Joe Fafard Hon Deg’89

by Victor Cicansky BA’67

My history with Joe goes back to 1970 when we were both hired as professors of art at the University of Regina. We were a lot younger back then and we both had long black hair and full beards. We dressed in jeans and often wore colourful striped t-shirts. We looked like your stereotypical artists and some people around Regina had difficulty telling us apart.

“We are all richer for experiencing the power of Joe’s work in our midst.”

I remember standing at a checkout counter and being approached by a prominent Regina resident. She said, “I was in Toronto recently, Joe, and enjoyed seeing your herd of prairie cows on the lawn at the TD Centre. What a terrific installation in the financial district.” Occasionally I would just nod and graciously accept the praise on Joe’s behalf. Most times I would say, “Thank you for compliment. I’ll pass it on to Joe next time I see him.”

We both received catalogues from a prominent auction house conducting an auction of the Bronfman art collection. Several of Joe’s bronze animals were being auctioned off. Also included in the collection and attributed to Joe were my bronze tables. I phoned the auction house and asked: “Do you ever turn a work over to check for a signature? Just because the plums on my table look like goat testicles doesn’t mean it’s Joe’s work.” We laughed, and Joe signed the catalogues as Joe Cicansky while I signed Vic Fafard.

We didn’t buy into abstract expression, the current art fashion of the time, or the fundamentalist aesthetic taught in most art schools. We were independent. We created art from our own life experiences: Joe created animals and people; and I created garden vegetables and gardeners. Our careers blossomed. Joe’s more so.

Joe’s achievements are numerous and familiar to all of us who have been touched and inspired by his work. Joe is not just any Joe. He’s Joe intensified: intensified by his passion to make expressive and powerful sculptures and intensified by his gift to excite a wide audience of art lovers with his sculptures of people, cows, horses, pigs, sheep, goats, chickens, dogs and more.

Many of the ideas that Joe has developed for decades are summarized in his landscape sculpture, Le jardin de l’esprit (Mind’s Garden), on the south shore of Wascana Lake. This sculpture is in the University of Regina President’s art collection and visited by walkers in the park. We are all richer for experiencing the power of Joe’s work in our midst.

 

Victor Cicansky BA’67
Saskatchewan artist
Member of the Order of Canada

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How does one speak about “the light” that was Dominic? How does one speak of this inexplicable tragedy that has shut off that light?

I am being neither flippant nor poetic in my use of the word “light”. I have heard it so many times from different people who either knew Dominic well or had only heard of him. I have heard students speak of him as “radiant light”, as “luminous.” He cast a certain light in the way he perceived the world, in the way he wanted people to be with one another, in the way he saw the place of music in our lives, in the way he saw his role in our midst.

“For Dominic, life and music was about love and compassion and forgiveness and kindness and gratitude and connectedness. As a friend put it, “Dominic was hired to teach music, and he did, but it was secondary to his teaching about love and compassion.””

I came to know him best was when I joined his choirs for The Messiah in 2017 and Faure’s Requiem in the spring of 2018. He shone the brightest of lights on the pieces and brought a new perspective to those of us who had been singing the choruses of The Messiah for 25 years. He made clear the symbiosis of the music and the words, the nuances and dynamics of the music that bring the story to life. He also made us understand that we had been given a gift, and we, in turn, were giving that gift to those who would be listening to us. We not only were singing, but also making a connection with each other in the choir and with those in the audience.

For above all, Dominic was a passionate connector.

And that was the role of music in our lives. For Dominic, life and music was about love and compassion and forgiveness and kindness and gratitude and connectedness. As a friend put it, “Dominic was hired to teach music, and he did, but it was secondary to his teaching about love and compassion.”

During rehearsals, he would constantly encourage us to reflect on those values, and make us greet and speak to the choristers beside us. It was annoying and quirky at first – all those homilitics and all that hugging your neighbour – but eventually it all made sense. We were not simply singing, we were connecting and living the music.

And the students in the choir – one could see how much they idolized Dominic, how they respected him and absorbed everything he said. He was full of joy and was genuine in his affection and care. As one student put it quite poetically, Dominic’s luminosity “radiated from his being and dispelled the shadows from every soul he touched.” And he worked hard – late into the night writing and sending us copious notes after every rehearsal – and he expected us to work on his notes.

As soon as he had come on campus, he worked hard at attracting students to his choirs. He eventually doubled the size of the University choirs as students responded to the freshness and vitality of his approach to music, and to his creativity.

He very quickly made a name for himself in the University as well as in the community.  Regina has always been blessed in its musical culture; Dominic tapped into that culture and enriched it. The concerts he directed were always a delightful and aesthetic experience –transcendent even.

And then there was his socializing, for he had cast a wide net of circles of friends. He was as intense in his friendships as he was in all that he did. He was loving and wanted desperately to be loved.

But I think Dominic would tell us to find comfort “in the strength of love”; love makes the tragedy endurable, which would otherwise inflame the brain and break the heart. There is comfort in knowing that though Dominic’s life was brief, it was a life profoundly, lovingly, lived. Dominic strongly believed that we live not in our bodies but in our minds and hearts.  And so though he is no longer with us physically, he continues to live in the spirit and the music and the love he left behind, in the many whom he taught and whose lives he touched with his “bright light.”

 

Samira McCarthy
Former professor of English at Campion College

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“You have to remember that you are a strong young women, who deserves everything the world has to offer you. You’re going to do that through education, but more importantly, through your identity,” Noel declared through a plume of smoke from the smudge he was burning.

I was sitting in his office in the College West building, after finding out that my mother had overdosed from drugs in BC. I was an 18-years-old, first year student, with little family support and feeling alone and overwhelmed, trying to get my life together through a university education. I will never forget that defining moment for me, when Noel called me granddaughter and helped me find my courage.

“To many, he is known as a great leader, but to his students and young people, he was our grandfather, who showed us that leadership is about dedication to our community and culture, but most importantly, to the relationships we build with one another.”

Like many other students, I met Noel through the Aboriginal Student Centre (ASC), as he was the male Elder in residence. The ASC was my home away from home at the university and I began to witness him lead and speak at many cultural activities and events. As I studied him, I could not help but be drawn by his charisma: his articulate way of weaving together and conveying powerful ideas, his ease and warmth and his ability to connect with others, especially through humour.

Noel was known for his political acclaim; beginning at the young age of twenty four as Chief of his own reserve, Starblanket Cree Nation; and later climbing the political ranks to serve as the National Chief of the National Indian Brotherhood (now the Assembly of First Nations), not once, but twice. He never boasted about his political background, and always made it a point in personal conversations, to highlight his own imperfections, always as a way to show us that the most important attributes in someone, was humility and hard work. This was evident in his choice to be called a “Life Speaker” rather than Elder or Knowledge Keeper, as Noel involved himself in a multitude of activities around the University.

In 2017, he guided and performed in our student lead performance, Making Treaty Four. Before our show on the University of Regina’s mainstage, he smudged, lead a sharing circle and spoke. Through tears, he said, “The old ones dreamt of a time when young people would come together to tell our stories and, that is what you are doing today. I am so thankful to know you young people and witness this in my lifetime.”

To many, he is known as a great leader, but to his students and young people, he was our grandfather, who showed us that leadership is about dedication to our community and culture, but most importantly, to the relationships we build with one another. Noel, you will be deeply missed, but your spirit of generosity and truth will have lasting impacts on the family you built at the University.

Kinanâskomitin, pidamaya-wopida, chi-miigwetch.

 

Erin Goodpipe, Fourth-year Education student
Proud Dakota woman of the Oceti Sakowin or "Seven Council Fires" nation (Sioux Nation)
Former co-host of the TV show RezX

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