Pacific Brant Carving & Art Show

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Sunday, April 12th, 2015
10:00 AM to 5:00 PM

The Pacific Brant Carving and Art Show has its roots in the Parksville/Qualicum area on Vancouver Island. In 1991, volunteers from the Mid Island Wildlife Watch Society organized the first Brant Wildlife Festival, to celebrate the arrival of the Pacific Brant Geese. Each year 1000's of Brant stop in the area to rest and feed before continuing to their Arctic breeding grounds. In 2006, the festival was taken over by The Nature Trust of British Columbia who continue to run the festival.

One of the events at the Brant Festival was a wildlife woodcarving competition, sponsored by the Vancouver Island Woodcarvers Club. In 2010 the woodcarving show was moved to Victoria, on the southern tip of Vancouver Island and re-named the Pacific Brant Carving and Art Show. The show has grown to be one of Canada's best known wildlife woodcarving competitions and has been featured in the US publication "Wildfowl Carving Magazine" for the past four years. In recent years, the show has been expanded to include a woodturning competition as well as including many commercial booths featuring the Island's top wildlife artists. The show attracts many popular BC wildlife artists, photographers and sculptors as well as giving talented carvers and turners from across the Pacific Northwest and Canada a venue to display their work and compete among each other for ribbons and cash prizes. The show is held at the Mary Winspear Centre in Sidney, in early April each year.

This is one of the largest wildlife art shows in BC and features the provinces foremost wildlife artists and photographers. Wildlife woodcarvers from across Canada and the US will compete for ribbons and cash awards and many of their carvings will be offered for sale. The woodturning competition added to the show in 2011 attracts top wood turners from across the region.