Artists: Sam Millard, John Webster, Kourtney Hope
Puzzle Designers:Jasen Robillard, Marcy Wiedrick, Siri Olson
Dimensions: 12 cm by 12 cm (each)
Table of Contents
About the Artists
Three paintings, three entirely distinct artistic voices — and each one a perfect match for its subject.
Sam Millard brings the moose to life through bold, swirling abstraction. Her signature style blurs the line between animal and environment until you're no longer sure where the forest ends and the creature begins. It's a fitting approach for an animal that has a way of vanishing into the treeline the moment you think you've spotted it.
Kourtney Hope needs no introduction to fans of our Woodland Watcher puzzle — her fox is every bit as captivating as her previous work, rendered in luminous sweeps of rust and blue that crackle with personality. That knowing, upward gaze says everything about the animal: alert, clever, and entirely on its own terms.
John Webster is a Calgary-based artist we're especially excited to be working with, and Polar Expedition marks his first of two releases with us this year. His layered, textural approach gives the polar bear a quiet monumentality — a creature standing its ground against a landscape that burns with unexpected warmth and colour.
Three artists. Three Canadian icons. One wild, remarkable set of Canadian mini puzzles!
Links
Iconically Canadian - The Moose
Nature Canada - The Fox
iNaturalist - Ursus Maritimus
Design Diaries
Part I: Midnight Moose
Artist: Sam Millard
Designer: Jasen Robillard
Piece Count: 77
Difficulty: 3 out of 5
Sam Millard's painting stopped me in my tracks — that bull moose, luminous and golden, somehow both commanding and hidden within the swirling blue-green forest. I took its tantalizing side glance as an invitation to discover more about this iconic keystone species.
We tend to romanticize these large mammals from a safe distance, but it is wise to avoid encounters with a moose in rut! Likewise, if you're backcountry camping and you hear a bull moose crashing through a dark forest at night, you have a very good reason to be terrified. In that scenario, it doesn't take much to conjure a monster crashing through the woods: the sheer mass of the animal, the crack and splinter of branches, the sense that something enormous is moving just beyond what you can see. It's the kind of experience that reminds you very quickly that you are not the apex or keystone species in that forest.
That feeling inspired some of my piece design. Moose antlers are extraordinary structures — broad, branching, almost architectural — and I became a little obsessed with the idea of using that shape as additional camouflage. In Sam's painting, the antlers already begin to dissolve into the surrounding trees, their amber tines echoing the bare branches of the night forest.
As usual, I fell down a wonderful rabbit hole of moose lore and ecology, including Indigenous knowledge traditions that speak to the moose as a creature whose movements shape the lives of everything around it. Loons call out across lakes where moose wade and feed, their haunting cries a kind of living map of the waterways. Lynx and owls patrol the same night corridors. Rodents and pine martens rustle in the undergrowth moose help create.The whole forest is in conversation with this animal. The puzzle design reflects that evolving web of relationships.
Part II: Polar Expedition
Artist: John Webster
Designer: Marcy Wiedrick
Piece Count: 58
Difficulty: 2 out of 5
Polar bears live in one of the harshest environments on Earth, yet somehow move through it with this incredible calmness and strength. Even though they look bright white against the snow, their fur is actually transparent, helping scatter light and blend into the ice around them. Underneath that fur is black skin that absorbs heat from the sun, plus a thick layer of fat that keeps them warm while swimming through freezing Arctic water. They can travel incredible distances across sea ice, surviving in conditions most animals never could.
This puzzle felt deeply personal for me to design because I’m from the Northwest Territories, grew up there, and also lived past the Arctic Circle. The North shaped so much of how I see wildlife and nature, and this puzzle became a way for me to put a little piece of that experience into something others could enjoy too. I felt a really strong connection while designing it, and I hope that feeling carries over to the person building it.
A huge inspiration for this puzzle was the famous National Geographic photo of a polar bear sleeping peacefully in a field of fireweed. Seeing such a massive Arctic predator resting among soft purple flowers completely changed the way I saw them. It reminded me that the Arctic isn’t just snow and ice it’s also full of colour, softness, and quiet moments people don’t always expect.
Part III: Rising Sun
Artist: Kourtney Hope
Designer: Siri Olson
Piece Count:
Difficulty: 3 out of 5
Designing this puzzle was very similar to designing Woodland Watcher, in that it was a deep focus on a creature of the woods that I feel a strong connection with. Kourtney’s medium of soft pastels is not one you see as commonly as others, so zooming in closely on the way the colours blend together really inspired the design process.
The fox, in many cultures, is a trickster, a cunning guide, and often a symbol of transformation. Three fox whimsies in this puzzle represent each of those motifs, locking together as one. The “Trickster” sits at the bottom left of the puzzle, sneakily approaching a goose that is defending its eggs. The “Guide of the Forest” is running freely toward the right corner. The final “Shapeshifter” whimsy is upside down in the puzzle, but when turned, it can be read in multiple ways. Its head can appear to be looking back toward its tail, or up toward the sky, depending on which points you choose to read as its ears.
Rising Sun reinforces how shifting nature is, both in how it exists and how we perceive it. After all the tricks & transformations, the sun still rises.
Whimsy List
Midnight Moose
2x Moose
2x Loons
2x Owls
2x Pine Martens
Wolverine
Rodent of Unusual Size (ROUS)
Polar Expedition
Baby Polar Bear with Fish
Mama Polar Bear
Ringed Seal
Narwhal
Raven
Fireweed
Rising Sun
4x Foxes
Showshoe Hare
Canadian Goose
Rising Sun
