From Echo Bay, Ontario
The northern Ontario artist who painted a loon at his studio in the Sylvan Valley — and watched it become the reverse of every Canadian dollar.
His name was Robert-Ralph Carmichael.
The Sault, then the Sylvan Valley.
Carmichael was born in Sault Ste. Marie in 1937.
He graduated from high school at eighteen and enrolled at the Ontario College of Art (now OCAD University) in Toronto, earning his diploma in 1959. He went on to Carleton University in Ottawa for a BA, finishing in 1964.
In 1976, he came home to the north. He and his wife Gwen Keatley — herself a painter — built a house and a studio in Sylvan Valley, a rural corner just outside Echo Bay, on the north shore of Lake Huron’s St. Joseph Channel.
They lived there for the rest of his working life.
The paintings.
Carmichael worked in acrylic. His landscapes were hyperrealist — some called them surrealist — combining the Algoma country he could see out his studio window with a quiet editorial hand: nature in conflict with technological development, commercialism, and environmental degradation.
He was firm on one point: no reproductions. To see a Carmichael painting, you had to see the original — at a gallery, at an art show, at his studio, or in a private collection. His work now hangs at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, the Beaverbrook Art Gallery in Fredericton, the Glenbow Museum in Calgary, and the Tom Thomson Art Gallery in Owen Sound.
But one small painting of his had to be reproduced. Roughly a billion times.
The loon.
In 1978, Carmichael sent a small painting to the Royal Canadian Mint. It was of a common loon on a lake, with coniferous trees on a point of land in the distance.
The Mint set it aside.
Every few years, he submitted more proposals. The Mint set those aside too. For a decade, it looked like the loon would stay a small painting on a Sylvan Valley studio table.
Then, around Christmas 1986, the Mint called.
They had chosen a different design for the new one-dollar coin — a canoe and voyageur by the sculptor Emanuel Hahn. The master dies for that design had been picked up in Ottawa in November 1986. Eleven days later, the dies had failed to arrive in Winnipeg.
The RCMP investigated. They never solved the case of the missing dies.
The Mint needed a replacement fast. Carmichael’s loon — waiting in a file drawer since 1978 — was the only design ready to go.
His loon went to the coin.
June 30, 1987.
The loonie entered circulation in June 1987. Carmichael’s loon swims on a lake, with coniferous trees on a point of land on the horizon — Sylvan Valley made small enough to fit in a pocket.
If you look closely, under the bird’s beak, between the ripples on the water, you can find his initials: RRC.
By 2016, the loonie had been struck more than a billion times. Almost every one carries his design.
Home was Echo Bay.
For all the national recognition, Carmichael’s daily life stayed small. He and Gwen worked out of the same Sylvan Valley studio they had built in 1976. His paintings stayed in Algoma. His neighbours knew him as Bob.
In 1992, the town of Echo Bay put up a giant loonie beside Highway 17 in his honour — a nine-foot version of the coin, painted the correct shade of nickel and gold. Locals call it the Big Loonie, named as a small nod to Sudbury’s older monument, the Big Nickel.
The Big Loonie still stands on the highway.
Carmichael died in Sault Ste. Marie in2016, at age 78. His painter’s book was continued after his death by a former Sylvan Valley resident named Karl Tuira, whose 2020 book honoured Carmichael’s landscapes.
Bob is buried near the town he came home to.
Every Canadian who has ever carried a dollar coin has carried a piece of Sylvan Valley in their pocket.
Echo Bay is a part of Macdonald, Meredith and Aberdeen Additional township in Algoma District, Ontario.
After the Canadian government and the Ojibway signed the Huron-Robinson Treaty of 1850, surveyors were sent into this area to examine the territory. What later resulted was the creation of three separate townships. The first of the three townships created was Macdonald Township in 1863. Named after Sir John A. Macdonald, this township became home to the village of Echo Bay.
