Fifty-two years later, the mystery of a missing painting persists in the NWT.

In the late 1960s Andrew Jackson Steen, now almost 80 years old, produced a large painting of the then Government of the Northwest Territories.

He says he lent the 1.20m by 1.80m canvas to the territorial government for an event at Yellowknife City Hall in 1970, posed with it in front of the crowd, and never saw it again.

The event was part of the Northwest Territories Centennial celebrations, held to mark the 100^and anniversary of the surrender by the Hudson’s Bay Company of a large swathe of Canada, including much of the north and center, to the Dominion of Canada.

This event took place three years after Canada’s centennial, which saw celebrations across the country.

Decades later, Mr. Steen still has no news of his painting.

I was proud of it, that’s all. I had made my personal contribution to the centenary. (…) It’s really strange that nobody knows what happened to him.

Andrew Jackson Steen worries that someone left with his canvas under his arm, not realizing its value to the territory.

Procedures left unanswered

The man explains that he has taken steps over the years to locate his work. He wrote letters to the territorial government and posted appeals on Facebook, but to no avail. More recently, his daughter, Doris Butt, spoke to the media.

As her father grows older, Ms Butt says his will to find the lost item is even stronger.

He would like the mystery to be solved before he leaves.

The only record Mr. Steen has of the painting, which took nearly a year to complete, is a slide made before it was completed.

On a collage base of blue-dyed newspaper clippings, the faces of the then 13 members of the Northwest Territories council appear in glowing circles. In a fourteenth circle appears the face of former commissioner Stuart Hodgson.

Mr. Steen thinks that his Catholic upbringing, which he received at the Aklavik Indian residential school, may partly explain these halos that surround NWT politicians.

Would the painting have traveled?

Centennial celebrations lasted an entire year in the Northwest Territories, which at the time included Nunavut.

The commissioner’s son, Eugene Hodgson was a high school student at the time. He doesn’t recall seeing the painting painted by Andrew Jackson Steen, but suggests it may have ended up with a territorial councilor or the national archives.

It is not at the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre, according to its director, Sarah Carr-Locke.

As for the questions sent to Library and Archives Canada, they have remained unanswered to date. A spokesperson for the National Gallery of Canada says the establishment has no work by Mr. Steen in its permanent collection.

According to a spokesperson, members of the territory’s Legislative Assembly are also wondering where the painting is.

We all agree that it wouldn’t be surprising if it were somewhere in Ottawa or in a private collection.

In the late 1980s, Andrew Jackson Steen was offered $1,000 by Tony Whitford, then the commissioner’s assistant, as compensation for the loss of the painting. He had refused the money, claiming that his painting was worth more than the sum offered.

Today, Mr. Steen, who lives on Denman Island, British Columbia, says he no longer necessarily hopes to recover his canvas. However, he would like to have a photo and be paid.

I’m thinking around $40,000, because it’s not just a painting anymore, but a historical document.

He would like to use the money to create a scholarship for up-and-coming artists who want to enroll in art school.

With information from Sydney Cohen