Polson canvas serves as game ‘board’

By Maurice Switzer

NORTH BAY — Frank Polson’s paintings have appeared on many surfaces.

When he first decided he wanted to try his hand at art, Polson was in federal prison and used strips of used clothing for his canvases.

“I gessoed old jeans to paint on,” the Algonquin artist recalls.

Years later, he applied his images to soapstone and wood – he took up carving.

“I was fascinated by using a variety of raw materials,” he says, and was especially drawn to making totem poles that displayed the creatures that represented  the Seven Grandfather Teachings. “People would say, ‘That’s not traditional to Algonquin,’ but Elder Joe Rogers came to me and said, ‘Thanks for bringing that back.’ He said the Algonquin used to carve those animal faces right into trees.”

In 2018, Frank accepted a commission from the Royal Canadian Mint, which released a series of $3 silver commemorative coins bearing his sketches that depicted the 13 Grandmother Moons. The 4,000 subscription sets quickly sold out.

He has also produced colouring books containing outlines of his paintings of clan animals that were distributed to schools near his home in Winneway (Long Point First Nation) in the Abitibi-Témiscamingue region of Western Quebec.

Now, some of the estimated 4,500 paintings Frank estimates he has created over the years are featured in a new bilingual board game called Jeu Mikinak (Turtle) Game, which the artist envisions as a teaching tool to create more Indigenous cultural awareness among Canadians of all ages.

He credits his longtime business partner, Danielle Desjardins, with helping develop the game concept and doing much of the ground work required to make it a marketable product.

“We wanted to share Frank’s culture,” says Desjardin, a former teacher who Frank remembers suggesting that maybe it should put it into a game.

One of Frank’s paintings of a turtle served as the pair’s “drawing board” on which to develop their ideas, although the game features a major difference from other board games – there is no conventional board.

“We wanted to incorporate the [Indigenous] idea of a circle,” says Frank, showing how the game is played on a piece of three-foot-long artist’s canvas that rolls up into a cardboard tube.

Players roll one die, numbered one to six, to advance on the game’s squares, which include small images of Frank’s paintings of the Anishinabek Seven Grandfather Teachings and 13 Grandmother Moons. Other squares feature the four colours of the Medicine Wheel and “speech bubbles”, which require a player to share their memory of the teachings featured in the game.

The game was designed for four players, each of whom moves a small stone hand-painted with one of the four Medicine Wheel colours.

“Danielle and I collected dozens of the little stones from different places around Winneway,” notes Frank.

The four game pieces are in a small deerhide pouch, which were made by Elders from the First Nation.

Also included in the tube is a 28-page booklet describing the teachings in English, French, and the Algonquin version of Anishinaabemowin. Frank says the game acknowledges the United Nations proclamation of the International Decade of Indigenous Languages.

“Without a language you have no culture.”

The COVID-19 pandemic delayed the licensing and production of the first 200 copies of the game by a Rouyn-Noranda firm that has been a longtime supporter of Frank Polson’s artwork.

The game is being sold for $85 to test the market, and interested parties can contact its creators: ddesjardins@outlook.com or polson45@hotmail.com