Mr. Speaker, yesterday Mr. Takao Tanabe of Errington, B.C. received the prestigious Governor General's Award in Visual and Media Arts.
Mr. Tanabe is a landscape artist of international reputation and an influential teacher of younger generations of Canadian artists. He was born in the small fishing settlement of Seal Cove near Prince Rupert, B.C. Of Japanese ancestry, Tanabe and his family were unfortunately among those interned during the second world war.
Mr. Tanabe has studied and painted in Winnipeg, New York, England, Italy, Denmark and Japan, and has served as the head of the art department at the Banff School of Fine Arts. His work is represented in more than 50 public collections in Canada and 120 corporate collections internationally.
In 1980 Tanabe took up permanent residence on Vancouver Island. He is described as the “poet of the ocean shore”. There is little doubt that his images of the mist-shrouded coastlines are among the most striking of his accomplishments.
On behalf of the constituents of Nanaimo—Alberni and the residents of Errington, B.C., it is a great pleasure to extend congratulations to Mr. Takao Tanabe, laureate of this year's Governor General's Award in Visual and Media Arts.