Michele Show by the Exhibitionist at Art Windsor Essex, Windsor, Ontario, Canada

Michele front left of Michele Odalisque by Judy Chappus, Artist

 

Michele Show by the Exhibitionist at Art Windsor Essex (AWE)

Windsor, Ontario, Canada (April 16 to Oct 25, 2026)

Michele Birch-Conery was born Margorie Ann Conery on Aug 3, 1939 in Vancouver, BC on the feast day of St. Lydia who made her living dyeing, spinning and selling rare, expensive purple cloth. 

A visionary, mystic and social activist for women's equality in the Roman Catholic Church, Michele's life embodied threads of the sacred and profane. Her life spun around charisms of writing, storytelling, advocacy for women, prayer, service and teaching - a nurse, nun, university Women's Studies and English literature professor, musician, poet and, in her final years, an ordained bishop. 

Michele was conceived in rape by Rose who was 13 years old. She went into foster care and later was adopted at age six. Her adopted parents taught her to play the violin and piano; however, they isolated her from peers and after school activities. The father sexually abused Michele until she was 12 years old when she reported the abuse to authorities. She was sent to boarding school under the care of women religious who were her teachers, protectors and mentors. There she flourished in academics, music and stirred up trouble and fun with her peers.  In her early adult years, Michele became a nun with the religious order Holy Names of Jesus and Mary.  

Until she died at 81 years of age and especially throughout her childhood, Michele was plagued with cyclic vomiting syndrome, an incapacitating aliment known as an abdominal migraine. She was constantly under the duress of financial stress, medical marginalization and mental health challenges, used alcohol to assuage the pain. Nonetheless, Michele's passion for life and resilience led her to embrace countless, spirit-filled adventures. 

In her early forties, Michele reunited with her birth mother and lived with Rose and Rose's husband for several years. She never married or had children. 

In 2004, decades after she left religious life, Michele was ordained as the first Canadian Roman Catholic priest, an elicit ordination made legal by the presence of one ordaining bishop in good standing with Rome. She moved to Windsor in 2014 and established the Heart of Compassion International Faith Community, along with several progressive Roman Catholic local women. 

Michele was consecrated a bishop with the international Association of Roman Catholic Women Priests (ARWCP) in 2015. Her devotion to this sacred calling was total. There were multiple, complex challenges and opportunities that animated her well-honed life experience and gifts, and drew upon her life of prayer and contemplation. 

As a dual citizen, Michele was keenly political and a consummate diplomat. She cared deeply about the pastoral and personal development of women candidates in preparation for ordination, often hosting them for weekends in her upper apartment and talking with them deep into the early hours. Her love of liturgy and her creative use of language merged in worship celebrations that were inclusive, feminist, ecological and evolutionary. Michele also had a wild imagination and a robust sense of humour. 

In 2019, and a year before she died, Michele modeled with the Exhibitionist. After several, severe bouts of cyclic vomiting syndrome and at 94 pounds, she gave her naked, withered flesh and bones to be rendered in images: one final act of justice to counter misogyny and patriarchy. Michele laid down the purple cloth of her ailing and aging body for women elders who are often deemed irrelevant and whose bodies are seen as disgusting. 

Moved by her courage and life story, the Exhibitionists have captured Michele's power and beauty through their art-making and a recording of Michele reading two of her arresting poems, Exile and Reunion. The Michele Show is at Art Windsor Essex from April 16 to Oct 25, 2026 on the 3rd floor.

Free access to Michele's memoir, Birdwoman: Memoir of a Migrant Mystic is available at People's Catholic Seminary, 

https://pcseminary.teachable.com/p/pcs-712-birdwoman-memoir-of-a-migrant-mystic

Written by Barbara Billey, close companion

What If? by Ezzenntahh

 

 Breakfast Club Photography by Ezzenntahh

What if?

What if it is this side of the pane

 that is closer to making sense?

What if it is actually even

 nuttier on the other side?

Ezzenntahh 7.4.26

Embarrassment by Wendy Piercy

 

Embarrassment! 

I’m rushing out the front door late for a fashion show dressed in my finest suit, nylons and heels. I suddenly think “Wait! Did I put the keys in my purse?” knowing in my heart I probably didn’t. Frantically, I check my purse which contains every conceivable item one would need in an emergency - bandaids, scissors, EpiPen (fish allergy), aspirin, lipstick (!) - except house keys!

I review my options - I have to get into the house to retrieve the keys but the only possibility I can think of is to climb the Monterey Cypress tree adjacent to the house and jump onto the bedroom balcony where I can gain access through the balcony door. Simple. I reckon I’m fit enough to do this. I just have to remove my precious clothing including nylons leaving me in my bra and panties - not a pretty sight but I am not worried about that as our house is very private.

 Accessing the tree is easy from the rocks which surround it and I feel quite confident initially as I scale the first and second branches of the tree and my goal seems very achievable. I am pumped with adrenaline. I can do this! That is until I reach the level of the balcony and I realize that I will have to hop over a 3-foot gap! I am suddenly very aware of how high I am and recognize that, if I missed the jump, I would fall at least 40 feet to the rocks below. I am no longer feeling confident; panic is replacing bravado and my adrenalin high has been replaced by fear. I am afraid to jump and I’m afraid to retrace my steps for fear of falling.

Suddenly I hear someone working in the property next door and hope replaces fear. It is a young man doing some painting for my neighbour. I yell “Help!” a few times and am rewarded with “Where are you?” I try to explain my dilemma and entreat him to not laugh and definitely not look!

Thankfully he does neither as he helps me climb down the tree and then climbs back up with enthusiastic ease, hops over the balcony and into the house like a professional burglar. Moments later he opens the front for me and blushingly shrugs off my enthusiastic thanks.

A week later I am attending a financial planning meeting downtown when I spot this same young man in the room. He makes his way through the crowd to me and says, “Hi - I didn’t recognize you with your clothes on!”  

Embarrassing?!!

Wendy Piercy

After-Life: Scaling a Curve by Barbara Billey

After-Life: Scaling a Curve

Let me tell you what I really want. 

I want the people whom I love that have died to come back. 

Today is Holy Thursday in the Christian tradition where Jesus washes the feet of his disciples before he's scourged and hung on a cross on Good Friday. (I'm not convinced this is a good day for Jesus.) On Easter morning, Jesus is walking in the garden and appears to Mary Magdalene. He's risen from the dead!

I know we're supposed to believe in an after-life. Christian "believers" are usually confident they have their ticket to heaven, and will be re-joined with relatives and friends. Some people believe we will be absorbed into another level (higher?) of consciousness, enlightened souls who have shed the coil of their mortal bodies. What about those who believe we are one with nature, dying and rising again with the cycles of life?  Others believe our beloveds are with us as spirits or stars, ancestors to whom we can turn for guidance. 

I want my ancestors who have died, especially Mom and Dad, to come back. I want them to call me on the phone, to visit for tea or a meal, to laugh with me again, to gossip, to kiss and hug me, even to get angry with me. 

I want to make up for all the words or actions that I regret. I want to share with them how the vagaries of life have humbled me: "I get you were traumatized, too." I want to be with them as the person who knows what I now know. To tell them how much I love them and how beautiful they are - everyday. 

I want their life to go on beside mine, rather than visitations of them in memories or dreams, both difficult and lovely.  A good friend shared that he once did a meditation to connect with his parents. They told him, "We're doing fine. Now, leave us alone." 

Dad appeared to me in a dream two days before the second anniversary of his death on Good Friday, March 29, 2024. In the dream, I was in a living room with family and friends. Dad laid dead on the couch. No one noticed. I shouted, "Dad's dead!" Dad sat up and opened his eyes. I was scared awake. He would have thought that he was being funny. 

I don't want people I love who are alive to die. I don't want them to leave. Ever. 

I tell myself a myriad of things to assuage the hole of loss. Mostly, I land in the belief that love and loss are complicated.

"Every beginning 

is only a sequel, after all,

and the book of events

is always open halfway through.1"

Each day feels like I'm riding a motorcycle. On easier days, I'm gliding across the open prairie on a warm, sunny day. On other days, I'm on a slippery mountain road driving way too fast and heading toward a curve. The road is taking me into uncertainty. I'm curious and terrified. 

I'm not sure where I will arrive after my tour on this planet. What do you believe?

Barbara Billey 02 Apr 2026

1. "Love at First Sight" by Wislawa Szmborska, 1996

Remembrance of Rain by Barbara Billey

remembrance of rain

rain gives permission to listen

as wetness blankets mother earth

drowns out rushing street noise

even birds fall silent.

lightening zigs zags across the sky

reminds me to hide inside

like i did when Dad's thunder

erupted as anger.

i like to walk outside in my red overcoat

get my salty winter shoes washed when

i cross the glistening pavement.

soft Spring rain removes dust from 

my cluttered, painful memories

reminds me why I love my life.

when a rainbow arrives

i remember Dad's smile

the varied colours of his moods 

vanishing into a giggle.

i remember riding my blue bicycle

through the thick puddles against

the curb of my childhood home

my legs tucked up from the whoosh

of water free to be me.

Barbara Billey 31 Mar 26

Rusty Hinge by Barbara Billey

 Rusty Hinge Barbara Billey, Photographer

Rusty Hinge

dew   illusive this Spring morning

even as first buds arrive on the magnolia

a hint of lime green sprouting in the garden

shy from the shiver of steel sky cold.

i go outside anyway ----- escape the cloister

in a midnight blue parka

my head encased in a neon green toque

hands wrapped in hot pink mittens.

I can walk and breathe //// feel brisk 

slap my cheeks

movement from the rusty hinge 

of my aging body praying

mantis on the horizon of warmth to come.

Barbara Billey 25 Mar 26

The Garden by Arthur Onion

 The Onion of Heaven and Earth

Arthur Onion, Artist

t     h    e        g     a     r     d     e     n

we live in a thin slice near the outer skin of the onion

our universe is this bubble zone

we could explore it for a very  very

very long time

before getting to know the onion itself

let alone

the  s o i u l 

it

 grows in.

by:  Arthur Onion