Bodies of Art, Bodies of Labour

by Kate Beaton

Bodies of Art, Bodies of Labour by Kate Beaton, award-winning author of Two Years in the Oil Sands and Hark! A Vagrant, explores connections between class, literature, and art from Cape Breton Island. In this thought-provoking book, Beaton addresses the often overlooked impact of class on the Canadian arts scene. The book highlights the reality that people from poor or working-class backgrounds face significant barriers to becoming artists, limiting their ability to share their stories and contribute to the collective culture. This lack of representation in art, music, and literature can empower or stereotype, edify or diminish, or worse, erase entire communities. Beaton emphasizes that if working-class and poor people do not write themselves into stories, others will, often with damaging results. Drawing on examples from work published about Cape Breton, Beaton sheds light on the portrayal of working-class lives. She juxtaposes this with her personal experiences, her family's stories, and the inspiring work of other Cape Bretoners. Despite economic hardships, her community has long valued and created art for no money, for each other, for themselves, for memory, for joy. Bodies of Art, Bodies of Labour thoughtfully examines personal and working class legacies, celebrating the authenticity and power of truly seeing ourselves and each other in the art that we create.


Introduction by Julie Rak.

Genres: Nonfiction, Essays

68 pages, Paperback

Published February 4, 2025

About the author

Kate Beaton was born in Nova Scotia, took a history degree in New Brunswick, paid it off in Alberta, worked in a museum in British Columbia, then came to Ontario for a while to draw pictures, then Halifax, and then New York, and then back to Toronto.

Reviews

[Adam McPhee · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have a review of this up at The Temz Review. In short, this one's useful and enjoyable. It's a call for more working-class art, and a survey of Cape Breton's literary output.

[Jim Puskas · Rating 2 out of 5]

I chose to read this almost as an apology for having given up on Beaton’s Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands when it was a finalist on Canada Reads; I could see that she had weighty matters to share in that work but I abandoned it because I simply cannot abide the graphic novel format; the continuous stream of illustrations gets in the way of my ability to absorb the message and flavor of what the text is trying to convey; the two media often seem to contradict each other. I wanted to give Beaton another chance.
I’ve shelved this as essays because it reads as if it had grown out of two essays made into a lecture. Beaton starts off with a commentary on socio-economic class distinctions and the barriers facing anyone coming from a low income background and aspiring to a life in the arts; it then morphs into a far more interesting talk about her Cape Breton heritage and the manner in which her birth community, its people and its Gael-inspired culture has been regarded and portrayed by outsiders (especially tourists).
The first of the above topics has been discussed and analyzed in so many ways by so many writers that it would be astonishing if Beaton had anything startlingly new to add. (She doesn’t.) Her second topic however proved much more worthwhile: she brings a very personal perspective to the discussion, with family stories as well as revelations about the impact that popular entertainers and other notable Canadian writers have had upon Cape Breton Island in recent years.
Extra marks for an impressive bibliography. Too bad the copy editor missed several errors.

[Sarah Lasko · Rating 4 out of 5]

Digital book

Quick read. Felt like a master’s thesis with jokes/personal asides sprinkled in. It inspired me to put many books by East Coast authors on my reading list. I will seek out more lectures from the CLC Kreisel Lecture Series.

[ツツ]

I just realised that i rarely read classism more than just mentioned in passing, even in books about social justices. Maybe because such subject matter could resemble communism so the anglophoneshpere tend to avoid it? This transcripted speech of a short book is reflective and recursive, just the kind of nuisanced thoughts condensed from lived experiences that i like to read. This is the first time i got sold on hometown/heritage affinity, ofc, the word “pride” (or proud) was never used. It somewhat rekindled my interest in the author’s earlier graphic memoir, which i initially wasnt going to read bc all the panels are uniformed rectangles.

[Ash · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked the focus on how class affects the difficulty of entry into art opportunities in Canada; how it’s usually the wealthier classes that have the ability and opportunity to pursue art without having to work laborious jobs to support yourself. And because the wealthier are often the ones making art, they are the ones communicating culture, and often that means poorer communities are represented in art inaccurately or to very limited extents. It paints a picture of how important it is make financial and social and political efforts to increase access and opportunity for all classes to pursue art; that humans are not just bodies to be used for labour but bodies and minds to be used for creation and expression.

I travelled to a lot of the areas Beaton mentions as having working class pasts and present in Cape Breton in 2022. I did a tour of the Glace Bay mines and heard the stories of harsh and dangerous working conditions but also the stories of how the miners still found ways to practice art in ways they could, even if it was inventing and playing games on the mien cart trip down into and back from the mines. Bodies of art, Bodies of labour.

I was a tourist that was travelling to Nova Scotia to find information and stories of my ancestors, like the ones she mentions seeing when she worked at a museum there in the summer, although my family was in the Annapolis Valley, not Cape Breton, and my family were planters from New England that made money in the ship building business, not direct Scottish immigrants that came straight from Scotland. But from what I gather, our ancestors would have started their lives there at roughly the same time, in the late 1700s. So I enjoyed hearing what knowledge she could share of her own research into Nova Scotian history.

[Nathan Patel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Please Kate Beaton, please write more. I don't understand how but you've made a graphic novel and an essay two of my favourite books of this year.
I fully don't understand how it seems anything "serious" Kate Beaton produces seems to resonate with me so much - but this 50 page essay somehow unpacks a whole heap of complex topics. Beaton seems to be able to explore and touch on class, capitalism, art, history, family, culture, and more in this tiny book without any of the points feeling shallow: perhaps it's only with the backing of having read Ducks recently that I find the depth of these topics, but the nuance with which she steps through them and brings forth her own experiences that makes the essay interesting and powerful.
Wrestling with ideas like how capitalism can both bring incredible opportunties and ability to share ideas and culture, but also how it can reduce culture and history to what is possible to sell to tourists; how working class culture can be both poor monetarily yet rich in so many other ways, and how it's so easy to deride or just ignore that culture; how dying industries and lack of jobs in home towns can leave young adults without a place anywhere.
I still implore you to read Ducks, if you haven't, and then read this.

[August Bourré · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful. Beaton’s work really speaks to me and to the experiences I’ve had as a working class kid from a working class place, with almost zero cultural representation outside the region itself, trying to make art. I never fully fit up north, but somehow I’m more northern here in Toronto than I ever was back home. There’s always that tension: in order to be the person you are, you have to leave the place that made you.

[Suzy Kopf · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this very short treatise but I did not get every specific Canadian reference and the footnotes provided are merely citations not explanations so that felt somewhat limiting.

"I moved home eventually because I know myself here. I feel like a version of myself that I like the most. Other people also know me and they may know generations before me also. And when I tell a story, I am pulling from the strength of something deep inside."

[Beth West · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read after you've read "Ducks". A haunting and moving talk highlighting and challenging who is represented in the arts, and how and by whom. It managed to cover issues of gender, race, class, colonialism, and more, without feeling preachy or too heavy. Kate Beaton is a master at treating such issues with acknowledgement and respect, whilst knowing where to draw the line at her own experiences. If you like any of her other work, I highly recommend picking up a copy of this little book.

[Avvai · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was Kate Beaton's lecture on class and Canadian arts. Super short, can read it in an afternoon. There was some interesting things to think about in here and working in publishing myself made me reflect on who tells the stories of working class people, how are different classes portrayed in literature and arts, and who gets to tell these stories.

[kitkatsnicksnack · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very insightful- I don't know much about Canadian history or culture, so I feel like this long form essay gave me some good places to start from. I also loved how Beaton interjected her big-picture or statistic-heavy segments with stories of individual people, which is my favorite way to learn history.

[Richard Lehingrat · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really liked the Gaelic poem by her great grandfather. ***

[Jay Semeniuk · Rating 4 out of 5]

a great look into the conversation of art and labour. very different from her other works but still lovely and thought provoking!