In my early twenties, living in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada I would frequent a downtown store — Canada’s Four Corners. Among many other things, the store sold nature and indigenous peoples art and carvings from all over the country. In those days, when you walked in the store, you could smell the smoked moose hide — the work of Indians who lived in remote northern communities.
Upstairs, in a corner tucked behind a big old grand piano, I came across a charcoal drawing of an inland Inuit (Eskimo) by artist Gabriel Gély. It reminded me of a Métis, half-Indian, half-white man I had known in the north when I was up there fighting forest fires. I bought it. Fifteen years later I met Gabriel in a small town near Halifax, Nova Scotia and interviewed him for Heron Dance. Below are a couple of excerpts from that interview. To set the context, Gabriel had fought in the French Underground during WWII:

I was drawn to these people. They lived much as we did in the underground -- semi-nomadic. They travelled light. They had a beautiful, carefree outlook on life. They believed `next year' did not belong to them. It was wonderful to find a whole culture like this. They were my teachers par excellence. I grew up with them. I spent thirty-eight years with a people who don't plan. They have this wonderful gift of remaining detached from all of the ferocity of the world they found themselves in. Nothing seems to bother them. A wave of the hand and all of the problems we might go to a psychiatrist for are dismissed. They don't need advisors or counsellors or confessors. They refuse to focus on the negative. They have nothing that is really permanent. They taught me to be ready for change when circumstances indicate. There is a force to which you must be open. Man proposes, God disposes. This way of life has been very good to me.

Gabriel ended up starting art studios for Inuit in remote communities all over the Canadian north. He would work in a village until they could operate the workshops on their own, then he would leave for the next community. The entire village got involved -- those not carving kept records or constructed the craft centers. The government, which financed the workshops, required that the people incorporate as cooperatives. Gabe would help with everything from scouting out soapstone sites to marketing, pricing and presentation. The only thing he wouldn't do  was teach art.

"Being an artist, a sculptor, involves more than getting incorporation papers. It's a matter of the mind and the spirit. There has to be a psychological readiness for art. Because of the way these people lived, many possess amazing manual deftness, but as with all peoples, there are many copiers of likeness but few true artists. My job was to encourage their creativity; not influence it."

I asked Gabe what distinguishes art that lasts the test of time.

"Art that survives is distinguished by great sincerity. A product of the spirit, a work of love. Only after a hundred or two hundred years does the good stuff emerge. All of the jokers disappear. Great art is timeless. Great art is something very substantial and very humanistic and nourishing. The real source of artistry is the deep experience of life. Many great paintings come out of the spirit of friends gathered in a bistro."

For more of my interview of Gabriel, visit here.