Heritage Quilt at Pier 21 the Length of Four Buses
By Marilyn Smulders
The Daily News, Halifax - June 28, 2005

Canada's multicultural heritage has long been compared to a patchwork quilt - each thread contributing to our social fabric - so what better symbol than a quilt to represent it?

Invitation: The Quilt of Belonging is an exquisite, 36-metre-long quilt - that's the length of four school buses parked end to end.

It comprises 263 quilt blocks - one each for Canadian residents from every country in the world and 71 aboriginal peoples, including Métis, Inuit and First Nations.

Officially launched at the Canadian Museum of Civilization in Gatineau, Que., earlier this year, the quilt was unveiled yesterday at Halifax's Pier 21, where it will be on display until Aug. 27.

Instigator Esther Bryan stresses that hundreds of people helped stitch her dream together - from the people who made the blocks, to the 90-year-old woman who embroidered the country names in French and English, to the women of her tiny home town of Williamstown, Ont. (population 250), who sewed the blocks together and hand quilted them.

"Ordinary people of all kinds helped," says Bryan. "The idea was bigger than anyone of us could imagine … If I didn't know how to do something, I knew someone else would. It wasn't necessary for me to be Wonder Woman."

Forced to leave
Bryan's own intricately embroidered block represents the country of Slovakia. Bryan's father, a missionary, was forced to leave in 1946, following the upheaval of the Second World War and the ascension of the Communists to power in Czechoslovakia. More than 43 years after his departure, she accompanied her father to Slovakia and came to realize why his homeland was so dear. That trip became the impetus for Invitation.

Like the quilts pioneer women made of scrap fabrics, every block carries a story.

For example, the El Salvador block - a brightly coloured village scene of birds, sun and white-washed houses - was embroidered by social activists imprisoned and tortured in their native country, and show lives were saved through Canadian intervention.

Treasured carving
The Congo Brazzaville block is an elegant silhouette of a mother and child styled from a treasured carving. It was created by refugee Marie-Leontine Tsidbinda, a UNESCO-recognized writer whose profile made her a target during the 1997 civil war there. She now lives in Hull, Que.

The Kiribati block was fashioned from a coconut frond mat, a woman's smocked blouse and tiny cowrie shell flowers. The maker, Baiaa Teangauba, could well be the only Kiribati-born Canadian; he met his Canadian wife Dale while she was on a two-year volunteer contract in the tiny island nation in the Pacific Ocean.

"It took us the whole six-and-a-half years to find everyone - we made hundreds of phone calls, wrote mountains of letters. Some communities are very small or have issues, let's put it that way. It takes time to win people's trust," says Bryan. Some of the blocks, like Kiribati, San Marino or Vanuatu, may have only one or two people living in Canada.

Incredibly, Bryan's a painter; not a quiltmaker - "This is my first quilt," she exclaims proudly. But she says that turned out to be an advantage in pulling it together. The widest range of materials were included, everything from sealskin, to a miniature Afghanistan carpet, to functioning Swiss clock.

"It's a long way from traditional quiltmaking," she says with a smile.

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