This piece explores how landscapes accumulate meaning through culture, history, and personal experience. It depicts O.S.A. Lake in Killarney Provincial Park, formerly known as Trout Lake, which is a landscape that carries a significance beyond its remarkable beauty. It is closely associated with Franklin Carmichael, whose paintings inspired appreciation for the region and whose advocacy helped protect this area from logging.

Nestled among the rocks is a Blue Mountain Pottery trout figurine. Produced by a company that no longer exists, it is removed from the shelf and returned to the shoreline, blurring the boundary between memory and place.

The trout figurine also acknowledges the area’s history of ecological loss. Acid rain severely impacted Killarney’s lakes, leaving many devoid of fish and wildlife. Today, through decades of conservation, the landscape continues its recovery.

Five years ago, I completed a solo backcountry canoe trip to O.S.A. Lake. Reaching it under my own power transformed it from a beautiful destination into a deeply personal place. That experience changed how I understand the Canadian landscape. It is not simply scenery, but something that shapes identity, demands stewardship, and rewards those willing to immerse themselves within it.

Built upon a copper underpainting, traces emerge through the surface, alluding to the nickel-copper smelting emissions that contributed to the acidification of these waters. Together with the intentionally unresolved parts of the piece, they speak to a landscape, and our relationship with it, that is still evolving. Its story did not end with Carmichael, nor with the damage caused by acid rain. Like the recovering ecosystem itself, it remains unfinished. The future of this place is still being written, and we are all holding the pen.