Welcome to The

RICE HOWARD WAY ALLEY OF LIGHT

FEATURE ART BOX

SEPTEMBER 2022 - SEPTEMBER 2024

RICE HOWARD WAY ALLEY, EDMONTON, ALBERTA;

WEST-FACING WALL OF THE MCLEOD BUILDING (10134 100 St NW)

WE KNEW… AND HOME FIRES BURN FOR YOU

The RHW Alley of Light - Feature Art Box, features bi-annual rotating exhibits.  The inaugural exhibit by the North entrance of the RHW Alley, features, We Knew…And Home Fires Burn For You by Alberta artists Brad Callihoo, and will run from September 2022 to September 2024.

About Brad Callihoo’s Artwork   We Knew…And Home Fires Burn For You.  The inspiration for this piece came to me after the publication of the Le Estcwicwe̓y̓ — The Missing discovered in Kamloops, British Columbia, allowing the world to share in the horror. It proved to be the first inkling that perhaps, just perhaps, the general populace was finally willing to listen, to believe what the community has known as truth, and has been painfully screaming aloud for decades. 

Children were being taken, and they were not coming home. They had been forcibly dumped into these places, and they were not coming back the same — if they even did return. The heartbreak and the suffering of all those involved: parents, children, and families, it all manifested into several generations of lost souls existing amongst our people — but no one wanted to hear this truth.

This stone memorial is roughly four sided as an homage to the importance of the Cardinal directions in Native culture. The pillar is encircled by a ring of fire, showered with a constant flow of tears raining down from the multitudes of children who were lost and the families who agonized over their losses. These tears carry the hope that in their shedding, they may help in releasing the pain and suffering the children endured, and perhaps ease their continuing struggles in perseverance.  

Our Home Fires are an immensely important cultural symbol to acknowledge one’s place. One’s place in family. One’s place in community. That one place where comfort and safety were known. And those Fires burned on, never wavering, never weakening. They shone as a beacon, as a guiding light to lead the living back home, and too, as a sign for those souls who had crossed over to the Spirit World — a sign that showed that their loss was recognized and acknowledged in these homes. 

Artist Bio – B. Callihoo   Brad Callihoo is a commercial photographer and videographer who grew up in Spruce Grove, South of what was the Michel Indian Reservation, where his father was a member. He always had a keen interest in sculpture, first being exposed to the process in Nui Sam, Vietnam, while assisting a mentor at an International Sculpture Symposium. Witnessing these 64 artists at work gave Callihoo the confidence to pick up a chisel and hammer away at a stone. The result has become the ongoing series, Emerging Feathers… — an array of stone sculptures depicting the rebirth of Native Heritage and Culture. From it a further series has grown, Broken Feathers…, which represents the results of oppression, but also the resiliency proven to still be here. Callihoo was lucky enough to spend five years living in Cambodia and traveling through large parts of S.E. Asia and India before returning to Canada in 2018. This exposure to so many varying cultures and spiritual practices was an inspirational quest, and although the chance to work on stones did not arise, many photographs were taken and video accounts of the lives he was involved with were produced. Attending a Powwow soon after returning helped him immeasurably on the journey back to reconnecting with life in the Western world. The revitalization of the spirit led to revisiting this stone pillar and shaping it into a memorial named We Knew… for the victims of the Residential School System and its survivors. Callihoo continues to pursue the ongoing series and is near completion of a book he is writing, chronicling his adventures and mishaps while living in S.E. Asia in prose and photographs.

PROJECT PARTNERS