Biography
Alma Houston

Reprinted from The Novascotian, May 24, 1986
by Steve Proctor

Often in this life it is the small things which lead to major change. A chance meeting, an overheard conversation or a letter gone astray have the potential of altering lives forever.

For Alma Bardon Houston of Lunenburg, one small, but life-altering event was a trip to a Montreal exhibit of Inuit art in the summer of 1950.

"I was 23 years-old at the time," she says. I was living in Montreal, but I was looking for a job and was offered a position with Sun Life to teach the children of oil company employees in Venezuela. It was a five-year contract, but I decided it would be a great way to see the world and learn about other cultures."

But on the weekend prior to accepting the offer, she attended an art show that changed her life. A casual admirer of "innocent and naive" art since she was a young school girl in Truro, Ms. Houston said she and a friend noticed the show's advertisement in a local paper and decided to attend.

"That's where I met my former husband, James Houston. I was introduced to him by my friend and we went out to lunch and spent four hours talking. By the time we finished dessert he had persuaded me to go to the Arctic. Six months later we were married and a month after that we were on our way north."

James Houston had first gone to the Arctic in 1948 and is credited as the first person to bring out the Inuit work as art. Until that point the work of Canada's northern native people was brought out as crafts or curios. He is also recognized as the person who introduced printmaking to the Inuit.

But the initial trip north was not easy for the shy Nova Scotian. Although she was the daughter of a Stewiacke lumber merchant and was used to travelling about the province of Nova Scotia from the time she was young, a trip to Cape Dorset in the Arctic was another matter. It was a tremendous undertaking.

It started with a flight from Goose Bay to Frobisher Bay by military transport, but then came a three-week trip by dog team. "For a young and inexperienced girl, you can imagine the shock. We stayed in snow huts at night and travelled in bone-chilling cold by day. But I loved it. It was pure, clean, unoccupied and undeveloped.

You could climb to the top of a ridge and imagine you were the only person in the history of the world that had stood on that spot. It answered the call for adventure which was inside me," she recalls.

Financed with a grant from the department of northern affairs and natural resources, the purpose of the trip, and several subsequent trips, was to encourage the Inuit to develop their art as a way of helping themselves out of tragic economic conditions.

While she worked with many of the Inuit ladies to sew parkas and at one point taught school from the tent that was her home, Ms. Houston also worked with her husband to develop the first art co-operative in the Arctic.

"Inuit tend to live co-operatively anyway so it was easy enough to explain how the combination of all their talents would help make them stronger in both the purchasing of supplies and for more clout in the marketing of items," says Ms. Houston. "Rather than the possible exploitation of their art, as had been done in Africa and American Indian cases, the co-operative allowed the orderly marketing of the art items."

In the 10 years the couple spent in and out of the Arctic two sons were born, John in 1954, and Sam in 1956. "The Arctic is one of the greatest places in the world to raise your children," she says. "The Inuit are very gentle with children. They have a relaxed courage that is born out of their survival in such extreme conditions for so many years. Although she says she can get along "inelegantly" in the native Inuktittut, her youngest son learned the native language even before English. Her oldest son, John, is a master of the language and was interpreting for a nurse in the area before he was four years old. Shortly following the formation of the co-op her marriage collapsed and she moved to Ottawa and found a job with the Eskimo Art Committee.

"I had no background in marketing and only a little experience in advertising, but I spent two years travelling the world arranging shows of Inuit art and looking for people willing to take a long-range view of becoming involved in promoting the work of the Inuit.

"It was during those years, I became very conscious of the need for more promotion. The government had always had vision when it came to Inuit art and when the need for a marketing agency was pointed out, it responded and established the Canadian Arctic Producers Limited. It was a catalyst in the large-scale development of Inuit art because it gave the natives an alternative to the often hard-to-find dealer."

For the following decade, as the Arctic Producer's artistic director, she continued to travel around the world promoting Inuit art.

"To be able to introduce sculpture, prints and small carvings in a country like Finland and have them enthusiastically accepted by both the public and the artistic community was thrilling."

In addition to the excitement of the travel, this period in her life was highlighted with her investiture as a member of the Order of Canada for her service to Inuit art.

"It was a big honour, but I was a little embarrassed," she says, modestly. "I was just doing the work I enjoyed. I momentarily thought about refusing it, but I had worked in the Arctic for 25 years so I took it as the gesture it was supposed to be."

In 1975, as the Inuit gradually bought the co-op from the government, Ms. Houston resigned her position. I wanted to leave before I got stale."

But her resignation did not to take her away from the world of Inuit art. In the next four years she became the executive director of the Native Arts Council and continued to travel on an assignment basis. But her real desire was to write.

"I had a strong plan to write a book about Inuit art. There's a lot of books written on the topic, some excellent ones, but few in non-academic language which can be easily translated into Inuktittut. Many of the artists are older Inuit who neither read nor speak English. I had a pretty good idea of where their works stood both nationally and internationally, but I didn't feel, in spite of our efforts, they knew where they stood. I thought writing a book would be like part of my continuing stewardship of their work."

The book has yet to materialize, but what happened instead was the development of the Houston North Gallery, a bright, three-storey, commercial gallery overlooking Lunenburg Harbour and specializing in Inuit art, and to a smaller extent Nova Scotia folk art.

Recently praised by Mary Sparling, director of the Mount Saint Vincent Gallery, "as one of the best in the province," the gallery which Alma Houston co-owns with her son John has grown from humble beginnings.

On her return to Nova Scotia, her son suggested she look for a nice old house by the water where they could set up a gallery. She wasn't sure she was interested in a gallery but agreed to help him. "Then I got hooked."

On the first day, she found the building she wanted. Someone already had a bid in on it and was ready to transform it into a restaurant, but, undaunted, she made a bid as well and within a month took over the building.

"We started off with the idea of displaying the best of Inuit art we could get our hands on. It - didn't have to be the biggest pieces or the most expensive, just the best quality possible. This year we'll mark our fifth season and I can proudly say we've stayed firm with that premise."

Continually questioned by visitors why the gallery is set up in Lunenburg rather than a larger commercial centre like Halifax or Toronto, she responds with both practical and philosophical reasoning.

On the practical side, she says the type of gallery she and her son chose to run demands a relaxed atmosphere. The display areas are very open and breezy with much of the home's original fixtures still in place to create an informal atmosphere.

"The surroundings here are right for the Inuit art. Although some of them are purchased as items for offices, the majority of them end up in a private home. Why not display them in a setting closer to where they will end up?"

Reminders that it is an old home are everywhere. Former kitchen drawers have been transformed into a storage space and a broom closet is now a display case. Even an upstairs bathroom has been converted to a bookkeeping office.

While the thought of a city gallery isn't abhorrent, Ms. Houston notes there are more galleries per capita in Halifax than any other city in Canada.

On the philosophical side, she says the Inuit are an intrinsic part of the Canadian national identity and belong to everyone, so why not locate in Lunenburg?

"When we started out, we had nowhere to go but up. We'd travelled, been out in the real world, but there had always been someone else to look after the shipping and accounting. Now after five years and a recession I can say we're still here. That in itself is an accomplishment."

But the gallery has done more than just survive. From one floor and a few exhibitions the first year, all three floors have been pushed into service and a detailed season of exhibitions has been arranged. While starting with a small number of items, the gallery can boast sculptures and small carvings from 25 communities in the Northwest Territories and Arctic Quebec as well as a full floor of Nova Scotia folk art.

This summer, if the work can be done before the exhibition season, Ms. Houston says an extension will be added to the gallery.

Although she is a member of the area cinema society, the Lunenburg Economic Development Commission and the board of trade, she says most of her time and energy are devoted to the gallery and the study of Inuit art.

"In a sense, running the gallery is like having our own ideal world," says Alma Houston. "We decide which artist should be displayed on which wall and can decide who could use a push. We're a commercial gallery, but we can respond directly to the needs of the artist."