21 Years Later...

"I don't know Tina…I can't find the right crate, plus I'd have to look for good bubble wrapping. I don't know if they would handle it properly and..."

"I know Daddy. It's okay…don't worry about it."

The conversation with my father had ended on a "slumpy" note and I had to accept the fact that I would not get the piece any time soon. In fact, after our little talk, I was convinced that I would not get it at all.

The piece in question was a photograph, two feet wide, three feet tall and laminated on a large wooden plaque. Neither my father, nor I, could afford to have it shipped to me the right way, and we didn't want to take our chances shipping it the cheap way either. I thought about creating a replica, but the process would have been time-consuming and expensive. There was no way I could bring a project like that to completion.

Another burden tipping the scales to "unfavorable" was the fact that my father didn't know where the negatives where. After twenty-one years and three big moves, including one that took him out of the country and another that brought him back in, he wasn't sure where they were. He'd have to go back to the site and shoot a new set of pictures all over again. I could not imagine making him do all of that, just to fulfill a request of mine.

I was 10 years old when my father began to work on a theme of photographs he would eventually show at The Coconut Club off Saint Lawrence Boulevard. He had gone down to Old Montréal and come back with pictures of statues.

The first thing I noticed about them was that they were plastered in pigeon poo…especially the one portraying a Native American warrior. He was bent down on his left knee and looked over to his right. A Tomahawk was in his right hand and the left one had nothing in it. It was open, the palm facing downward with the fingers slightly curled. "Probably keeping an eye out for the next batch of pigeons," I thought. The Native American was made of brass but it was hard to tell. Massive amounts of pigeon droppings had dripped-dried and coated most of his surface, leaving slivers of brass showing here and there.

According to my father, this was the best part. He was going to use black and white photography, along with the exposed portions of brass, to tell a profound story.

He worked hand in hand with graphic artist André Barbeau to make sure the photo was composed according to his specifications. The Native American had been isolated out of a group of four statues, centered in the frame and the entire background had been airbrushed black. The word "Montréal" stretched boldly along the top of the piece, looming over the Native American's head. Just beneath the image of the statue was my father's signature, or as I called it back then, "Daddy's scribble scrabble."

"So…what's the message?" I asked.

"Look at him Tina."

I watched, trying to understand, but I wasn't sure what I was supposed to see.

"You see his eyes?" he asked.

"Yes."

"And?"

"It looks like he's focused on something…maybe something coming at him."

"Rrrrright! And you can see, they are very intense."

I nodded to show that I understood.

"What about his hand?"

"Um…Okay…" I stalled, still unsure of what I was supposed to notice.

"Doesn't it look like he's about to reach for something, like a rock…like he's getting ready to fling it at whatever is coming at him and, bam!"

"Oh yeah…it does!" I said more enthusiastically.

"And now look at this…"

My father motioned his fingers over the portions of exposed brass. Shooting the picture in black and white had given the image an inverse effect where the brass looked like the drippy element, not the poo. In fact, the brass looked a lot like streams of black blood flowing down the Native American's face, arms and knee.

"Ahhhhh!" I said, finally getting it. "Wow!"

"AHHHHH!" my father chimed in, happy that his clues led me to enlightenment. "So you see…he is in the middle of a very bloody battle."

Having the word "Montréal" over the warrior's head was a humble reminder that the life we enjoyed came at a hefty price to the Native American people, who fought tooth and nail for their land. Even at 10 years old, I was deeply moved by this message, and a few weeks later I'd come to understand that their fight was an ongoing one.

Around the time my father began looking for distributors to carry this photo, marketed in poster format, the Oka Crisis of 1990 broke out. The Mohawk people sought to protect a sacred ancestral burial site from demolition (the Canadian government wanted to expand a golf course of all things) and the whole ordeal turned ugly. There was a growing anti-Native American sentiment among the Quebecois and distributors refused to carry this picture in their stores.

In August 2011, my father and brother drove down from Montréal to spend time with my sister and me. Upon their arrival, my father presented me with the original. I was downright elated. I couldn't believe he thought to bring it down. It hadn't even occurred to me, when he said he was coming, to even ask for it. Once the picture was in my house, I found myself slipping away from the family every now and then, just to stand in front of the photo and look at it. I stared at the details and absorb the humbling message all over again. I'm incredibly proud of my father's work and I'm happy to report that, 21 years later, this piece finally belongs to me.