Rosedale Golf and Country Club - It’s Hard for Us to Realize, 1972

Acquired directly from the Artist, 1967 Private Collection, Toronto Private Collection, Toronto Heffel Fine Art, auction, 9 November 2000, Vancouver, lot 322 Private Collection, Winnipeg

“Abbotsford Collects: Selected Works from Local Collectors”, The Reach Gallery Museum, Abbotsford, 24 June-3 October 2010

William Kurelek, "O Toronto: Paintings and Notes by William Kurelek", Toronto, 1973, introduction by James Bacque (unpaginated), page 24

"O Toronto: Paintings and Notes by William Kurelek", was published after the exhibition "William Kurelek: The Toronto Series/Toronto: A Series of 20 Paintings and One Drawing" held at The Isaacs Gallery in October of 1972. As noted in the book’s introduction by James Bacque, Kurelek had embraced his new home with the full force of his personality, drive, and unique artistic vision. “William Kurelek” he states, “paints in Toronto as if the city were his.” "Rosedale Golf and Country Club – It’s Hard to for Us to Realize", is a variation on the work of the same title included in the publication, "O Toronto". This brilliant documentation of Rosedale Golf and Country Club, located at the north end of Mount Pleasant Road, is symbolic of Kurelek’s world view. Having just returned to Canada via England, with Christianity now deeply rooted in his convictions and steadfastly concerned that mankind faced imminent collapse, Kurelek looked at the city differently and saw the need for reform. In the richly detailed, symbolic and fascinating painting, "It’s Hard for Us to Realize", Kurelek observed the city and sought “to drive the fat cats from their golf carts on the eighteenth green at the Rosedale Golf Club.” The message in this work, as Bacque shares, “is about [Kurelek’s] conception of life and this particular city, not about painting, technique, the quality of light, or even the artist’s function in society.” Kurelek recounts in "O Toronto": “I attended a wedding reception there a few years ago. Two years after that experience of sumptuousness and high fashion, I was walking the streets of Bombay in the company of a Capuchin monk. I try to get the feeling across that I had then of the contrast between the two ways of life by superimposing one scene on the other. In the foreground I’ve located my own house from Balsam Avenue, modest in comparison with some on the wealthier areas of town, but I placed right behind it the lean-to and culvert homes of India’s destitute. That’s the habitation contrast.”