Meet John
John and Jean
October 1 is National Seniors Day and International Day of Older Persons. Senior Living Communities are the perfect place to connect with storytellers and people who have lived rich and interesting lives. If you get our residents talking, you will discover so many unique talents and one of our resident artists, John, is no exception! He is a multifaceted artist, storyteller, author, painter, woodworker, and musician.
John lives with his wife, Jean, surrounded by his amazing works. In fact, that’s how they met. Jean was interested in purchasing one of his hand-crafted Viking ships at a farmers’ market and they have been together ever since. “She bought me at the farmers’ market,” John recounts with a laugh.
John, age 4
Jean also helps edit John’s books. “I always liked to write but I’m a very bad speller. I’ve got to get them edited and Jean usually did my editing. She’s a good speller!” John’s books draw inspiration from the remote place he grew up, Lake of the Woods, Ontario, where his family lived in a log cabin that did not have electricity. “There’s a lot of stories. Lake of the Woods is a fantastic place; I really miss it. It’s bush, trees and nature. My dad owned a saw mill and he made fish boxes. He would go out into the bush, cut the trees down, and cut them into planks and boards. He also had a trap line. Trapping and skinning were quite interesting.” John also used to travel to school in a canoe! Most of John’s books are fiction except for Ever Eat a Muskrat? which is an autobiography. You can find his books online, including on Amazon.
John’s parents (middle)
John is Metis and his creative work is very connected to his family history. His mother was Ojibway and his father had Icelandic roots. Through combining these heritages, John creates wonderful canoes and Viking ships from wood. Genealogy has become a passion over the years and John has binders full of family history tracing back to Eric the Red and Lief Eriksson, the first Europeans in North America. “These people come alive! When you find out you had a great, great, great, great, great grandmother whose name was Sylvia and she lived with 18 kids in Iceland - you can visualize it. In my genealogy I’ve got murderers, doctors, policemen, farmers, Vikings. It’s exciting…it’s scary because you find out things you didn’t really want to know.” he said with a chuckle.
The month of October is National Book month, the perfect time to check out John’s book, Ever Eat a Muskrat? If you were wondering, John personally doesn’t recommend eating a muskrat – “they do not taste very good.”