This obituary was written by Robin Metcalfe. Robin will be writing a more personal reflection on Jim later. Photo is 2025, also by Robin. Several other tributes to him are posted below. If you would like to add one, email it to us.
1945-05-06 - 2025-09-06
James “Jim” Barry MacSwain died at home, at the time and in the manner of his choosing, on 6 September 2025, surrounded by friends and family.
A son of the late James and Marion (Price) MacSwain, Jim is survived by brothers Ivan “Ted” (Joy) and Carl (Rose) MacSwain, by Carl’s children, Daniel, Scott and Robbie, and Ted’s step-children Laura, Tanya, Darren, Jaye and Szarina, and by Jim’s partners of many years, Andrés Guibert and Andy Paterson.
Growing up in Amherst, Jim realised at an early age that his gayness and his interest in the arts did not fit the mould of what was expected for boys in small-town Nova Scotia. Through a course of studies at Mount Allison University, and influenced by the existentialism of Jean-Paul Sartre, he found his way to an accepting community, and to a proud chosen identity as an artist and a gay man.
Active in many media, Jim was particularly recognised for his stop-action animated films and visual art works employing collage techniques to explore classical and contemporary mythologies and Queer desire. His works were filled with profuse images of flowers, outer space, dragons and Marilyn Monroe. He was also a writer of poetry, fiction and plays, and appeared on stage and screen as a musician, actor, puppeteer and performance artist. He co-founded the Gargoyle Puppet Theatre, which toured extensively in the 1980s.
Together with a group of artists in theatre, music and film, Jim was an original member in the early 1970s of a long-lived cooperative house on Brunswick Street that has served for more than five decades as a social centre and point of call for artists in all media. Jim is survived there by his housemates, Linda and Sandy Moore, respectively a former Artistic Director of Neptune Theatre and a noted composer, and by filmmaker Lulu Keating.
Jim served the arts community as an administrator and volunteer, with such organisations as the Centre for Art Tapes, Atlantic Filmmakers’ Coop, and Atlantic Independent Media, and on many juries for provincial and federal arts funding agencies. He was active until the end as a member of the Manual Training Collective, maintaining a studio in downtown Halifax. His generosity, particularly as a mentor to emerging artists, including many from Queer, Trans and racialised communities, was one of the contributions recognised in 2011 when he received the Portia White Prize, Nova Scotia’s most prestigious award for artists. Memorably, in accepting the award, Jim gave an impromtu performance of singing the names of all the preceding recipients of the Prize.
Coming of age in a time when Canadian law criminalised homosexuality and offered no protection from violence and discrimination, Jim was active in the Halifax movement for gay liberation from its early days in the 1970s, participating in the earliest demonstrations for lesbian and gay rights in 1977 and helping to organise cultural activities associated with the national conference held in Halifax in 1978. That conference featured an original musical based on the police raid, the previous year, of a Montréal gay bar. Jim appeared as an actor in The Night They Raided Truxx. Through the 1980s, with fellow activist and curator, Robin Metcalfe, Jim organised a series of exhibitions in Halifax, Art by Gay Men.
In the early 1990s, while working at the Canadian Film Makers Distribution Centre in Toronto, He collaborated with artist Greg Wight on such works as The Medicine Show, dealing with the corporate exploitation of the AIDS Crisis.
In his later years, Jim produced a series of artist’s books, first with Jo Cook of Perro Verlag press, then in collaboration with artist Bob Williams, who created artworks to accompany Jim’s texts, resulting in a new book each December. The last in that series will be published at the end of 2025.
Jim was a resolute defier of conventions who chose to be an artist and to be free. He was the subject of a feature-length documentary film, Celestial Queer, directed by Eryn Foster and Sue Johnson. It premiered at the Atlantic International Film Festival in 2023 and won the award for Best Atlantic Documentary Feature. A cross-country series of screenings is planned for 2026. The Wayves article about it is here. The collective Hermes Gallery on North Street, of which Jim was a member, will present an exhibition of Jim’s recent “shadow-box” works from late November into December.
Jim suffered a series of injuries and illnesses over the past five years that hampered his mobility. As it became evident, in the past several months, that his health had deteriorated to a critical point, members of his wide network of friends pulled together to organise medical and practical support for Jim and for his principal care-giver, Andrés. Among those assisting in various ways were Jeffrey Cowling, Paula Danckert, Nicola Lipman, Robin Metcalfe, Lorca Moore and Robert Wright. Andrés and Lorca, in particular, provided exhaustive daily support to Jim’s care needs in his final days.
In accordance with Jim’s wishes, his life was celebrated by a host of his friends gathered on the day of his death by MAID, to say good-bye and wish him bon voyage. Sandy Moore delivered a moving toast, and everyone, including Jim, sipped champagne in honour of a life well lived.
Various groups and organisations with which Jim was associated will be marking and celebrating his life through events over the next few months.
Halifax Rainbow Encyclopedia
- Jim's page in the Halifax Rainbow Encyclopedia (H•R•E) is here.
- Here is a list of all the pages in the H•R•E which mention him.
From: AIFF, the Atlantic International Film Festival
On behalf of all the staff at AIFF, we want to take a moment to remember James MacSwain, a filmmaker, artist, arts administrator, and friend to so many in our community.
Jim had a unique ability to take the work of being an artist incredibly seriously, while remaining refreshingly lighthearted about the complex structures around it. He reminded us all that the arts community is defined by the people who are resilient, creative, and committed to making art no matter the challenges.
We cannot imagine what the arts community in Halifax will look like without Jim. Yet the most beautiful part of being an artist is that we will always have the work. We remain grateful to Eryn Foster and Sue Johnson for sharing Celestial Queer with the festival in 2023, which allowed us to celebrate one of the most extraordinary examples of a life devoted to art.
We send all our love to the queer community, filmmakers, and artists who have lost a friend and mentor. Thank you, Jim, for everything you gave us.
From: Centre for Art Tapes
On behalf of the Centre for Art Tapes' (CFAT) employees and members, past and present, we would like to offer our most heartfelt condolences to the family, friends and community of the kind and effervescent James MacSwain, who passed away in his home surrounded by love, song and champagne, on September 6th, 2025. Since the 70s Jim worked in film and video in Halifax and throughout Canada and was instrumental in setting up the Halifax-based film and video distribution outlet and the Atlantic Independent Media.
Jim was on the board of numerous non-profit organizations over his career; the longest serving board member of the Centre for Art Tapes, the Linda Joy Media Arts Society, Live Art Productions, the Nova Scotia Arts Council, Independent Media Arts Alliance, the Canadian Conference of the Arts, and others. His volunteerism and mentorship extends beyond what the public eye could see.
Jim was both a founding member of CFAT, and co-author of its formative by-laws that included equity and diversity as core values as it emerged as the first media production centre in the region. He will be remembered as both a pioneer and steward of the Centre's values throughout its 46-year history.
In addition to many other acts of volunteerism, he also brought his professionalism to his role as chair of the programming committee. He curated multiple screenings and projects such as Digital Divergence in 1999, Classical/Digital 2: Recent Animations in 2006, and diligently editing the anniversary publication, 25 Years of Connecting at the Centre for Art Tapes in 2004.
He was a guide to visiting artists, consummate host to the arts community, and a devoted colleague as CFAT's Director of Programming from 2003-2009. Even after his departure from that role, Jim continued supporting emerging artists through his mentorship in CFAT's scholarship program until 2018. He was a constant force and joy to many artists looking for an introduction into the world of media arts and also influential to those who were looking for commiseration on the challenges of the arts in Canada.
His welcoming cheer, curatorial eye, his queer and candid generosity was felt intergenerationally by artists coming through CFAT doors over the years. He filled all those at the Centre for Art Tapes with determination to pursue stewardship and advocacy for media arts in Canada.
Jim's mind elaborated into tentacles of animations, collages, experimentations and queering of institutional processes. The Centre for Art Tapes community will remember him as a friend, a joyous work colleague, ardent advocate and above all a thoughtful, effortlessly humorous and political artist.
For the 2010 CFAT retrospective of his animation work, curator and Jim's lifelong friend Robin Metcalfe wrote, "Like a thief in the palace of the patriarchs, MacSwain has grabbed whatever he needed to make his art and run."
James MacSwain's legacy will remain forever with us at the Centre for Art Tapes and all who have crossed or will follow his stardust path.
Written with the support from CFAT friends, directors, and past/present employees: Mireille Bourgeois, Becka Barker, Ilan Sandler, Sue Johnson, Catherine Phoenix, Ann Verrall, Tori Flemming and Jesse Mitchell.
Photos: Jim at a CFAT holiday party with former executive director Tori Martin Fleming; Jim in his studio with his collage theatre boxes.
