Artist’s Statement: 

This is my mother Betty (in the red top) and my Auntie Pat. It is around 1956. They are two young women enjoying the brilliant Canadian summer. Everything lay bright and sparkling before them.

The ever present cigarette package floats in the foreground.

Decades later the sisters will die from lung cancer.

But on this day, Betty and Pat are healthy and blissfully unaware of what cruelty that small turquoise pack of cigarettes has in store for them.