helen waimel robertson

By Greta Hildebrand

In the late spring of 2000, I travelled to St. Kevin’s Catholic Church in Welland. I had arranged to view the fourteen-paneled bas-relief, Stations of the Cross, which Helen Waimel Robertson had been commissioned to sculpt in 1957. Once inside the Sanctuary, I imagined the execution of each monumental panel lining the nave, and wondered how many people had contemplated the allegory of these stone-lined walls, and would again as the traditional seasons of worship came with each successive year.

Robertson was in the prime of her career as an architectural sculptor when she worked on the Church commission and a set of liturgical murals, Christ’s Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem and Christ Blessing the Children, for St. Dennis School in St. Catharines two years before. From St. Catharines my journey had begun as guest curator for an exhibition of ten newly donated bronze sculptures by the artist to Rodman Hall Arts Centre. I was to amass in my research an impressive list of her works that embraced public and private institutions, and open spaces throughout the Niagara Peninsula and Toronto (others in Nova Scotia and Florida were, for the time, beyond my parameters). In his Dictionary of Canadian Art, Colin MacDonald had listed under Robertson’s entry: a large 30- by 10-foot mural titled School Figures for Ryerson Institute of Technology; copper sculpture wall, 50 x 12 feet for the Queen Elizabeth Building at the C.N.E. grounds (designed by Elizabeth Wyn Wood), and Golden Goddess suspended over a pool in the Colonnade Hotel in Toronto as among her finest works; fifty-four complete works are listed in her compilation of accomplishments. Robertson’s creative genius had earned her entry into the Sculptors’ Society of Canada in the mid 1950s.

Heading east on Highway 47 to the Chippawa Parkway to meet the artist, then at the age of 82, cemented a lasting reverence. Still active in the care of her expansive estate, gracefully landscaped with specifically designed artwork, Robertson had prided herself in competing with the professionally groomed gardens of the well-visited Parkway. The two-tiered Golden Fountain outside the home’s entranceway had, during the life of Robertson’s late husband Blake, been a spectacle of three playful bronze statues: “boy with bird,” “boy with fish,” and “boy riding turtle.” The statuary was later donated to the Niagara Parks Commission Greenhouse, the first piece in 1990, the remaining two added in the fall of 2002, shortly after her death. The well-patinated bronzes were dedicated at a commemorative gathering of family, friends, and public, all of whose lives she had, in some way touched. A second version of “boy riding turtle” had earlier been donated to the Children’s Centre in St. Catharines; Rodman Hall Arts Centre received the promised duplicate of “boy with bird,” along with a bas-relief titled Adam and Eve that had been the centre-piece of Robertson’s family living space from the late 1950s. From her fireplace mantle to that of the Arts Centre’s research library, the two-figured interpretation now adds a focal point to Brock University’s newly acquired facility. The library currently houses several of her bronze sculptures as well. It was Robertson’s wish that the community enjoy her most intimate works. And, it was her family’s hope that she become appreciated for the contribution she had made to the public face of art during her lifetime. >>