Grace - WAR Flowers

I believe that grace is to honour, and give credit, by one’s presence.

Many thought of Talbot Papineau as a future prime minister. He received the Military Cross for his actions at Saint-Éloi in 1915, and then became a staff officer. In 1917, he left the security of this position to return to command a company of his regiment. Papineau was from one of Quebec’s best-known families. Yet the battlefield granted no immunity. “You know Hughie, this is suicide,” he uttered to a fellow officer moments before he was killed by a shell. He was one of 4,000 Canadian soldiers who died during the Battle of Passchendaele.

– Viveka Melki

Talbot Papineau (1883-1917)

Talbot Papineau is one of the best-known of Canada’s combatants in World War I and one of its most famous victims. He was the son of a Quebec father and an American mother. He grew up on the Papineau family’s vast estate at Montebello on the Ottawa River. He was the great grandson of Louis-Joseph Papineau, a major figure in Quebec political history whose leadership of the 1837 Rebellion led to his exile but whose ideas contributed to the extension of responsible government to Canada.

Talbot Papineau was one of the first Rhodes Scholars from Canada. On his return from Oxford University with a degree in law, he was marked for success and for a political career. A talented lawyer, fluently bilingual, well-read and respected, Papineau was thought to be a future prime minister.

During the First World War, Papineau joined the Princess Patricia’s Light Infantry. At the front, he illustrated his bravery in several of the first skirmishes fought by Canadian soldiers in the war. He was appointed to serve in the Canadian War Records Office but returned to his regiment in June, 1917.

Papineau rose to prominence off the battlefield for taking on Le Devoir editorialist Henri Bourassa in a very public dispute over Canada’s involvement in the war. In an open letter published in August 1916, Papineau called on Bourassa to moderate his opposition to Canada’s participation in the war and to accept his position that Canada had no choice but to join the war at the side of Britain. Bourassa dismissed the letter of his “gallant cousin”, arguing that Canada was not bound by “Imperial solidarity”. “German Imperialism, and British Imperialism, French militarism and Russian Tsarism, I hate with equal detestation…and I believe….that Canada, a nation of America, has a nobler Mission to fulfill than to bind herself to the fate of the nations of Europe”.

The debate played out in 1916 on the pages of newspapers in Quebec, Canada and the United Kingdom with papers on both sides of the Atlantic taking sides. The English-language press dubbed the “soldier and patriot Papineau” the victor in this battle. But Papineau did not enjoy the honours for very long. He was killed by a shell leading his troops in a morning attack at Passchendaele on October 30, 1917.

Learn More about Talbot Papineau:

Talbot Papineau is the subject of a short biography by Sandra Gwyn in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography and the key figure in her book Tapestry of War, A Private View of Canadians in the Great War (2004).

http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/papineau_talbot_mercer_14E.html

Press on the pictures below to show content:

Optical crystal

“Men in their thousands marched to war, a world war no one could have imagined, the rose a reminder that life and beauty do prevail.”
– Mark Raynes Roberts

Olfactory memory

“While the sun is rising in the sky, a proud and enchanting rose leaves a strong fragrance of patriotism.”
– Alexandra Bachand

Talbot Papineau (1883-1917)

“Papineau rose to prominence off the battlefield for taking on Le Devoir editorialist Henri Bourassa in a very public dispute over Canada’s involvement in the war. In an open letter published in August 1916, Papineau called on Bourassa to moderate his opposition to Canada’s participation in the war and to accept his position that Canada had no choice but to join the war at the side of Britain.”
– Alexander Reford

Cantlie’s Letter

Conservation

See the letter

Cantlie's Letter

Botanical Approach

Conservation issues for George Stephen Cantlie’s botanical specimens to be displayed in the WAR Flowers exhibit

Contractual expertise by Céline Arseneault, botanist and archivist (retired botanist and librarian at the Montréal Botanical Garden) May 2016

Conservation assessment

The dried flowers specimens had been conserved pressed in the original letters/papers/envelopes for nearly 100 years, with one exception where a later envelope included a flower.
Some flowers had pieces of fabrics or textiles attached to them.
Some flowers had rubbed off or left their print on the papers.
The flowers were dry, brittle and in some cases very fragile and broken in pieces (included in the paper/envelopes).
Some envelopes included more than one specimen and more than one plant species.
The flowers hold historical value but no biodiversity value like scientific herbarium pieces because they were not documented as such.
Botanical identification has been made in accordance with the letters’ indications (dates, locations) and material available (mostly flowers only, visual colours, few leaves) for tentative scientific genus identification.
The flowers have historical significance in the context of Cantlie’s archives, as a part of the correspondence addressed mainly to his daughter Celia (or exceptionally wife/other daughters). They are seen as item “objects” in the scope of the Rules for Archival Description by the Canadian Council of Archives:
http://www.cdncouncilarchives.ca /RAD/RAD_Chapter11_Dec2002.pdf
The primary purpose of the present assessment was to avoid altering the integrity of these objects.
The accompanying papers, letters and envelopes bring major significant value (dates, paper headings, postal stamps, annotations, writings, etc.) to the objects. See link above.

Original plan for the exhibit: Inclusion of flowers into resin pastilles

The original exhibit proposal included stand‐alone encasing flowers into transparent polymer‐type resin (“pastilles”), each one to be temporarily encased in a crystal sculpture for display purposes.

Conservation issues regarding acrylic resin encasing

Transparent acrylic‐type or polymer‐type resin can be used successfully for fresh botanical specimens, however:

Dried botanical specimens are organic and brittle.The brittleness accentuates with dryness, age and manipulation. Humidity and change of environment can cause rapid deterioration by moulds, dust mites or otherwise. Older pigments and botanical specimens themselves are also more fragile to heat and light. https://www.nps.gov/museum/publications/conserveogram/01‐03.pdf — http://conservation.myspecies.info/node/35
Encasing in acrylic‐type resin implies a heating process which creates static energy as well as thermal energy. Statics augments brittleness and specimens risk “exploding” into the resin.
Because of their historical value, there were no available sample specimens that could be used as an experiment to validate the previous statement.
At this point, where flowers have already been subjected to change of colours due to time, we can assume that polymer encasing would accelerate the discolouration.
No studies are available regarding the long‐term conservation (discolouration, deterioration) of the acrylic resin itself.
This type of encasing is not generally recommended for archival or historical conservation as it alters the specimens.
This type of encasing is NOT recommended in the conservation literature for older, organic material, such as botanical specimens and papyrus (references available on request).

For these reasons and in regard to further deterioration of the specimens, encasing in acrylic resin was not recommended for the Cantlie’s flowers.

Conservation issues regarding stand‐alone two‐glass panes encasing

Even pressed, the dried flowers have thickness, some more than others, and may not be encased easily in two panes of glass (or acrylic) with a frame moulding, particularly because of their brittleness and for practical and esthetic concerns (e.g type of transparent glue applied on the glass, type of moulding, etc.).

Mounting

As stated above, the dried flowers seen as objects have no significant historical value when separated from the archival fonds and their accompanying pieces.
Archival conversation aims to preserve all parts of an item (or a historical record) together.
Producing a series of botanical specimens in stand-alone frames would contradict archival conversation.
Float mounting thus included a non-acid paper in an off-white texture and colour.
Stable polymer archival glue was recommended by the Marie Victorin Herbarium of Université de Montréal to be used both on flowers, which we use also for the papers records.
High-standard museum-recommended frame acrylic, in a non glare acrylic glazing matte finish, was used instaid of glass after studying the travel requirements of the exhibit and to minimize reflection for glare-free viewing.
The pre-layouts were realized by Céline Arseneault and Viveka Melki in the Spring of 2016 and each layout was documented: botanical identification, measurements and text transcription of each record in a preliminary archival description of the Cantlie Fonds.
17 final layouts (including 19 pieces) werw then frames by the experienced framer at « Au Coin des Artistes » in Montreal under the supervision of Céline Arseneault for the purpose of conservation and to be included as the main raison d’être of the War Flowers exhibit.