The Makers
Post #19: Molly Lamb Bobak, Daniel Lanois, Richard Lachance, Kurt Waldele
Molly Lamb Bobak. Artist. (March 2014, Ottawa) In the Pearson Building, waiting outside the Minister’s office. On the wall a still life by Molly Lamb, dated 1966, likely painted in the studio beneath my father’s office at UNB’s Memorial Hall. Amid the hurly burly of the capital, the little canvas is calm.
‘Mem Hall’ in the 1960s, its air of sanctuary: cool in the summer, dry and hot in the winter, a soft light, stillness, deeply hued stained glass. Across the lobby from its exhibition rooms, grizzled Bruno Bobak dangled a cigar while his wife Molly painted deeper within their studio. Solvent fumes, easels, stacked canvases. I’d pass them to mount the creaking staircase for my weekly clarinet lesson, or else to visit my father’s office. A few times he brought me next door to the top-floor faculty club in the Old Arts Building. Sandwiches on trays, highbacked armchairs amid the crack of snooker balls. (May 2013, Ottawa.)
... passings: Uncle Lawrence Kristmanson in a Vancouver hospital. His evocative west coast charcoal landscape/seascape hangs in my office; Mavis Gallant, in Paris; Léa notices that Molly Lamb Bobak died yesterday; Bruno had been Lawrence’s teacher. Several weeks of great loss.
… Molly Lamb, Canada’s first female war artist, also served on the board of the National Capital Commission. I honoured her passing at the NCC’s April 2014 public meeting. Five years on, Board members and executives have marked the end of my term as CEO with a beautiful gift, one of her finest watercolours, a white lily perfectly rendered. (January 2019, Ottawa.)
Daniel Lanois. Musician, Producer. (February 2007, Ottawa.) “In the beginning was the deed.” Thus, Wittgenstein privileges ‘making’ over ‘saying’. For artists, that tension often devolves into craft commitment: mastering the instrument, voice, paint, clay, even digital gear. Daniel Lanois’ deft hand on the means of musical reproduction—successive recording media, consoles, effects, from analogue to digital—ensures that his oeuvre keenly evokes time and place, rather than disembodied space. The northern songs are grounded in Canada’s expanse of forests, sand pits, beaver dams, resource town streetscapes, in all their seasons. On the coldest February night he’s back in his old hometown far from LA, and I thank him for braving our outdoor Rideau Canal Snowbowl stage. Smiling, with a guitarist’s light handshake: “I wouldn’t be anywhere else.”
Richard Lachance. Sound Engineer. (June 2013, Ottawa.) The Governor General’s Performing Arts Awards tonight at the NAC. Of the Laureates, Viola Léger is most thoughtful in her NFB-produced segment. La Sagouine touches everyone “between the lines,” she explains. Crossing paths with Marie-Jo Thério, decked up to perform Évangéline as a tribute for Viola, Léa smiles: “last time, you were barefoot at Guy’s and Frenchy’s in Shediac!” Seated directly behind us, above on the Mezzanine, Daniel Lanois is clearly moved to receive this much-deserved national affirmation.
Stage director Pierre Boileau and producer Cari Cullen were hesitant beforehand in the lobby when I asked if tonight’s edition is likely to surpass their triumph with Bryan Adams. Echoes from the years spent in this opera house: Ron Colpaart, head electrician, is visible in his booth; prop man Frank O’Leary, now retired, is feisty as ever. I spot jazzman Phil Nimmons, whose workshops at Mem Hall I attended as a teenager, present at age ninety. The gala concludes with two Lanois covers delivered softly by Patrick Watson and Basia Bulat. Nothing like the opening fanfare. Host Colm Feore summarily bids us goodnight, cueing the houselights.
Crossing to the Chateau Laurier, we encounter the congenial Richard Lachance on the Sappers’ Bridge. He’s just mixed his final GG awards, he says; at sixty he’s ready to retire. This I take with a grain of salt, coming from Canada’s leading orchestral sound engineer. Does he remember our first outdoor concerts with the NAC Orchestra twenty-five years ago? How the orchestra manager had sidled up to me, beadily eyeing Richard wearing a Hawaiian shirt, clutching a milkshake, bopping behind his console? “This chap… he’s alright for Mozart-Brahms-Beethoven?” Oh yes.
Kurt Waldele. Head Chef. (May 2019, Quebec City.) For years one could buy a basic hot meal in the Green Room before the evening show. Usually, I’d sit at the NAC’s Café bar for the smoked salmon plate, steak tartar, or the excellent seafood Caesar. Armenio, the bartender, might hand me an espresso or a dessert. Head Chef Kurt Waldele occasionally included me in rehearsals for international competitions. With Tony Ibbotson and a couple of others, I’d be seated in the Fountain Room with fine linen and select cutlery to be served a single course at the peak of culinary perfectionism, then asked to comment. Almost always Kurt’s team returned with a trophy.
Earlier in the 1980s Don Marriott ran the NAC’s restaurants, a bon vivant who would invite a few of us post-show to Le Restaurant to lounge in its high curved booths, very sixties. Feigning shock that I could be unacquainted with quail eggs he immediately had said delicacies delivered up in a small ornate bowl from kitchens far below in the underworld. Don was succeeded by Ashok Dhawan who, under Carl Morrison’s able direction, brought to bear a focused business acumen. The Restaurant closed, but catering expanded profitably, and the NAC’s annual budget came to rely on welcome new revenues from food services.
Yet, Kurt never changed. Once, after supervising a long day and evening of Canada Day programs, I walked out into Confederation Square around midnight. Only then did I notice how hungry I was. Thankfully, a burger stand was still operating at the top of the ramp next to the Sappers’ Bridge. Its attendant wore a chef’s hat. To my astonishment it was Kurt—officer commanding hundreds of kitchen staff, waiters, caterers. Here he was, smoking a cigarette on the front line, enjoying the summer night, chatting with his distinct German accent as he sold me a hamburger.
What i most remember of Mark, from his time at the NAC was his signature "Hi there.." that opened most of his conversations.