in search of snipes

 Heritage Square

Designed and cast in 1986 by Glenn Spicer,
Maple Bay, BC

The Artist

Born and raised in Ontario, Glenn Spicer received a B.Sc. from the University of Guelph. For a while he put both his science background and his artistic abilities to work as a paleontology display artist sculpting dinosaur skulls with the Royal Ontario Museum and as a scientific illustrator for the Botany Department of the University of Guelph.

After his move to the West Coast, Glenn became a layout artist with the Vancouver Folk Music Festival, and gained experience as a research assistant and media lab manager with the Department of Communications Media and Technology, Faculty of Education, U.B.C. His growing love of things artistic led him to complete three years at the Emily Carr College of Art and Design in Vancouver.

Spicer has since worked as a senior display artist for the Vancouver Aquarium, and now freelances as a sculptor and stained glass artist.

The Art

On a moonlit summer's night in 1913, two strangers found their way into Chemainus. While socializing with the locals, they were told of elusive snipes hiding in the forest, and that this would be a perfect night to catch them. The strangers were shown the secret place in the woods and instructed to hold a lit lantern in front of an open sack, into which the locals, acting as beaters, would drive the snipe.

The townsfolk then stole back to the village. After hours of waiting, the boys realized they had been innocent victims of a bit of mischief, and they too returned to the town to join the others and share in a good laugh.

Snipes, like dreams, can be captured. Through hard work, Chemainus embraced its “snipes” when yesterday's dreams became today's realities.
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