Journey to the Centre of the Shield

Abstract

The land of deep water lies in Ontario’s north, atop the boundless rock of the Shield. It holds the secret of an island once blossoming with copper ore. Here primordial elements dance in the ancient landscape and invite us to join them in their awakening. Liquid portals, layered ancient rock and plunging mine shafts unearth a cosmic order born of chaos. Myth, geology and alchemy all fuse together in defining this place.

This thesis is a journey to centre of the Shield, through the deep water, rock and voids that encircle it. It is an expedition into the multiplicities of time through the poetic imagination. Here on the bridge to preconsciousness, we are invited in.

At the heart lies Copperfields, a mine isolated on an island in Temagami. Once bearing some of the purest copper on Earth, it now sits abandoned amidst fragments of its former glory. The design proposed reclaims these elements and animates them as gateways to the dynamic Shield. In the folds of time, quivering between thought and the preconscious, a fiction rich in meaning and experience is offered up.

Let us now embark on our journey to the centre of the Shield.