How This Monumental Painting Found Its Way to Thunder Bay

Before it became the centrepiece of the Thunder Bay Art Gallery’s Morrisseau Masterwork exhibition, this canvas began nearly 40 years ago in Jasper, Alberta, in a small studio above the Helmy family’s Maligne Canyon Tea House. Norval Morrisseau worked there during the mid-1980s, the years EA Studios sponsored him, creating a monumental Woodland Style painting that remained in the Helmy family’s private collection until this year.

According to EA Studios director Joseph Helmy, the relationship began when Morrisseau called his father, Galal, and said he had dreamed of painting for him in the Canadian Rockies. Galal booked him a flight to Alberta soon after, picked him up, and brought him to Jasper, where Morrisseau settled into the tea house studio for the months that followed.

For Joseph, the painting captures something larger than its origin story. “If I could sum it up into one word, it would be unity,” he said of what the piece represents to his family.

Learn more about the story from The Jasper Local:
https://www.jasperlocal.com/2026/09/29/a-morrisseau-painted-in-jasper-returns-to-public-view-after-40-years/