The Woodland Sisters new art project features northern Ontario women from the 19th, 20th centuries

Ten Northern Ontario women from the 19th and 20th centuries will be featured in a new art project being funded by the Ontario Arts Council.

The project – the brainchild of Sudbury sisters Cassidy and Caitlyn McAuliffe –  is titled Women Who Break Trail and it consists of both physical and digital art.

The art portion of the project is a printmaking portrait series – carved linoleum rolled in ink, then pressed into paper, presenting a portrait of each of the women highlighted.

The storytelling side is where a story is told of the artists' experience in northern Ontario through text, maps, photos, videos and archival materials.

The woman that inspired the sisters to undertake the project artist Corline Maben Flower. 

"We saw this really cool photo of this girl in the 19th century, who had 'Lady Prospector' transcribed on her canoe," Caitlyn said. 

"And we started to look into that– what is a lady prospector? And who lived here at that time? Then we started to find out a little bit more information about her, and from there we just thought we should we should start a project highlighting other women just like this."

Cassidy was equally inspired by Anahero, who people may recognize as the former partner of Grey Owl.

"She lived quite an interesting life," Cassidy said. "She's a writer and a conservationist…and lived a vibrant, independent, complex experience."

"She went gold prospecting across northern Ontario and northern Quebec. And her story is just so, so fascinating to read."

She also wrote a book, Cassidy said, called Devil in Deerskin: My Life With Grey Owl.

Tracking down information about these artists is a bit of a challenge, the sisters say, and they've concentrated their research around archival newspaper articles from northern Ontario. They've also gathered what they can from Facebook pages devoted to northern Ontario history.

"We have a historical and social context to talk about these women and understand what they were living through, what pulled them to the area, what kept them here or what was it that they loved about this place at the time?" Caitlyn said.

But the richest trove of information, and what makes these historical characters come to life comes from visiting the places the artists themselves walked, or trying to track down family members to get their own unique perspective.