.082 Singsong - Navvy Jack Point Park Public Art

History is a melting pot of facts and fictions. It is tinted with imagination, with its fine grains shift continuously through time. The tapestry is especially colourful during the early years of European settlement, when tales and rumours of the land were told over sunny porches and dimly-lit saloons, across horse carriages in passing, from villages to mountaintops to the sea. The ones that slipped past official channels turned in sailors’ shanties, lumberjacks’ folklores and grandmothers’ lullabies. They precipitate in the collective memories of the populace like the grey mist shrouding the coastline.

“Singsong” is a public art installation that reveals a small snippet within the larger effort of preserving the life stories of Navvy Jack, in whose namesake the project site is called. Inspired by how Indigenous Nations use storytelling to transmit knowledge, beliefs and aspirations (Navvy Jack’s wife Rowie was the Granddaughter of Old Chief Ki-ep-i-lano), the art installation passes on a story of Jack’s rooster that has taken on different meanings over time. How a rooster’s morning crow saved a stranded ship across the Salish Coast, and the many excursionists on it, indulges our wildest dreams. Using a peculiar side story as a catalyst of conceptual exploration, “Singsong” unravels the many facets of our collective memories. It blurs the boundaries between artifacts of commemoration and whispers of our imagination. 

“Out of the silence and mist, we heard a rooster crow; the master ordered the anchor up; rang for ‘slow ahead.’ He knew where he was… It was Navvy Jack’s rooster which had crowed.”
- Interview of a passenger by Major J.S Matthews. Early Vancouver Vol.4 (1944)