About Canada

Now it’s only seven weeks to Christmas. And we continue with our Christmas gift ideas.

Gift Idea number 3

Here is one for the ladies. One of the really popular lines of jewellery in our store, About Canada has been the line from Canadian artist Gilles Maurel

Gilles produces a line of really neat, but inexpensive, oxidised silver jewelry.

Click on the link to go to the product in store

Gilles work is not only popular, it is inexpensive, making it the perfect piece for stocking filler or main gift.

Tell us if you like it.

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Now it’s only eight weeks to Christmas. So we will continue giving you some Christmas gift ideas.

Gift Idea number 2

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Here is one for the hockey fans / players. It is now the beginning of the hockey season and here in store we have the perfect stocking filler or present in the form of the Hockey Bear print, by Canadian artist Nathalie Parenteau

Click on the link to go to the product in store

Nathalie has a series of dynamic, bold works of activities, northern scenes and wildlife.

If you are not into hockey what’s your sport to get you through the long winter?

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So, I hate be the one to tell you but it’s only nine weeks to Christmas. We will start giving you some Christmas gift ideas, this is one of a series.

Gift Idea number 1

We will start with one for everyone. One item that continues to be popular with locals and occasional visitors to our store is the classic book of Bruno Engler’s black and white photography.

Click on the link to go to the product in store

Swiss born and raised to be an accomplished Mountain Guide Bruno emigrated to Canada in 1939 and settled in the Banff area where he could pursue his passions for the mountains and photography.

Bruno was a fun loving man with an unbridled passion for adventure who could always make those around him laugh and had the incredible talent to capture the perfect moment on film. He was something of a local legend with a bar and ski run named after him.

I put this idea first as it is a little on the heavy side and we are already near the cut off for getting things by sea to Europe (October 25th).

Have you started Christmas shopping yet, let us know if you have any great ideas for presents.

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We took in a painting at About Canada, Banff that really tickles me.

Octavian Florescu, an artist with an international reputation as a surrealist painter, decided to produce some pieces just for us in Banff.

The fun piece is Golf Bears. From now on how can you ever hear of golfers seeing a bear on the golf course without coming up with this image.

He has also produced a line called Banff Eagles which you can see online.

In the Banff Eagle Octavian mixes his surrealist geometrics with a natural scene including Mount Rundle in the background.

In the Banff Eagle Series 2 Octavian produces a more sraightforward depiction of an eagle flying through the Bow Valley with Mount Rundle in the background.

The Octavian Florescu Banff Eagle Series 3 sees Octavian again depicting eagles in a surrealist style as the eagles escape their original painting.

In the Eagle Banff Series 4 sees Octavian again producing a more sraightforward depiction of an eagle flying through the Bow Valley with Mount Rundle in the background.

The Octavian Banff Eagle Series 5 sees Octavian again depicting eagles in a surrealist style as the eagle swoops down in the Bow Valley. In the valley bottom is a teepee (in Octavians geometrically impossible style) upon a native drum base.

Click on the link to go to the product in store

You may not have seen golfing bears before but tell us what you have seen on the golf course.

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So the roads to places like Takakkaw Falls, Yoho National Park close on the 12th October. Its officially coming to the end of the season and we have two weekends to revisit favourite places.

Takakkaw is one of the places I take visitors, its beautiful and easy for the not so fit. Here in the store at About Canada, Banff . I often show people the photos of the falls by Bruno Engler

The other image that I really like of the falls is the one from the series of street banners that Parks Canada commissioned local artist Max Elliott to create.

Winter comes next with a whole host of other things to do but there are so many great places that now become unavailable for the Winter. Which are your favourites and where was best this year?.

(I finally figured out how to enable comments!)

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Its been so wet recently that, in the absence of any real scenery due to low cloud, all there has been for our visitors to do is to shop.

However I really thought that window shopping was an exclusively human wet weather pastime. That is until, twice in one afternoon, we had a window shopper at About Canada, Banff in the form of a squirrel.


He had a proper look around, left to look at other stores, then came back to have another look around the Gallery. I believe he had left his wallet in the car as he didn’t buy anything that day.

I was left wondering if it is THE Banff squirrel. Do you recognise this squirrel?.

That night it snowed and today Banff is beautiful again for our guests, and squirrels.

(Having read the following I am pretty sure it was a squirrel not a chipmunk)

The first thing is to recognize that a chipmunk is different from the only squirrel that is similar, Golden-mantled Ground-Squirrel (right). That colorful squirrel is widespread in wooded open country throughout mountainous western North America. Although the Golden-mantled Ground-Squirrel has black-and-white body stripes, as do chipmunks, it lacks any stripes on the face. It is not a chipmunk, but is in a genus (Spermophilus) with many other ground-squirrels.

          

An interesting set of prints that we have in our store About Canada, Banff, is a trilogy by Canadian artist Blake Richardson.

Blake has produced a series of photographs that in themselves cause one to reflect upon their deeper meaning.

Having transferred the original photograph to canvas he transforms the piece by using oil paints to define, in a subtle way, the images he finds in the photograph.

To me they are neat on a couple of levels. I see the circle of life in the trilogy:

Stare Away is the beginning, birth.

River of Life is the the journey, life.

Spirit Path is the end with the light at the end of the path, death.

Then on another level are all the hidden images that you only see as you peer into the print.

For example in these two extracts magnifications of the images alone are: Pegasus, Hippo, Unicorn, Arctic Fox, Lemur, Badger, Butterfly, Giraffe, Lioness &, Cubs, Lion, Domestic Cat, Gorilla, Rhino & Baby, Buffalo, Puffin, Panda, Terrier, Spider, Red Poodle, Queen, Horse, Pig and Reindeer

and: Turtle, Fairy Family, Mink, Wolf, 2 Bears, Coyote, White Buffalo, Mountain Lion, Raccoon, Fairy in Flight, Deer, Unicorn, Goose, Fawn, Heron, Hummingbird, Fox, Skunk and Opossum

There are not many art works that you put on your wall that cause you to see new things each day and which also give cause for pondering the meaning. Quite neat don’t you think.

How many of the images did you find?.

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I love the legends that artists provide us with when they make pieces for us at our store About Canada, Banff.

One of our favourite jewellers Bill Finn is of First Nation origins.

Bill hand engraves all his sterling silver jewellery pieces and has sent us a Dragonfly pendant with a gold tail.

The pendant came with the legend of the Dragonfly’s tail:-

A Grandmothers Raven Tale

Frog was sitting on a water lily leaf in the sun. Turtle swam up and took Frog’s leg in his mouth to drown him. Dragonfly saw this, flew down and bit Turtle on the head. Turtle let frog go and bit Dragonfly’s tail off. Dragonfly tried to fly but tumbled over and over in the air until he landed on the lake’s bank.

Raven had been watching and flew down to dragon’s side. Raven said how brave Dragonfly had been and that Frog was one of his family.

So Raven gave Dragonfly a Raven feather for his tail so he could fly again.

I think thats a neat legend, do you like it?.

          

We went to some friends for a barbecue this weekend. It was really neat as, though I don’t have a musical bone in my body, most of the attendees were musicians and they were jamming away for most of the evening, ranging from folk songs to Beatles numbers. It was a really good night.

One big surprise was a tiny visitor, in the form of a hummingbird. I thought the hummingbirds had long since gone. Usually they are pretty timid but this one just went to the feeder in the middle of the crowded deck.

The hummingbird is one of the favourite images that we sell in the store at About Canada, Banff .

One of the suprisingly popular lines, in this modern age, is the range of cross stitch patterns. We they are bought by young and older alike.

The publishers have just released a new image in the line, Sue Coleman’s Rufus Hummingbird

Have a look at the One of the suprisingly popular lines, in this modern age, is the range cross stitchcomplete range of patterns available.

          

At About Canada, Banff one of the neat things about running the store / gallery is meeting the artist. This month we were privilged to have Leo Arcand, a well known First Nation carver, call by to see if we would like to represent his work.

Of course we jumped at the chance. Leo is a Woodland Cree sculptor from the Alexander First Nations reserve in Northern Alberta. He works mainly in soapstone, drawing his inspiration from a deep spirituality and keen belief that there must be a balance in all things.

It was a pleasure to meet him and to take on his work.

The initial pieces that we have taken are:

Grandmother Bear

Protecting Spirit

Thundering Eagle

My favourite is the Protecting Spirit, which is yours?.

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