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Written by Michael LeBlanc
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One of Eric's ‘Russia Stories,’ 1954
It was seven o’clock one evening two years ago when I found myself talking to a companion in a room of the National Hotel in Moscow. My companion was Canada’s number one, two or three, painter, according to who is calling the mathematics. I am one of the fractions. He is 74 or 5; I am 46 or 7. He is a great artist. I am an artist. Both of these statements are my own, and while I believe they are true I can supply a respectable army of dissenters culled from the rancours of contemporaries. They may be right. I have no way of knowing because I am not dead yet...
...For a reasonable period we “got along famously”, partly because he realised we were both foreigners to the Russians, and partly because in those rare moments when he listened to my views he toyed with the idea that I might possibly be human. Our communication was considerably eased by the fact that I believe all artists are basically human, and I am willing to fight for this belief. Which is one reason why artists do not approve of me...
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Written by Michael LeBlanc
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At the height of the cold war “Red Scare,” in 1954, Eric went with a small Canadian arts group to tour the USSR, sponsored by the Canadian Soviet Friendship Society. The Society announced that they would fund a tour of the USSR for 14 Canadian painters, architects, musicians, actors and dancers. Despite the wide promotion for the trip, only 6 Canadians boarded the plane for the USSR: artist Eric and Group of Seven artist Frederick Varley with four francophones: Michelain LeGendre, puppeteer and marionettist; Charles Lemoine, poet and radio critic; and Mr. and Mrs. Pierre St. Germain, a newspaper writer (his wife was a social worker). The entourage included no musicians, architects, or ballet dancers as was previously advertised. “It was enough to make me uneasy, but because Mr. Varley persisted, I persisted, and so we found ourselves with this mixed group who did not know each other,” wrote Eric later.
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