The art of a neighbourhood walk
Emma FitzGerald in Lunenburg, photo by Kim Campbell Sullivan
To create the sketches and vignettes in her 2015 award-winning book Hand Drawn Halifax: Portraits of the city’s buildings, landmarks, neighbourhoods and residents, Emma FitzGerald went walking.
The author and illustrator had lived in Halifax’s North End for about half a decade when she began documenting scenes she encountered on walks around her neighbourhood. With pen and paper, she captured the iconic and the everyday.
As the project expanded, so did the ground she covered. She continued exploring on foot, sometimes using buses or cabs to reach far-flung parts of the city. (She did not own a car at the time.) Her journeys stretched from St. Margaret’s Bay to Seaforth, from Cherrybrook to Schmidtville, from Lake Banook to Peggy’s Cove.
The cover of Hand Drawn Halifax
Walking outside to observe and record her surroundings has long been part of Emma’s artistic practice. She recalls how, at 16, she moved with her family from Vancouver to Ireland, where she would endure one-hour bus commutes from her village of Enniskerry into Dublin to explore and draw the unfamiliar city.
“I think there’s something really special about being a little bit lost,” she says.
Emma’s lively sketches often reflect the conditions under which they were created.
“If it’s cold out, you’re going to draw even faster. That contributes to the energy of the drawing – it’s something to harness and work with. Sometimes it’s physical raindrops on the pen that cause marks or lines. You can see that tension or struggle. That makes it a more interesting drawing.”
Emma sketching while travelling in 2024
Much has changed since Hand Drawn Halifax came out. The city has grown. Landmarks have changed or disappeared. Emma’s left her North End community for Lunenburg, and she has a car now.
Emma leading a reading walk on the Glen Allen Story Book Trail, an initiative facilitated by the Town of Bridgewater. Here she reads from Two Crows, written by Susan Vande Griek and illustrated by Emma.
“To be honest, sometimes I’m quite nostalgic for all the walking I did in the city,” she admits. “What I’ll do now when I do go back to the city is I’ll park my car back in my old neighbourhood and pretend I still live there. I’ll walk all the way downtown and then back up the hill.”
Since Hand Drawn Halifax, Emma has published several similar collections focusing on Vancouver, Victoria and Nova Scotia’s South Shore.
Her sketching in these books reflects more than what she sees along the way. They’re also informed by what she hears.
“It’s a slow, deep listening,” she says. “You become a beacon for people to come and talk to.”
She recalls one such interaction on her walks to research and sketch Halifax.
“When I went to Hammonds Plains, I took a cab out there and then decided I’d walk to Bedford to catch the bus. It was Remembrance Day, so it was chilly. I could hear someone playing saxophone and I followed the sound.”
She wandered into a backyard, where she met a man playing “Amazing Grace” to mark the solemn day. She drew him while he shared his own observations about his neighbourhood.
“People open up to you because you put yourself in a vulnerable place,” she says. “That’s a big part of the books’ charms.”
The illustration of Emma’s anecdote about hearing the saxophone while walking in Hammonds Plains