In 1963, Lady Diana Kingsmill leased an island to the Quakers for pacifist education for a symbolic $1 a year, giving rise to the Grindstone Island Peace Education Centre. Over the next decade, Grindstone would become an internationally recognized hub for disarmament and non-violence education. When the Quakers could no longer sustain it in the 1970s, committed participants formed the Grindstone Island Cooperative to carry on its vision. And they did just that, creating innovative peace and community building programming including the beloved Grindstone Alternative Kids Camp which ran with enthusiasm until the Cooperative’s sudden and unexpected closure in 1991.

The Grindstone Alternative is an intimate story about the Cooperative and its impact on my family, told through a series of paintings that have been percolating since our last days in that remarkable place. More broadly, it asks what this community knew about peace, civil disobedience, and human connection that we urgently need to remember. While the project is in service to the hundreds of extraordinary individuals who shaped Grindstone, my hope is that a visual reminder of the passion and commitment that made this community so remarkably close will also affect a collective consciousness and reawaken the activist within each of us.

Through oil and watercolour paintings drawn from my personal archive and a collected archive gathered through intentional re-connection, I'm painting to honour the people who made Grindstone what it was, and invite them home. This project-in-progress explores how art and shared memory can bridge decades of estrangement, reconnecting organizers, founders, and alumni scattered across North America. The Grindstone Alternative project culminates in a reunion exhibition in 2027, an ongoing digital archive, and a living record of this visionary community.

A dedicated website is currently under development, where friends of Grindstone will be able to upload their own memorabilia for posterity. In the meantime, you can find us on Facebook at Grindstone Island Cooperative Connection Project. There is a great effort underway to reunite as many organizers and alumni as possible at the exhibition's opening night (date to be announced). If you have ever set foot on the island, and have any memories to share, we hope you'll join in.