Helen Opie

Helen Opie, who passed away at the end of 2021, lived in Granville Ferry since 2003, moving here from Mader’s Cove in South Shore Nova Scotia, after having arrived Nova Scotia from Charlotte County NB, where she first began to understand that she might be one who thinks she has to draw lions.

   She majored in studio art at Oberlin College in Ohio because she was too dyslexic to manage all the writing of papers required in other major subjects, and went onto get an M Ed (elementary school teaching) from Boston University, again choosing a topic, children’s literature, that did not require reading a great deal of dense material.

   She was fascinated in watching how old age requires new learning. (all this digital stuff), new perspectives (even the middle-aged don’t remember World War II, or when Edward (V?? VIII??) abdicated the British throne), and new adaptation (all real typewriters were manual, and few were actually portable; cars had tire chains for driving on snow; there was no frozen food, just ice in aluminum ice trays in the fridge).

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Helen's immersive artist's journal of a month-long trip on a tall ship, Aboard Picton Castle, is available now.