Silent Voices

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Marlena Wyman, “Mosquitoes continue to be awful,” 2024, oil and encaustic on Mylar and birch panel, 12" x 24.5" diptych (courtesy of Marlena Wyman)

Countless women’s lives and achievements have been lost forever, their voices buried in the margins of history books. But what if we could hear our maternal ancestors’ stories firsthand — feel their joys, understand their struggles, and come to know them as friends?

Edmonton-based artist Marlena Wyman has accomplished this seemingly impossible task. She didn’t exactly time travel, but as an archivist at the Provincial Archives of Alberta for more than 30 years and as Edmonton’s Historian Laureate (2018–2020), she knew just where to look. Wyman rummaged through boxes tucked away in the dim corners of prairie archives and unearthed letters and diaries handwritten by settler women throughout the past 140 years.

As she held these handwritten documents, perhaps last touched by their writers in a bygone era, Wyman felt a deep personal connection. Her paintings and text panels in But There Were Also Flowers, on view at Bugera Matheson Gallery from Nov. 23 to Dec. 7, breathe life back into the words of long-forgotten women.

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Marlena Wyman, “Mat no more,” 2019, oil and photo transfer on Mylar and birch panel, 16" x 24.5" (courtesy of Marlena Wyman)

Among them is Mary (Capling) Hyde, whose 69 diaries span from 1900 to 1945 and reveal a life Wyman came to know intimately. In the oil painting Mat No More, a photo transfer of Hyde’s family emerges from a mist of hazy memories, recalling the tragic chapter when her beloved husband, Mat, was killed only months after joining the 66th Overseas Battalion during the First World War.

Wyman split the canvas into two, visually tearing the family apart. Mary’s side of the diptych swirls with clouds that echo the chaos of grenade explosions. At the painting’s heart lies one of Mary’s diary pages, where the phrase “Mat no more” is heavily pencilled in. These words stand out like an “emotional stab on the page,” Wyman notes, adding that Mary remained single and, until her passing, began each day’s entry with those same haunting words.

The tragedies, dust storms, crop failures, and relentless isolation chronicled in their journals are matched only by these women’s remarkable stoicism. Even in the privacy of their diaries, they rarely complained. “They were practical,” Wyman says. “This is what I have to deal with; let’s get on with it.” Their acceptance and knack for finding joy in small things bring moments of lightness and even humour to Wyman’s paintings.

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Marlena Wyman, “Another terrible dust storm,” 2024, oil and photo transfer on Mylar and birch panel, 24" x 24" (courtesy of Marlena Wyman)

For instance, Mosquitoes continue to be awful, imagines Alda Dale (Black) Randall, a woman from Alberta’s High Prairie region in the early 1900s, standing tall with an almost otherworldly calm. She gazes across the dusty, windswept prairie as a gust of wind sweeps her long hair into the black swarm of mosquitoes.

One of Alda’s diary entries inspired this scene: “Mosquitoes continue to be awful — must keep a smudge almost continually in the house —smudge before we sleep & again about 3 or 4 a.m.,” she wrote. It’s one of several references to the advice and generosity of the area’s Indigenous people. During times of great hunger, they gave Alda’s family meat, taught them about edible plants, and showed them ways to keep mosquitoes out of drafty cabins. 

Through her extensive research for this show, Wyman realized why Canadian suffrage took root on the prairies. The demands of prairie life required women to manage not only traditional chores but also the full range of work typically done by men. Their strength, emotional stamina, and sense of self-worth created fertile ground for the activism of the Famous Five, who invited women to “pink teas”— a clever disguise for political gatherings dismissed by men as mere gossip sessions. By 1916, all three prairie provinces amended their election acts to allow women to vote.

This remarkable conclusion emerges from the pages of diaries whose authors likely assumed they would never be read again. After all, these were humble and largely invisible women. Yet, as Wyman’s show illustrates, their stoic courage helped to change the nation. ■

Marlena Wyman, But there were also flowers, is on view Nov. 23 to Dec. 7 at Bugera Matheson Gallery in Edmonton

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