Barely an adult, a young Elmer Dambergs stumbled on an engraving on an abbey in England in the late 1940s that read: “A great man is he that does not lose his child’s heart.”
Now 83, it’s apparent Dambergs’ busy child heart hasn’t stopped beating – almost every pulse vividly preserved on squares of paper or canvas scattered across the globe.
Although he lives quietly in his single-story Parry Sound home, Elmer’s artwork hangs on the walls of a royal castle in England, appears regularly in newspapers in two continents, and represents Canada in the international collections of several countries. His paintings have hung beside Picasso, his cartoons have been included in publications with Donato and he’s hobnobbed with a Group of Seven painter he called a friend.
Perhaps most importantly, Elmer’s art decorates countless local homes, cottages and offices and his cartoons, paintings and writing document the personalities, changes and events shaping the Parry Sound area for the past 35 years.
“This is what keeps me alive,” says Elmer who, although his pace doesn’t appear to be slowing down, is now taking a small step back from his weekly workload of editorial cartooning. “I never went to a bar, I never smoked, but you have to do something to be crazy. Everyone has a vice. This is my vice – painting.”
Elmer was born September 9, 1924, in Aizpute, Latvia. When the Russians moved into his homeland, Elmer was in Grade 11 and narrowly avoided being sent to Siberia as part of a working gang. Within a few months, the Germans took over the occupation and, about a year later, he was sent to Germany as part of a government workforce, and spent three months digging trenches.
Elmer Dambergs
Elmer at work in his Parry Sound home this year.
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