Algoma sisters Margaret and Edna Chapman were widespread wielders of their artistic tools – one with a paint knife, the other with words. Inspired by their Batchawana birthplace, the Chapmans’ creations were showcased in art galleries as far away as Los Angeles and published in newspapers, magazines and books, including a poetry anthology across the ocean in London, England.
Their father, Alfred S. Chapman, was an artist and shoemaker who followed his pioneering spirit from Listowel to the rugged north in 1892. He and his wife Mary shaped their homestead and a family of eight children on a 230-acre plot of farmland in Batchawana, where Alfred served as postmaster for 33 years. They taught their children literature and arithmetic before the first school was built in the area.
At 14, for reasons not unknown to women, Edna published her first poem under the pen name Edmar Chapman. Edmar was a fusion of her given names, Mary and Edna, and, “it has the advantage of sounding like a man’s name and editors prefer men writers,” she told the Sault Star in 1966.
The name stayed with her through two published poetry books: Batchawana Echoes (1933) and White Drums (1943), as well as in Sault Star columns entitled The Highway’s End in the 1930s and Batchawana Briefs in the 1950s.
As they came of age, the sisters sought wider horizons and studies in Kalamazoo and Chicago, the latter being where they worked as steno-secretaries and where Margaret studied at the Art Institute and Academy of Fine Arts.
She exhibited her Algoma paintings in many locations, including Marshall Field and Company, the legendary Chicago department store whose fine art gallery was considered among the finest in America.
A.R. Lennon, art critic, wrote in the Chicago Post: “Her impressions of nature gained during this period of close contact with it in almost primeval form are what she attempts to express in her paintings…her feeling of the vastness of creation, its mystery and its beauty.”
Scenes that Edmar penned through imagery and words, Margaret produced with a paint knife, saying it created purer colours and a more realistic effect. As a bonus, the paint knife came in handy for chasing an intruding black bear, who broke into her Batchawana studio to steal the day’s fresh-baked bread.
These up close and personal encounters with wildlife were frequently detailed in Edmar’s Batchewana Echoes Sault Star column circa the 1930s. Edmar had by then returned to live a content and eclectic life working as steno-secretary, writing for the Star, helping run the Highway’s End Tea Room at the mouth of the Carp River, and living at the Silver Birch Lodge.
Margaret would go on to paint scenes from the coast of Nova Scotia to the Tucson and Santa Fe deserts under her middle name of Grace or ‘G.’ Goodall, and she even opened an oceanside artists’ studio in Laguna Beach, Calif.
She estimated that she had created around 2,000 works through the span of her professional lifetime.
“If you’ve watched the grey cranes mighty vigil, the shy doe with her fawns cavorting past your door at twilight, and the great buck moose swim by, antlers flashing in the morning sunshine or in the moonlight leaving a phosphorescent trail, then you’ll understand something of the reason why I’ve got to paint, though filled with a sense of unworthiness because my colours seem so inadequate to portray Algoma’s soul.” Margaret said.
No matter where on the continent they found themselves, the sisters never shook their love for Algoma, returning home at all stages of life to exhibit their work and replenish artistic inspiration.
From Chippewa Falls to the Michipicoten River, Agawa Canyon, and of course, Batchawana Bay – Algoma’s colourful landscapes were brought to life through their respective mediums.