Passage

I am Marlene Hilton Moore and I'm the artist who created the sculpture "Passage" at the foot of the Doris McCarthy Trail. Passage as a sculpture marks not only Scarborough Bluffs as a geographical location, but also the person of Doris McCarthy. Doris McCarthy is a painter. She is now nearly 100 years old in the year 2009. She has painted the Canadian landscape, the Arctic, the badlands, Newfoundland. She's traveled from one end of the country to the other and she's given us a vision of our land that's exceptional. She still lives in her home that she built on top of the exact bluff beside this sculpture.

The sculpture itself is based upon the rib cage of a fish. The spine of that rib cage, which is really the base of the work, is styled in the exact form of an architectural scale ruler. So there are dates placed on the spine. Down one side are significant dates in the geological existence of the Scarborough Bluffs and the other side of the spine has the dates that are marking the most important points of the life of Doris McCarthy.

It's fabricated from Corten Steel. Corten Steel rusts naturally. When I asked Doris McCarthy what material she would like to represent her in this sculpture, she said, "A tough material, I'm a tough woman and a natural material because I am a natural woman". And so Corten Steel is a wonderful material from that perspective. It is steel, it's tough, it rusts to a point of stability and then it stays. So it becomes an incredible colour in the landscape.

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