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 "Bass Harbor Maine Light By Moonlight" / Art Chouinard  Paintings by Art Chouinard will be on display at Canton Town Hall in January and February. Photo: dotCANTON By Steve Wilder dotCANTON.com
The more you look at his work and the more you listen to his story the more you find yourself almost disbelieving what the man is saying.
Self-taught? Never tried painting until a little more than a decade ago … when he was well into his 60s?
Art Chouinard of Avon grins a lot as his visitor marvels over how far and how fast he has come, almost like, maybe, he doesn’t quite believe it himself.
 "HMS Rose Tall Ship" / Art Chouinard Make no mistake, Chouinard — pronounced Shen-ard — has a highly skilled right hand. His talent for general graphics and lettering paid the bills for 40 years, and you get the feeling he’d still be creating banners, promotional posters, artwork and trade show presentations for area insurance companies had the computer not come along. But it did, and it took work away from him and many others in that trade.
“A lot of artists that were let go went to computer school,” says Chouinard, who has been invited to display his extraordinarily detailed paintings at Canton Town Hall through the months of January and February. “If I had been a lot younger, I probably would have gone, (too).”
 "Weekapaugh, R.I., By Moonlight" / Art Chouinar Instead, Chouinard started looking for something else to do. “Retirement is a foreign word to me,” he says. “I wanted to convert over to a different scene entirely.”
He started painting general landscapes and scenes from around the Farmington Valley, including, quite naturally, the Collins Co. ax factory in Collinsville. His efforts were impressive to say the least, but Chouinard didn’t find a path he could follow with passion until a friend in Watch Hill, R.I., introduced him to the work of maritime artist John Stobart. The British-born Stobart’s s realistic style paintings got Chouinard’s attention.
 "Niantic Yacht Club Misty Morning" / Art Chouinard “Oh, boy, did they ever,” he says.
“I loved his work and said that’s where I’d like to be someday. I said, here’s a goal.”
Just as he had never planned to paint, Chouinard wasn’t thinking about being a commercial graphic artist when he was growing up in Hartford’s South End and attending St. Augustine Grammar School and Bulkeley High School. He envisioned himself playing his trombone for a living and even enlisted in the Air Force to be a member of a field band.
It didn’t take long for some realities to hit home.
“I wanted to be a musician badly,” he says. “But when I lived with other musicians in the Air Force, I could see where I was lacking.”
He took a “mail order” course in architectural drafting while in the service and produced publicity posters for some Air Force buddies who were booking stateside talent to entertain the troops in Puerto Rico, where Chouinard was stationed for three years. Continue reading Town Hall Invites Chouinard
 An assortment of arrows, spearheads and stone tools used by Native Americans in this area have been donated to the Canton Historical Museum. Photos: dotCANTON By Steve Wilder dotCANTON.com
David Gilchrist says his father-in-law, a resident of Avon, looked for American Indian artifacts almost all his life, beginning when he was a young boy early in the 20th century.
According to Gilchrist, a Canton selectman in his third term, George Plude would search plowed fields and the banks of the Farmington River in Avon, Simsbury and Farmington, particularly  after rain scrubbed the ground and made the rock and stone items more visible to a trained eye.
Plude put together a handsome collection over the years, and at 2 p.m. on Sunday, Dec. 19, the Canton Historical Museum will formally accept 300-plus artifacts from Gilchrist in memory of his wife, Marie Plude Gilchrist, who died in November 2009.
“We talked about it quite a bit before she passed away,” Gilchrist said. “She wanted the collection to be kept together and put in a place where it could be enjoyed by many people.”
According to the museum, the artifacts collected by Plude were evaluated over the past several months by Lisa Marie Evans, a grad student in anthropology and archaeology at Central Connecticut State University and found to be up to 10,000 years old. Many of the arrows and spearheads come from as far away as Ohio, according to the museum. Gilchrist said that’s probably the result of a series of trades among groups of Indians.
“(Evans) found arrowheads made of material not indigenous to this area,” Gilchrist said. As an example, he said some arrowheads were made of flint, and that the nearest deposits of flint were in Ohio.
The museum says the Gilchrist donation doubles the size of its collection. Five years ago the museum received a similar donation from the Dyer family in Canton.
 Snow-making continues at Ski Sundown in New Hartford on Wednesday, Dec. 8. According to www.skisundown.com, the facility will open on Friday, Dec. 10, at 9 a.m. On Nov. 29, Mountain Operations Manager Chris Sullivan told dotCANTON he was hoping for a Dec. 10 opening. Photo: dotCANTON
 All was quiet Saturday afternoon, Oct. 4, at Ski Sundown in New Hartford, where snow-making operations began late Thursday night into Friday morning, Oct 3. Photo: dotCANTON
 From Ratlum Road in New Hartford, a view of snow-making operations at Ski Sundown shortly after midnight on Friday, Dec. 3. Photo: dotCANTON Snow-making operations at Ski Sundown in New Hartford were underway at 12:30 a.m. on Friday, Dec. 3.
On Monday, Nov. 29, Mountain Operations Manager Chris Sullivan told dotCANTON.com he was hoping to begin making snow late Thursday night, Dec. 2, or in the wee hours of Friday morning. By all appearances, Sullivan was right on target.
In that same interview with dotCANTON, Sullivan said he was hoping Ski Sundown could open on Dec. 10.
– dotCANTON
 Ski Sundown on Monday, Nov. 29. Photo: dotCANTON By Steve Wilder dotCANTON.com
There isn’t a hint of snow at Ski Sundown in New Hartford, and it’s not likely they will begin to make any there until late Thursday night, Dec. 2, or the wee hours of Friday morning, but that isn’t stopping Mountain Operations Manager Chris Sullivan from hoping for a Dec. 10 opening.
“We always shoot for an opening the day after Thanksgiving,” Sullivan said Monday, Nov. 29. “But that’s only happened once in [the] 12 years [he has been there]. “It’s more likely early to mid-December.”
Right now, he said, “we’re shooting for Friday the 10th.”
Sullivan is just waiting for the weather to cooperate. He needs temperatures in the mid-20s to make snow, but he isn’t going to start if daytime warmth will just melt away his work or if a large rain storm is on the way.
And that is precisely the case this week. A significant amount of warm rain [about two inches, Sullivan said] is forecast for Tuesday night into Wedesday. After that, however, conditions are looking good.
 Waiting for the right weather. Photo: dotCANTON “We’ll try to go Thursday night,” Sullivan said. “We probably won’t get going until midnight or 1 in the morning [Friday]. That will give us till just after sunup.”
That’s just a beginning, of course. Again, it’s all about the weather cooperating.
“If we get three to four nights of marginal to good conditions, we can get six trails open,” he said.
Once he gets down a good amount of snow, Sullivan doesn’t worry as much about more rain. “If we get four to five days of snowmaking,” he said. “Rain won’t impact us as much.”
Any concerns about accessing Ski Sundown from Route 44 in downtown New Hartford ended last month, when work on the Route 219 bridge over the East Branch of the Farmington River was completed.
“Christmas Cottage,” a popular event for early holiday season shoppers, has been scheduled for Thursday, Nov. 4 (3 to 8 p.m.), Friday, Nov. 5 (9 a.m. to 8 p.m.), and Saturday, Nov. 6 (9 a.m. to 3 p.m.), at the Eureka Grange Hall on Route 202 in New Hartford, a little more than four miles west of the Saybrook Fish House.
In addition, a bit of the “Cottage” will be presented in the display case at the Canton Public Library through the month of November, and what’s there will be for sale.
According to Christmas Cottage member Brenda Sullivan, the group was unable to rent space this year at the Collinsville Congregational Church, where the popular, three-day fair has been held for “quite a few years.”
“We had to find a place or give up Christmas Cottage,” she said.
The 30-member group of artists and crafters plans to decorate the outside of the plain white hall on the south side of Route 202 with wreaths and lights.
 Eureka Grange. Photo: dotCANTON
“The inside of the hall is beautiful,” Sullivan said. “I’m sure we’ll be able to dress it up.”
There is ample parking behind the building, she said, but the driveway to reach it is narrow.
Christmas Cottage members produce the items they sell at the fair, including jams, baked goods, salsa, honey, mustard, candy, soaps, candles, wreaths, pottery, painted items, jewelry, stained glass, knitted woolen items, quilted items, turned wooden pieces, oil paintings, decorated trees and Christmas ornaments. Admission to Christmas Cottage is free.
–dotCANTON
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