious performance art group shows about taste, The Ugly Show, and The Stunning Show.
1 9 7 6
Moves to large Edwardian house at 350 Markham Street. Retains working studio at 24 Ryerson, forms renovation business with 2 partners. Paints large work Life is Not a Fountain, silkscreens Mooseplunge. Joins Artists With their Work program at the Art Gallery of Ontario. Lectures and shows in Kingston, Ottawa, Owen Sound, Simcoe, Hamilton, Sudbury.
June, buys old 100 acre farm and house in Oro township near Orillia. House of Anansi Press publishes The Queen of Canada Colouring Book with Pachter drawings.
1 9 7 7
August, purchases abandoned grocery store and blacksmith’s shop at 2 Grange Place, leaves 350 Markham Street. Begins renovating 2 Grange Place into a permanent home and studio.
October, COLLINS PACHTER TINKL exhibition opens at AGO.
1 9 7 8
Begins ink and dry brush portraits of friends, Figures in a Landscape paintings from Oro, Lake Simcoe. Visits Paris for Michael Snow exhibition at the Pompidou Centre. Draws David Earle, Peter Randazzo, Joyce Wieland, Catherine Williams, John Hirsch, Peter Newman, Rick Salutin, Susan Swan, Margaret Atwood, Peter Newman, Louis de Niverville.
åRenovates coach house at 118 Baldwin St, 78 Sullivan Street for Lester Orpen Dennys.
1 9 7 9
With partners John Stewart and John Eckler renovates old fur factory at Queen and Soho Streets into a new gallery, The Soho Loft. October, Figures in a Landscape Exhibition, Soho Loft Gallery, 367 Queen Street West. Six Figures in a Landscape, Self portrait on Couch, A Pause on the French River, Convertible in a Landscape, Monika at Oro, Alix Arnett, Gwendolyn MacEwen, Wendy Weaver.
1 9 8 0
Purchases Remeny House of Music Building at 553 Queen Street West, opens permanent gallery, hires director Judith Saunders. Resumes work on Margaret Atwood’s epic poem, The Journals of Susanna Moodie, folio first drafted in 1969. Hires Spanish master printers Manuel and Abel Bello Sanchez to print the serigraphs and poems. With 10 partners renovates a clothing store at 508 Queen St West into 180 seat restaurant and artists’ café called Gracie’s.
October, exhibits The Journals of Susanna Moodie and New Portraits at Ring gallery, 553 Queen Street West.
Begins reconstruction of former IGA supermarket and bulding at 567 Queen Street West.
November, Gracie’s Restaurant opens with gala party. Butter tarts from Wilkie’s bakery bussed in from Orillia.
1 9 8 1
Invited to exhibit in Artists in Books, at the National Library, Ottawa.
June, starts series of large Flag paintings. November, gala opening of the exhibition The Painted Flag in new galleries renovated from an old IGA supermarket. Exhibition coincides with patriation of the Constitution.
1 9 8 2
Recession. Gracie’s closes. IGA gallery closes. All real estate holdings sold except house and studio at 2 Grange Place. Artists Alliance closes. Business partnerships end. Invited to show in Post – Pop Realism, The Winnpeg Perspective, Winnipeg Art Gallery
1 9 8 3
Three large flag paintings acquired by Olympia and York for Stock Exchange Tower, First Canadian Place, Toronto.
1 9 8 4
Sees exhibition The Mystic North at AGO. Makes paintings of loyalists, historical and contemporary figures and objects in “Group of Seven” derived landscape settings. Simcoe‘s Reward, Cold Comfort, Davenport and Bay, Lake, Couch, I-Ching, Queen‘s Rangers, Castle Frank in Winter
1 9 8 4
March-July, exhibits paintings and graphics at Movenpick Restaurant gallery.
July, The Journals of Susanna Moodie opens at the Art Gallery of Ontario. November, invited to show in the group exhibition Vestiges of Empire in London.
December, solo exhibition of new paintings, Waterworks, opens at Queens Quay Terminal, Toronto.
1 9 8 5
April-October, Regarding the Flag, exhibition of 20 flag paintings at the Ontario Science Centre, Toronto, celebrating the flag’s 20th anniversary.
September, exhibits Waterworks at The Arts and Letters Club, Toronto. Davenport and Bay, Queen and Bay, Mooseplunge, Susanna Moodie.
November, tours the Pacific Rim: Tokyo, Kyoto, Taiwan, Bankgok, Singapore, Macau, Hong Kong. Makes new paintings The Supremes, Float, Bare in Mind the Light, State of the Tarts, To All in Tents.
December, visits Caribbean island of Bequia in the Grenadines. Paints Gait, Arcade, Revelation.
Begins series of 50 line drawing portraits of prominent Canadians for City and Country Home magazine.
1 9 8 6
April, exhibits new paintings at Gallery Moos, Toronto. Rapprochement, The Supremes, Mooseplunge, Float, Discovery: The Canvas House, Sealed Off, Constitutional.
July, purchases and renovates derelict apartment building at 80 Beverley St, across from the Art Gallery of Ontario overlooking Grange Park.
1 9 8 7
January, exhibits new works at opening of the new Alliance Française. Tour de Force, To All in Tents, Une Demoiselle de Toronto, Oro Barn, Cipher.
February, documentary profile Pachter, made by Claude Grenier, National Film Board, Montreal. April, exhibits at Ryerson Polytechnical Institute, Toronto. Writes series of articles on art and architecture for the Toronto Star.
1 9 8 8
Begins Amiga computer-generated sketches for paintings. Oro Barns, Red Barn Reflected. Starts a computer diary.
November, exhibits large paintings at La Citadelle, Montreal. State of the Tarts, A Cross The Lake, Ann at Oro, Moose Stall, Catherine Williams, Life is not a Fountain, To All in Tents, Noblesse Oblige.
1 9 8 9
February, creates 10th Anniversary Poster for the Genie Awards. Paints large acrylic portraits commissioned by Robert and Bogomila Welsh, Moses Znaimer and Marilyn Lightstone, Edward and Eva Borins, Pauline Elias. Paints Sir Who, Moose Lake, Flagspatter, Buy Lingual, Oro Window.
December, visits Greece: Delphi, Athens, Paros.
1 9 9 0
April, exhibits new works at Castle Hill. Ari Air View, Ordinary Canadians, The Once and Future King, The Rosedale Kiss, Night Ride, Black Lit Clark, Sealed Off, Round Square.
July, Paints outdoor mural Voice of Culture incorporating the Queen, a moose, and 3 Barnett Newman-inspired stripes into one composition for the exterior wall of Acme Bar and Grill, King and John Streets, Toronto.
August. Visits the south of France, is invited to mount a 3-month retrospective exhibition at the Centre d’Art Présence Van Gogh in Saint Rémy de Provence. September, paints 3 portraits of Pierre Trudeau, 2 portraits of Van Gogh as a young man. A la recherche du jeune Vincent, Vincent au lit.
November, Visits Key West, paints The Swingers.
1991
Solo exhibitions at The Summit, Canada Trust, Toronto, and Inniskillin Winery, Niagara-on-the Lake, Ontario. October First European retrospective opens at St. Rémy de Provence, France.
1992
April, “Licht im Schatten” Pachter retrospective opens at the Haus an der Redoute gallery in Bonn, Germany.
1993
Buys and renovates art deco house in Miami Beach, spends 5 winters there painting and hosting Canadian guests.
July – Sept., Shows 6 paintings in Exhibition The Simcoes and the Founding of Toronto, Art Gallery of Ontario.
1994
February – Sept. Charles Pachter’s Canada, retrospective exhibition opens at Royal Ontario Museum.
1995
June-Oct., In Pachter’s Orbit, CN Tower, Toronto, Toronto and Miami paintings.
1996
Sept-Oct, La Transhumance, Alliance Française, Toronto, exhibition of Florida paintings.
October, Receives honorary doctorate from Brock University
April Purchases abandoned warehouse in Chinatown, renovates it into Moose Factory Gallery and Event Centre.
1997
December, Opening of Moose Factory and Installation of “The Barns Exhibit” Mooseconstrue, Barn Again, Barn Free, Moosemerge, Moose Lunar, Skybarn, Barnstorm, Car Barn, Moose Demeanour
1998
June -Oct, Pachter Portraits exhibition at the University of Toronto Art Centre .
Invents art critic “Don Rouge-Humber “ to wax lyrical over his new work.
Visits Newfoundland, Paints Ark, Inner Harbour
1999
Installs 9-ft high commissioned steel moose on beach site overlooking Lake of Bays
Visits Budapest, Vienna, Prague, Paints Moose Spectre
2000
Named a member of the Order of Canada
Installation of Pachter Graphics at Design Exchange, Toronto
Creates Mooseplunge sculpture for Nathan Phillips Square, Toronto
Donates Moosedemeanour 2 ton steel sculpture to Graduate House, University of Toronto
2001
Apr Retrospective Exhibition, “Mind’s Eye”, opens at Canadian Embassy, Tokyo
August – Artist in Residence at Le Symposium International de la Peinture Contemporaine in Baie Saint Paul, Quebec
Oct Donates Mooseconstrue , steel sculpture to University of Toronto, installed on grassy knoll at Harbord & St George St.
2002
Oct Donates To All in Tents to International Jewish Memorial Centre in Shanghai
Nov Named Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by France
2003
July Purchases former Ice Storage Depot on Lake SImcoe waterfront, converts it to summer residence and studio.
2005
Feb-Mar Visits India
November Completion of Pachter Hall and the new Moose Factory at 22 Grange Ave.
FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF INDIA New Paintings – Nov 05 – June 06
2006
March Installation of MOOSEDEMEANOUR sculpture at University of Ontario Institute of Technology, Oshawa
July-Aug REGARDING THE LAKE New paintings and Graphics, Orillia Museum of Art & History
2007
January Exhibits New Works
GLIMPSES OF INDIA
Canadian High Commision, Delhi
DES REGARDS SUR L’INDE
Alliance Française, Delhi
DUCKS REDUX, July-August
The Ice House, Lake Simcoe
CHARLES PACHTER’S CANADA (II),
Royal Ontario Museum, Oct 07-Feb 08
2008
Sept, “M is for Moose”, children’s book published by Cormorant Books
2009
May-June Mythologies, Paintings 1964-2008, Elmwood Spa, Toronto
June Honorary Doctorate, OCAD University
CANADA COUNTS children’s book published by Cormorant Books
2010
Feb, Solo Olympics Exhibition Whistler, BC
June, Honorary Doctorate, University of Toronto
2011 Promoted to Officer in the Order of Canada
2012 Recipient of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal
2010
MOUNTAIN GALLERIES, Whistler BC, Feb -Mar
LUMINATO, Toronto Roots & Four Seasons Hotel, June –Aug
2011
The University College Collection, U of T Art Centre, Jan-Mar
PlayNation, Design Exchange, Toronto, June -Oct
Royal Portraits, Beaverbrook Museum, Fredericton NB, July-Oct 2011
THE PACHTER FACTOR, The Art Space, Huntsville ON July -Aug
2012
1812:THE ART OF WAR, Moose Factory Gallery, Toronto, May – Oct
MONARCHS OF THE NORTH, Blue Mountain Foundation for the Arts, Collingwood ON, June 9-23,
SELECTED WORKS, Train Station Gallery, Brantford ON Sep 8-31,
CINEMATIC cinema-themed Graphics, Hyatt Regency, Toronto Sep-Dec
2013
THE ART OF WAR Fort York National Historic Site, Toronto
A-R-T, The Art of Charles Pachter Art Gallery of Sudbury, Apr-June
LANDMARKS – ORILLIA MUSEUM OF ART & HISTORY July –Aug
POP GOES CANADIANA – ICONIC ART BY CHARLES PACHTER
Enterprise Square Galleries, University of Alberta, Edmonton Nov 1-30
THE SNOW SHOW, Michael Gibson Gallery, London ON
Nov 30 2013 -Jan 10 2014
2014
LEST WE FORGET -16 paintings commemorating the First World War
Lieutenant-Governor’s Suite, Queen’s Park, Toronto June 2014 – Aug
Oeno Gallery, Prince Edward County, Ontario Oct
Michael Gibson Gallery, London Ontario, Dec
2015
The Spoke Club, Toronto April-May
Alliance Française, Toronto, Sept-Oct
2016
The Charterhouse, London UK The British Loyalist Legacy and the Creation of Modern English Canada Aug Sept
2017
What Makes Thus Country Tick?
Retrospective, Peel Art Museum & Archives, Brampton
CHARLES PACHTER: The Cranbrook Years
Art Gallery of Windsor