Ten-Ants 2026
Wed, Mar 11, 2026 2:35PM • 21:28
This is an overall account of the Ants on the Cameron, there history and what the Cameron accomplished and continues to thrive here now in 2026.
What I am proposing to raise funds for the Ants
My last few months at the Cameron I had returned from India and I wanted to go back. No longer in FW. Through a longtime friend Richard Gorman, I was introduced to Don Lake, and I was given an opportunity for a 1991 show, called “Eye Drawn”. The idea came to sell the remaining drawings at original out of the gallery price to raise money to refurbish the ants.The remaining 42 watercolor collages, made of scraps of paper, memorabilia, photographs, ticket stubs, summary of forty years of memories . They are lovely works on paper. The paper which I bought from Courage My Love in Kensington Market. Stewart one of the owners, told me the paper I was buying had come from India. It was recycled Globe and Mail newspapers pressed with flowers. I thought it was fitting, I was bringing discarded newspapers back to Toronto and turning it into memorable artworks.
On the full moon Sunday August 25th, I was in my studio on the top floor of the Cameron working at my desk, painting and collaging and a cat wandered in, a gray mauve cat, you know kind of very attentive and lovely looking. So she sat on the desk and watched me draw and paint, and it stayed with me. From then on,Chandra stayed. She stayed while I did all the 242 pieces. After the show, took all the drawings down put them into a shoebox, and I went around Toronto Queen West with a box of drawings under my arms, and I sold them one by one. Sixty Eight of those drawings were bought by Mary Canary, who lived on the top floor of the Cameron, those drawings are in the Agnes Etherington Collections at Queens University.
At the Cameron House on Saturday afternoons between 4 and 6 I am selling off the final 42 drawings.
This is about the Ten Ants on the Cameron a history of Renewal
In 1983 I was asked to create a new front for the Cameron House which led to the installed the ants.
The original ants just came out of a discussion with Patty Roberge about surrealism and something that I could put on the outside of the building that would be an indicator that there was something going on I that building. A hub of creative activity going on and on. I told her about the Surrealist imagery of ants emerging from the hand in the film Chien Andalou, a scene where a man and a woman are captivated by ants emerging from broken open hand. I told her about Bruegel The Elder and the ants in his paintings, and I told her about Ant Farm in Texas. So emerged the white ants that became the creature that would adorn the Cameron, the first generation of ants where made of remnants found in the Cameron, pieces of forgotten wood in the basement, old discarded Now magazines that stuffed the bodies of the ants, some gaffing tape that I got next door on sale from Jacob’s Hardware and coat hangers, which I went around from room to room collecting the coat hangers which served as ant legs.
I installed them in 1984 with the help of Paul Sannella. We had to use a thirty foot ladder to put them up. With power lines it was an insane thing to attempt, but we wanted them way up high were people could see them from the corner of Spadina and Queen. I had made ten ants and one night while working with Paul we came up with the realization that there were ten ants on the building, a pun that has endured and kept us laughing as we worked. The entrance was a cave entrance with antelope horns pressed in the concrete. One night at around 4 AM Paul and I where mixing concrete for the cave entrance. A Ethiopian man stopped and checked out the antelope horns I was using for imprints and he gave us a lesson in mixing concrete by helping us get it right. The public reaction to the ant sculptures during Pope John Paul II’s 1984 visit was indirect but effective. The Cameron House, painted in papal colors (purple and gold) and adorned with the “ten ants” as a pun on “tenants,” aimed to grab attention during the Pope’s motorcade route. While the Archdiocese denied a requested papal blessing, the denial letter circulated to media, sparking coverage that highlighted the Cameron’s artistic resistance and housing dispute. This media attention ultimately led the city to allow the tenants to stay, cementing the ants as a symbol of creative defiance. Though the Pope did not acknowledge the gesture, the stunt succeeded in drawing public and press focus to the venue’s cultural significance. Later while in Rome we FW’s bought a Papal blessing document on parchment which you can buy at the Vatican for a nominal sum. It was a blessing for the Cameron House which hung behind the bar for many years.
In 1987 when I refurbished them for the first time, I repainted them orange instead of white I also urged Paul Sannella to repaint the interior of the front bar orange instead of blue to make it less desirable to a heroin problem that was plaguing Queen West, the color change did help. At some point in 87 and also replaced some of the ants, from the show curated by AA Bronson at the Power Plant Gallery called Sea to Shinning Sea. In March of 1987, I created the ants with the help of Reid Diamond at the galleries workshop. After that show in 1987 I replaced some of the ants on the Cameron and installed two in the front bar where one still remains. In 1994 I repelled on the Cameron to remove all the ants to my studio and repair and re-install them. People where yelling at me, extremely agitated that I was removing them and had to keep explaining they where being rehabilitated,
By 2009 I was getting emails and phone calls that something should be done with the ants, time to save them. So for Nuit Blanche 2009 with help of Kensington Arts a TV production company I was invited to set up a MASH unit set up by Sean Wakfer and Kara Delfosse and myself repairing ants and with Jamie Osborne repelling removing ants and our expert crew we worked changing legs, rewrapping them in shrink wrap plastic typically used to wrap boats for winter and to help them withstand the weather. It is 17 years later and the hour is here to once again go to the wall to re-invigorate the enduring legacy of the Cameron House. You can be a part of this by coming to the Cameron on Saturdays in March to buy a drawing that will support the new generation of ants to be replace during Nuit Blanche this year.
Napo B "Live" 