An effervescent household

In 1969, I had to do a large tapestry for the interior design project for St. Peter’s Church in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia I was working on with André Robitaille. Madame Thomas in Huberdeau wove the wide, multicoloured lengths of fabric, and Ghylaine did the dyeing, assembly and embroidery with help from her mother and mine on occasion. When the tapestry was finished, we put the children in the tent trailer and drove to Dartmouth to hang it in the church. We toured Cape Breton Island and visited the Fortress of Louisbourg, which was being rebuilt, then mainland Nova Scotia and the Gaspé Peninsula. Süzel took advantage of the dyeing baths to make her first artistic creations. It was around this time she wrote the beautiful story of the rocking chair that would become the subject of the film Crac!. Francis would endlessly arrange his toy soldiers and draw epic battles, which were admired by Claude Hinton and many others. Christian was working on his master’s degree in biology and when he had a break from his studies would go canoeing or kayaking with his friends.

Churches (Illustrator section)