No Man's Land

Kathryn A. Young, Sarah M. McKinnon

• Publisher: University of Manitoba Press
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780887558115
• eBook ISBN: 9780887555237
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Artist Biographies

What force of will and circumstance drove a woman from a comfortable life painting china tea services to one of hardship and loneliness in the battle zones of France and Belgium following the Great War?

For western Canadian artist Mary Riter Hamilton (1868-1954), art was her life's passion. Her tale is one of tragedy and adventure, from homestead beginnings, to genteel drawing rooms in Winnipeg, Victoria and Vancouver, to Berlin and Parisian art schools, to Vimy and Ypres, and finally to illness and poverty in old age.

No Man's Land is the first biographical study of Hamilton, whose work can be found in galleries and art museums throughout Canada.

Young and McKinnon's meticulous research in unpublished private collections brings to light new correspondence between Hamilton and her friends, revealing the importance of female networks to an artist's well being. Her letters from abroad, in particular, bring a woman's perspective into the immediate post-war period and give voice to trying conditions. Hamilton's career is situated within the context of her peers Florence Carlyle, Emily Carr, and Sophie Pemberton with whom she shared a Canadian and European experience.

Chapter One

Early Years—Artistic Beginnings, 1868–1901

Mary Riter Hamilton as a child was very clever about trimming dolls’ hats. She was always taking the prize for such novelties at the Emerson, Manitoba, fairs.

Mrs. Hamilton’s first picture was a copy of a picture of Current River Falls which she saw in a furniture store in Port Arthur. The men in the store gave her common paint and she made a copy for her brother. She had often fished in this river so she knew it.

— MRS. FANNY K. HUNTLEY, INTERVIEWED BY MAJOR J.S. MATTHEWS, 29 FEBRUARY 19521

The Annual Women’s Art Association Art Exhibition: . . . The principal exhibitor being, Mrs. Hamilton, the instructor. It is the finest [china painting] display ever seen in the Northwest.

— MANITOBA FREE PRESS, 5 DECEMBER 18962

Industrial Exhibition, July 1897: The largest and most attractive [china painting] by Mrs. Hamilton and her pupils shows wonderful progress in art by many of our best known city ladies.

— WINNIPEG TRIBUNE, 22 JULY 18973

December Exhibition of china painting, landscapes, still life and sepia drawings in Mrs. Hamilton’s studio, 196 Kennedy Street: To find in a city, young as Winnipeg, such evidence of true art is indeed as fine as it is astonishing. This is proved by the class of exhibits shown in Mrs. Hamilton’s studies.

— MANITOBA FREE PRESS, 15 DECEMBER 19004

Mary Matilda Riter, a child of the late nineteenth century, was born on 7 September 1868 in Bruce County, Ontario.5 She began life on a homestead near Teeswater village, in Culross Township, not far from Lake Huron, as one of five children in the family of John Saul Riter (1833–­­1890) and Charity Zimmerman (1837–1915). John Saul Riter was of British ancestry, and descendants of the Zimmerman family believe that Charity was of third-generation United Empire Loyalist stock, more specifically Pennsylvania Dutch.6 Her family likely came to Canada from the United States during the American Revolution (1775–1783) and put down roots, as did many Loyalists.7 By 1871, there were almost 50,000 people living on the Bruce County peninsula.8 Those who came, including the Riters, arrived from Upper Canada (Ontario). Others came from Lower Canada (Quebec), the Maritimes (Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island), the British Isles, and the United States.9 These early settlers travelled by horse or ox-drawn wagon to their land concessions, which were often situated in dense forest. Many found that they had to clear their properties before one-room shanties could be built as temporary shelter from Ontario’s bitter winters, with their sub-zero temperatures, ice and snow. By spring, though, they were able to construct more secure frame and stone dwellings, and they were able to plant wheat and vegetable crops.

Map 1. Mary Riter Hamilton’s Canada.

Bruce County was known for its rich agricultural production. Farm produce (wheat, oats, barley, peas, flour, and oatmeal) was shipped out from Goderich, on the shores of Lake Huron, into the Great Lakes water system. From there commodities travelled east down the St. Lawrence River to the Atlantic Ocean and across to markets in England.10 By the time of the Riters’ marriage in 1859, Teeswater village had a newspaper, a post office, and was serviced by the Toronto Grey and Bruce (TG&B), and later the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR).11 In that year, John Saul Riter and Charity Zimmerman were married in Culross Township on 9 July.12 Mary, born in 1868, was the youngest of the Riters’ five children. Her older brothers John Paul and Joseph came in 1861 and 1862, respectively, and they were followed by sisters Clara, who arrived in 1864, and Etty, born two years later.13 In the 1860s, John Saul Riter ran a sawmill on 10th Concession (now Highway 4). But when fire destroyed the mill, he turned to farming and by 188014 had his own plot of land.15

Although documentation about the artist’s childhood is sparse, we do know that she went to school.16 And we know that her interest in art began as soon as she could hold a pencil.17 Religion, like education, was also part of the fabric of early homesteading and the Riters identified themselves as Protestants in the census records between 1861 and 1881.18

Mary Riter was remembered by “old timers of Teeswater . . . as a young girl, the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. John Riter, living in a little frame house on a farm.”19 As the district grew and became more established, it faced severe weather conditions and poor crops. Drought was followed by brush fires and, eventually, the collapse of the business community. Homesteaders like the Riters began to look west.20 In the early 1880s, John Saul Riter and his family left Bruce County to settle at Clearwater, Manitoba, where Charity Zimmerman’s relatives had homesteaded a few years earlier.21

According to historian W.L. Morton, the “Ontario Migration” into the prairies corresponded with Manitoba’s entry into Confederation in 1870 and the City of Winnipeg’s incorporation four years later. The new province was advertised in Ontario newspapers as having fertile land for sale where wheat grew free of disease.22 In May 1875, the Manitoba Weekly Free Press described the movement of settlers, like the Riters, into the region beyond Winnipeg: “The men left the woman folk and household goods in Winnipeg and drove [by buggy or wagon] through the country nearby or far out on the trails to make their location. When they had found a site to their liking they returned for families and outfits, and with a horse team or oxen and wagon box covered with canvas set out for the homestead.”23

Morton has written that the Clearwater district was situated in the beautiful Pembina Mountain Valley, in south-central Manitoba. The Riters spoke English, as did many from Ontario, and by speech and manner were easily identified as Canadians and not as immigrants from foreign lands.24 Although at the outset homestead life was hard for families, culturally the Riters would have fit in easily with others of British background.

For these farmers homesteading followed a pattern. A plot of land was selected and purchased. Life then proceeded according to season. As in Culross, dwellings that began as shanties were soon replaced by sturdier ones constructed of logs using the notch and saddle technique, with oak foundations and, sometimes, thatched roofs. By the 1880s, a number of lumber yards had opened, selling cut lumber and other materials, as well as patterns for efficient house construction. As such, the Riters may have built a wood-frame home, as they had in Bruce County. Spring meant clearing the land for planting kitchen gardens and crops. Autumn brought the produce in for storage and sale. And winter was for cutting and hauling wood, buying stock and seed, and joining neighbours at socials and dances.

Life in the settlements revolved around national holidays such as Queen Victoria’s Birthday on 24 May and Dominion Day on 1 July. Summer activities included horse races and picnics with foot races, jumping, throwing, tugs-of-war, and baseball. Duck and prairie chicken hunting ushered in the autumn, and during the winter horse racing on river ice, curling, and snowshoeing brought homesteaders together in the cold Manitoba climate. Escape from the weather could be found indoors.

As Mary Riter had shown an interest in art from an early age, when she was in her teens her family sent her to Emerson, a Manitoba town near the American border, to train as a milliner with a Mrs. Traynor. Later when Traynor moved to Port Arthur, Ontario, with her adopted baby, she invited Mary to accompany her to mind the baby and to continue her millinery studies. The soon-to-be artist not only designed hats, she also turned her attention to crewel work and to the making of mottoes.25

Port Arthur was situated on the northwest shore of Lake Superior and with its twin, Fort William, shared a past built on the fur trade, mining, railway, and shipping. French fur traders and their Native partners had known the region since the seventeenth century as an entrepôt for furs coming from the west into the Great Lakes water system and then on to the markets of Montreal. In the early nineteenth century the area achieved prominence. In 1803 the North West Company built a fur trading post at the mouth of the Kaministiquia River, on Lake Superior, that became the town of Fort William and the hub of the North American fur trade.26 Port Arthur, the “Hill City,” developed later with the discovery of silver in the 1850s. By 1885, both towns had prospered with the completion of the CPR and the ensuing transport of immigrants and goods into western Canada. A decade later, there were about 3,000 inhabitants in each location who worked on the railway, as well as in the fur trade, silver mines, and shipyards.27 The retail and service trades developed concurrently.

Mary Riter arrived in Port Arthur sometime between 1887 and 1888. It was here that she created her first landscape painting, a pic...

Table of contents

• Illustrations
• Preface
• Prologue
• Plates
• Chapter One
• Chapter Two
• Chapter Three
• Chapter Four
• Chapter Five
• Epilogue
• Appendix
• Notes
• Bibliography