Moving Waters
This work-in-progress has evolved from a collaboration with the McMichael Canadian Art Collection and artist-in-residence Bonnie Devine. My photographs will be featured in the forthcoming publication Water to Water: A Way Through the Trees, written by Devine in collaboration with McMichael Curator Sarah Milroy, and accompanied by Devine’s artwork.

Devine’s vision follows the path of the Carrying Place Trail and Trade Route, a lifeline for the Huron-Wendat First Nation, who made their homes in this region. Long before the arrival of Europeans, this trail was part of a vast network of Indigenous mobility—shaping economies, diplomacy, and patterns of settlement. Later, it guided the colonial infrastructure that overlaid and disrupted these lands. Known also as the “Portage de Toronto,” the trail carried travelers from Lake Ontario to Lake Simcoe (Ouentironk), and onward through the Severn River to Georgian Bay—a swift north–south current of movement and exchange.

Today, the trail lingers in fragments: river valleys, archaeological sites, and the echo of its name in the landscape. My work follows these traces, exploring a contemporary Indigenous presence along its course, while attending to the remnants—and the ruptures—that remain in the wake of colonial settlement.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                         Robert Burley 2025