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©
2007 Whitney Smith
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Whitney Smith began his career as an actor in his teens, performing in many principal roles in films, TV and radio programs. Through his work as a radio performer he wrote, narrated and produced radio documentaries for major CBC programs, including Morningside and Ideas. At the same time he made a film, Up Only, which won two young filmmaker prizes (Best Experimental Film) in Brussels and Toronto.
While working as an actor, writer and broadcaster in the 70s he studied music with Samual Dolin (electronic music), Gordon Delamont (harmony, arranging, counterpoint, 12-tone music), Darwin Aitken (piano), Hank Monis and Tony Bradan (guitar), and wrote and performed songs, lyrics and program music for the theatre, notably Theatre Passe Muraille. In 1978 he wrote a radio documentary on Delamont (1918-1981), entitled "Taking the Notes Where They Want to Go." During this time he was an active member of the artist-run movement, working out of A Space in Toronto. As a writer, performer and musician, he collaborated on 27 performance art works (with General Idea, members of the Western Front, and many other independent artists), some of which toured Ontario, Canada and the U.S. In 1979 he played lead guitar for Video Cabaret's Hummer Sisters/1984 show that toured Canada and the UK. With poet Victor Coleman he founded the theatre company geared to shadow-puppetry, Shadowland, and wrote its first show, Radio Ghost, which toured Canada. With the island community and members of England's Welfare State International he produced, co-wrote the script (with Peter Such) and composed music and lyrics for the show, Island Follies, which was performed out-of-doors on Algonquin Island with the participation of 200 island volunteers. Smith's jazz and swing orchestra, the 18-piece Big Steam Band, was formed in the mid-80s, and featured Louise Pitre and Holly Cole as its lead vocalists (at separate periods). The band performed in clubs in Toronto and also became a fixture in the arts scene at the Music Gallery and QTV, a guerilla satelite broadcast show. At Artspace in Peterborough, Smith conceived an artist-in-residence program on art and radio, "This City is a Radio". His performance piece, "Alone with Radio", was performed with 60 participants of the program and the early Big Steam Band.
While foraging and selling wild foods for a company he co-founded, Forest Foods, which introduced wild produce to Toronto chefs, including Michael Stadtlander and Jamie Kennedy, Smith produced a performance piece, “Fern Policy.” This began his extensive variations on the theme of wilderness and cultivation. Fern Policy 2 and 3 followed, the latter performed at the Natural History Museum of Canada in Ottawa, and it was this work that culminated in founding the arts organization, the Society for the Preservation of Wild Culture (S.P.W.C.), which published the magazine, The Journal of Wild Culture. The first editorial team of Smith, Christopher Lowry, Kim Obrist, Peter Ferguson and the late Bernard Stockl conceived the premier issue; from its Toronto base The Journal of Wild Culture gathered its quizzical influence while riding the third wave of environmental public awareness of the last half of the century (the first ignited by the publication of Rachel Carson's The Silent Spring in 1962, and the second with Earth Day, in 1970). Using the subheading "ecology and imagination", The Journal of Wild Culture bridged the gap of discourse within the environmental and ecology movements in the mid-1980s with a magazine that was at once stylish, literary and quirky, a cross between the National Geographic Society, General Idea's File magazine, and the work of Toronto pataphysicians, notably the Marquis de Sod and Mr. Potatohead (pataphysics: "the science of imaginary definitions"). The local and international subterranean success of the magazine (its Southwestern U.S. distributor reported the magazine had "a cult following in Texas".) spawned other S.P.W.C. projects: an avant-garde cabaret series, The Café of Wild Culture, a series of walking tours by artists, Landscape Readings, and the book, Wild Culture (Somerville House. Toronto, 1990), co-edited with Christopher Lowry. (This publication is available through the website.) For a review go to Books in Canada. Smith's art has often connected with activism, and in between art projects he organized conferences on social change issues: In Our Own Back Yard: Bioregion Week, on the subject of bioregionalism in Toronto ; Our Local Economy (community economic development) and its three conferences, Town Hall Week; the Badger newspaper on municipal reform politics; a conference building awareness of Toronto's Garrison Creek; the 1995 Great Lakes Bioregional Congress on Snake Island. He currently working on development and programs for the Seeds of Hope Foundation, including its community learning centre, 6 St. Joseph House. With poets bpNichol and Victor Coleman Smith co-founded "Earlick", a festival of songs by Canadian poets and writers. Smith's most recent journalism been published in Toronto's NOW Magazine. "Other than hoping to end a relationship with a novel soon, all the rest is about doing what I can to keep the bands together — which I guess goes for all of us on some level or another."
On a road trip up the south eastern coast of Australia, just outside the amazing town of Tilba Tilba. Nothing quite like Oz! Whitney Smith lives thankfully in the glorious Chinatown/Kensington Market neighbourhood of Toronto with his wife Kristen Rundle, who grew up in Toronto, New South Wales, Australia.
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