Category: Art & Music

  • This mindfulness moment brought to you by nature….

    This mindfulness moment brought to you by nature….

    Today’s blog post comes from past ecologist Corina Brdar. When Corina’s not working at Ontario Parks, she is actively involved in the growing nature journaling and mindfulness community. It seems the term “mindfulness” is showing up everywhere in our lives these days. It can be a tricky concept to try out in your everyday life,…

  • Stars over Killarney 2023 recap: a marriage of culture, beauty, and science

    Stars over Killarney is an annual festival celebrated at Killarney Provincial Park. The event’s 2023 theme — Colours in the Cosmos — was inspired by the parallels between the beauty and the colour in provincial parks and the beauty and colour of the skies above. And beautiful colour was found everywhere at this year’s event! The program took…

  • Painting the picturesque: a guide to art in nature

    Today’s blog comes from Megan Callahan, a customer service assistant for Ontario Parks. Her love for nature and educational background in fine arts has created wonderful synchronicity in her parks career. Oftentimes, when someone thinks of art and Ontario Parks, they think of the Group of Seven. You know, the group of artists that were inspired…

  • Frances Anne Hopkins: documenting the lives of voyageurs through art

    Today’s post comes from Taylor Bottoms-Cau, a second-year Discovery student at Samuel de Champlain Provincial Park.  You’ve likely heard of the Group of Seven, artists who travelled the remote landscapes of Ontario to capture their rugged beauty by brush. But they weren’t the only artists who travelled rough and painted what they saw! Fifty years before…

  • Falling for campsite crafting

    Today, Content Development Specialist Andrea Coulter takes us through some family friendly fall crafts.  Last fall, my kids and I joined my parents on a three-generation camping trip to Canisbay Lake Campground at Algonquin Provincial Park. We spent our days going for bike rides, hiking, and visiting around the campfire, but my kids’ creative bug was…

  • Colours in the cosmos: where the beauty of nature meets the science of the cosmos

    “The heavens wheel around you, displaying to you their eternal glory and still your eye is upon the ground.” – Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy Many of us live in areas afflicted by light pollution, which prevents us from gazing at the heavens whirling around us. However, most of our northern and many other parks afford…

  • Fourth graders become species-at-risk superheroes!

    Parks alone are not enough to save species at risk. As we’ve continued our species-at-risk blog series this summer, we’ve been able to share stories of the amazing species that call parks home and the work being done to protect them. Now we want to introduce you to the newest team of superheroes taking up…

  • Can we bring painted rocks to the park?

    Art and nature go together like columbine flowers and hummingbird tongues. Indigenous artists express their relationship to land through art; Canada’s Group of Seven found inspiration in several Ontario Parks; parks offer residency programs, and our park visitors find many artistic ways to capture their memories. We love it when visitors share their artistic creations with us.…

  • Experience more of nature by journaling

    Today’s blog post comes from Corina Brdar. A different way to be mindful in nature is through nature journaling. Using  writing and sketching as tools can be a calming way to look more deeply and experience nature more fully. Like our previous mindfulness exercises, this too is a judgment-free practice.  You’re not creating a piece…

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