As we learned at Beausoleil, following a period of intense settler colonization and extraction of hardwood forest, artists such as Thomson heralded a new 'recreational' era. They typified those who visited the newly-established Parks in the early twentieth century – their paintings suggesting the kind of unconstrained movement forward, into a “wild” and limitless north, that Parks visitors were actively seeking.

In the meantime, there has been a shift, away from prioritizing recreational use of Canada's Parks, towards ecological and decolonial concerns that moderate how we relate to such places. The assumptions underpinning familiar, historical depictions of landscape are now open to question; and, as a consequence, in Beausoleil we were uneasy about straying from trails, or entering historic cemetary grounds, or inland lakes and inlets – not from a percieved risk, but from a sensitivity to other species, their ecological relationships, and a respect for Indigenous and Métis culture. With the age of unfettered access over, our very presence in this place now contentious and problematic. As artists we have each developed practices that are responsive to the ethical questions raised in an era of ecological thinking and decolonization. We have each developed practices that often eschew representation altogether, shaped by the discourses of non-representation geography and participatory modes of contemporary art. Yet despite these turns in academic, artistic, cultural, social and political life, images derived from the 'recreational' era still thrive. In this project we want to return to the conventions and the artforms associated with them, in order to deal directly with the expectations of access engendered by this canonical and hegemonic approach to art and to Canada's National Parks.

As such, on Beausoleil Island our research began by walking the island's trails and taking photographs of places within the Park where we could not or would not go. These photographs represent views towards locations where either access was explicitly denied to us (Parks signage instructing visitors to stay to paths for instance), where the place was remote or inaccesible to us (such as islands offshore), or where we considered it inappropriate to visit (woodlands where deer, bear, and plant species would be disturbed by our presence). Later, we producing drawings from these photographs, forming a series of images depicting “places where we cannot go”, as a kind of map of the locations where we were either unable or unwilling to visit as we engage with the Park during its shift from 'recreational' to ecological/decolonial eras.

Our aim is to extend this work further, identifying the image-surface as a venue where this shift between eras is negotiated, and as a place for further experimentation. Working as a family unit, we will collaborate on the process of image-making – primarily in drawing, with additional painting and photography – to experiment with how this process can enable, express, and embody a negotiation with the artistic, philosophical and ethical challenges presented to us as we visit Canada's National Parks.