When walking, we are in the company of ghosts. At the very least, we move within the dynamics of our earlier selves, embodying memories and learnings, conscious and unconscious. All the walking we have done in earlier phases of our lives, from hesitant toddling to adolescent wandering, and perhaps eventually to limping and rolling, are carried with us. And, of course, we all have forebears, ancestors, and other companions (human and more-than-human), who may have travelled the same paths and pavements in the past and who may be encountered anew.
My new project Corona Walker started with the headstone for a young woman named Corona Isabel Walker, who was buried in a local cemetery in my Dartmouth Nova Scotia neighbourhood in January 1889. She was born in March 1870. I first noticed her headstone years ago, when I moved to the area; the tragedy of her early demise caught my attention as did her name. When, a few years later, I began making artworks in the form of walks, her name became even more resonant. Her headstone was broken at that time, with the top part lying flat on the grassy lawn, but the image of an upright, striding young woman wearing a crown never failed to come to mind as I passed by. The headstone became a point of interest in a Jane’s Walk[i] I led in 2014, called Walkers’ Walk, and in 2015 it was one of three prompts I provided for my submission Walker in the book Ways to Wander, edited by Clare Qualmann and Claire Hind.[ii]
At some point in the past 5 years, the headstone was repaired, the two halves mortared together. Corona Walker was vertical once more, just in time for the COVID-19 pandemic. Coincidentally, Corona died just 10 months before the pandemic of 1889-90 (the “Russian Flu”) arrived in Nova Scotia. The actual cause of her death is unknown to me.
The absence and invisibility of Corona Walker (and so many women of that era) is at the centre of my project, which I would loosely categorize as a speculative biography. I have been doing some archival and other research into this figure, her family, and the conditions and contexts for life in the Dartmouth area at that time, but there are few specific details about her to be found. Church records have been destroyed in fires, school records failed to be saved for posterity, municipal ledgers with vital statistics are missing for key years. This leaves many options for ambiguities, conjecturing and imagining as I wander on foot through local neighbourhoods. My ambulations have been accompanied by writing that weaves together historical material, observations about weather and terrain, and complete fabrications including: an insouciant talking raccoon; a thoughtful walking stick with a deep memory; and the protagonist named Corona/Cora/Crona/Crony/Cory who walks a lot, episodically almost dies and instantly springs back into action in various eras, genders and fantastic costumes.
Invitations to the public walks have been narrowcast using my personal social media pages, with 10 to 12 participants taking part in each Corona Walker event to date. This small group scale is in keeping with public health restrictions on gatherings, and to encourage informal and convivial exchanges. Each walk has a few details that are prepared in advance; I construct a makeshift crown to wear while walking, food and libations are packed for the excursion, a walking stick is selected, and a short reading is copied out.
The trek back has started. We are just walking, to get to our village. No bus, no truck, no bicycle, just my feet. In my bindle I have papers that confirm my name and the place I come from. I have a thin blanket and the little vase my grandmother gave me. It has two birds perched on a tree branch. The tree trunk is hollow, the coloured glazes crackled and stained.
Corona, I see that they have repaired your headstone. When I first met you, it was in pieces on the ground. A puzzle, now assembled. But my attention is crazed, disassembled, in pieces scattered across today’s predicament.
(reading from the first event, Corona Walker: Very Cold, January 24, 2021, graveside)
The stump of a hollow tree, perhaps where the raccoon lives? And a crown made from chocolate wrappers. From “Corona Walker: Crowning”, March 2021 
My hope is that over the next months the Corona Walker project will result in a long piece of writing about walking and art in critical times, and that the group walking experiences will keep me and my companions creatively engaged and in motion through the duration of the pandemic.
[i] Jane’s Walks are community-based, volunteer-led public walks that take place in cities around the world every year in early May. They honour the ideas and legacy of urbanist, writer and political activist Jane Jacobs (1916-2006). See https://janeswalk.org for more information.
[ii] Ways to Wander, eds. Qualmann and Hind, Triarchy Press, 2015. https://www.triarchypress.net/waystowander.html
Barbara Lounder is an artist living in Nova Scotia. To visit Corona Walker on social media, go to
https://www.instagram.com/coronaiwalker/
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