Macmillan Jane

COLLECTORS OF OUR AREA
By Marie Morrell
Published in the Seaway News

Meet Jane Macmillan

Jane Blanch Macmillan is one of the most amazing women I have encountered over the years. If someone wrote her biography, it would absolutely be a best seller over night. Jane is better known as the owner the Cornwall School of Dance where she has been teaching for the past 14 years. She is a women of many talents; Jane is a choreographer, a costume designer, a painter who uses water colour/ink or acrylic/ink, as well as being an inspiration to so many. When I entered her home, I was totally astonished by the beauty of the décor.

Jane was born in England; her father, the oldest of six children was the son of a missionary in Madagascar. As a teen, she enjoyed going to Maude Turk’s antique shop, a tall skinny building of four floors, showcasing antiques and trinkets not seen anywhere else. Jane frequently shopped there with her pocket money. One of her favourite finds was a Victorian wooden box containing perfume bottles; other collectibles were clay pipes and parasols.

When it comes to collecting, rather than searching for one particular collectible, Jane finds objects with which she has a connection and that speak to her - items which will evoke a memory, an emotion. Jane also loves children books and things from nature
such as pottery and rocks.

In 1969, she emigrated to Canada, British Columbia, with only two suitcases. Then in 1980, she and her husband Neil pioneered for the Bahá'i Faith to Bangui, the capital city of the Central African Republic. Consequently, they had a house sale and travelled again with their four children with only one suitcase each. After nearly sixteen years in Central Africa, a civil war erupted. Jane and Neil had to flee their house with a 30-minute warning and were evacuated the next day. They gathered an armful of clothes, important papers, family pictures, and one small painting she could not leave behind because her sister had just sent it to her from England. Once again, they were on their way back to Canada, passing through a Gabon staging camp, set up by the French military, and then to Paris, France. Back in Canada, Jane and Neil started all over again with one suitcase each.

The Macmillan's are very hard working people and because of their faith and courage managed to survive and rebuild their life over again. After a few years, Jane ended up visiting some other countries. While in Bermuda, a Bahá'i friend gave her some African baskets to remind her of Africa. In Dominica, she also purchased some other baskets from another Bahá'i friend, Saturina, a Carib Indian basket-maker. The Caribs Indians were fierce warriors who resisted slavery to the death. In Dominica, there is a community of 3,500 living on the last Carib Reserve and an other 2,000 residing elsewhere on the island.

Jane has also travelled to Cape Dorset, Iqualuit, Arviat, Baker Lake and Rankin Inlet in Nunavut. In Rankin, she purchased a very unique piece of pottery depicting an Inuk rising out of a bowl (in the picture*). In Cape Dorset, a few days before her birthday, Neil asked what she would like. At the Art Co-op, Jane spotted a carving of a seagull* made by Napachie Sharkey, a man she had met the year before and who was working on the piece when she visited him this time; so Neil bought it for her. From her trip up north, Jane created many paintings she put into booklets, to which she added prayers and quotes to give as gifts to her new found Inuit friends.

When her uncle past away, to her surprise, he left her some money and with her sister, she visited Russia and had the opportunity to take a teacher’s training course at the Vaganova Academy in St. Petersburg, Russia.

Going back to her dancing career, it was only at age 15 that Jane decided to attend dance school where she trained as a classical ballet and character dancer, from 1961 to 1964, at the Legat School of Russian Ballet in England.

Thank you, Jane, for sharing your passion for collecting, and your life, with us.