Random Access

Don Barber isn’t technically allowed to be in the Mississauga Civic Centre these days, but he’s hanging around down on the main floor nonetheless.
Or, at least, his image is.
A portrait of Barber by Mississauga artist Laurie Kallis, standing in Cawthra Bush, is one of the exhibits in a current show at the Art Gallery of Mississauga entitled, “If 905 Isn’t 416, Why Do we Have YYZ? Defining Mississauga.”
It’s an intriguing little show that reflects, through the eyes of artists who live and work here, what it is to be Mississaugan.
“Conflicted” would seem to be the answer. The works can generally be divided into two categories — those that stand in awe of the natural beauty of the place (a representation in fabric of a lakeshore sunset by Pat Hertzberg, a portrait of a Majestic Oak by Parveen Kaur, a digital print of gabion baskets along the lakefront called Alfred’s Point by Mark Boylan) and those that concentrate on how that beauty is being transformed with skyscrapers and super-highways and things we really haven’t come to grips with yet.
At least one piece combines the duality of those visions. Home, by Fausta Faccipante, features dark, tattered grainy old-time photographic images that appear to have been melded together. You view these through layers of shattered and overlapping glass that distort the images, as if we are seeing them through fading memory. In an accompanying note Faccipante says, “I have lived in Mississauga all my life before it became crazy with development. I would like the natural beauty of Mississauga preserved and cherished by every citizen and visitor of this place.”
Kallis, an off-and-on local resident since 1987, says the portrait of Barber titled Keeper of the Grove, was inspired by her admiration for his willingness to take on the causes that most people consider lost. The accompanying text says, in part, “Swimming against the stream of development-supportive policies, Don Barber is a community watchdog who speaks for this irreplaceable natural treasure of Mississauga.”
Kallis lives right beside Cawthra Bush and actually hauled the painting through the paths there on her way to catch the bus to take it up to city hall. She often bumps into Barber in the bush, surrounded by piles of garlic mustard he has hauled out by hand.
Like most of us, Kallis has problems with some of the things Barber does but she says, “his heart is in the right place.”
Barber cannot see the exhibition himself because of bail conditions stemming from an assault charge laid after an incident at the Civic Centre following a council meeting last June 7.
In the past few days and weeks, Barber has bombarded The News accusing the paper of misleading people when it mentions the assault charge because it does not provide an accompanying detailed description of the circumstances that prompted it.
Apparently, every time we mention the fact he was charged, we must also mention that: 1) Barber was at the council meeting to express concerns about families at the end of the airport runway living with noise; 2) he was not personally affected by that issue but was speaking for the public good; 3) council changed its long-standing policy on public question period that day without notice, which is what prompted the concerns expressed by him and fellow mayoralty candidate Roy Willis; 4) city council considered the request the residents made to address them; and 5) “ City council did not request Roy’s and my removal from council before the (security) guards acted for no apparent reason.”
Barber is accused of having assaulted one of the guards later, a charge which he firmly denies and which he intends to fiercely fight in court.
You can bet he will be well-prepared for that battle — armed with his own world view, an obsessive-compulsive attention to the minutiae of every issue raised and a tenacity that drives bureaucrats and politicians just a little wild.
But just when you want to dismiss him for his aggravating, over-the-top ways (like giving the mayor a bottle of sherry at council for her birthday or putting out tasteless campaign literature that claims she is dying), he turns up something valuable, like the threatened Jefferson salamanders in Cawthra Bush.
Painting a portrait of Don Barber is obviously not a simple thing. Defining him, like defining Mississauga, involves getting used to lots and lots of contradictions.
Barber’s image will continue to stare wistfully into the future at the Art Gallery of Mississauga until May 3.