In one of his most recent and rewarding projects, Dan ‘Dannö’ Drouin took on the task of doing a major restoration on a popular Santa’s Carousel at Santa’s Village, which is located in Bracebridge, Ontario.
Drouin, whose creative career spans over four decades involving pinstriping, lettering, and graphic design, explained getting the opportunity to work at Santa’s Village.
“It was a bit of a fluke that I looked into it…I got a very short email saying if I was interested in doing restoration work for a carousel [and] initially thinking it was spam because I get a lot of those emails every day. But I decided to dig a little deeper, and it seemed legit. I replied, and to my amazement, they got back to me quickly. They knew about my involvement in the restoration work I had done on Toronto Island, the carousel there ten years ago, as they found me via a Google search,” the artist noted. “This was around November 2024. I then arranged to go up and meet with them and had a look at the carousel. It was in extremely poor condition, and it definitely needed to be restored. I found out that they had another one, which was dismantled and in storage temporarily. They weren’t sure what they were going to do with that one until they saw what I did with the one I was restoring. But there have been a lot of changes to the Santa Village under the new owners since they bought it ten years ago. They are putting a lot of effort and money into revamping the whole amusement park, and they’re doing a fantastic job.”
After the initial visit, Drouin dove into doing research with an idea of a new look for the carousel.
“They wanted to change the concept of the carousel. It started as a circus carousel theme, which didn’t jive with Santa’s Village. The owners wanted to incorporate Christmas-type elements like candy canes, and for the coloring, [they wanted] gold, red, green, white, silver, leafing…one of the owners mentioned that she really loved Holly, so we kept that in mind,” Drouin said. “It took me about a month to get a real feel for the project, doing a lot of artwork for it. I did a miniature cutout of a carousel horse, and painted it as a sample… it was different. 27 animals in total. No two of them are the same, especially when I was planning on painting each one differently. I did a lot of it on the fly [and] ended up getting the contract. Then spent another month getting the teams that I wanted to bring in to help, getting all the materials, and going over the project over and over in my head. I even made a spreadsheet to document the whole process as I perceived it might go.”
Despite some repair work that needed to be done, which was out of their hands, Drouin and his team gelled together.
“Because it was a complete restoration where we had to totally dismantle the carousel, it was all brought into a warehouse. We then started to strip away all the layers of old paint, the grime, and then cleaned it. Then we discovered cracks and broken pieces. Obviously, some repairs had to be done before we could proceed…with the priming and then getting to the actual fun part. That took three weeks,” he said. “But when we started on the work, the crew I had there started to really enjoy ourselves. I had three or four different crews. A couple of guys were with me for the whole duration. One of the guys came at the early phase just to do all the prep work, and did a great job in scraping and cleaning and getting it to the priming stage. He’s not an artist, per se, as the other guys were. So, then I brought in the artist types to do all the fine detail and do the more artistic aspect of it. At the end, I brought in another person who specialized in doing the clear coating using automotive-grade 2K clear coat.”
The veteran artist immersed himself in carousels, learning as much as he could about them.
“The owners knew nothing about the history of the carousel. So, I did a lot of research. In fact, I bought books on carousels and watched every single video on YouTube that I could, relating to carousels and carousel restoration. I also joined groups on Facebook. I spent countless days doing research, and then I eventually found the maker’s plate, which verified who it was made by. I had already done some inquiries with some other carousel restoration companies in the United States…and I found out that the animals were the molds taken directly from the original wooden carousels, which were made by the Philadelphia Toboggan Company,” Drouin explained. “I also found out that this carousel was built in 1992, so it’s actually not as old as what you would think it is. It looks like it is, but only because it comes from those original wooden carved carousels, giving it that vintage feel. A lot of the details were lost because there were so many coats of paint. Once we started cleaning and scraping it, we were finding a lot of really good detail that was lost over the years.”
However, along with the experience he had gained from the Toronto Island carousel project he worked on, he got an expert to help out too.
“I had a lot of cooperation with some other restoration experts, who led me down the right path. And that, combined with the work I did on the Toronto Island job, gave me a good foundation in this project. I would end up getting a hold of that fellow who was running that project in Toronto, and I brought him in on this one. There were quite a few headaches and obstacles that he came across on the Toronto Island Project, so he was able to bring some great experience while giving some ideas and solutions. But it was a team effort…we hit all of the markers all the way along, which made the owners really pleased, while staying on budget and the desired timeframe,” he said.
When Santa’s Village opened for the season, Drouin had a chance to see the carousel being enjoyed by many children and their families.
“The most rewarding aspect of the project was at the end, when the carousel was up and running, and I was still up there doing some other projects that they had given to me. I would go on a Sunday and just pay a visit to the park, and see all the kids riding on it with smiles on their faces from ear to ear. And they would get off, and then run back to the entrance for another ride on the carousel. Because, at the end of the day, we were doing it for the kids. The whole team had the same sentiments as I did,” the veteran designer recounted. “There was also a person on my team who brought his granddaughter and his wife over to the warehouse during the weekend. She had been to Santa’s Village before, and she said that the giraffe was her favorite animal on the carousel. She wanted to help paint it, so we put a paintbrush in her hand. And she just loved doing that so much. That was a proud moment for me, where one of my team members could share that special moment with his granddaughter.”
However, the talented artist had a chance to do other work at Santa’s Village after completing the carousel, including the two Nutcrackers at the main entrance.
“I got to repaint Santa’s chair. There’s a Santa house where Santa and Mrs. Claus are, and visitors can check it out. People can go into the house, sit on Santa’s lap, and get pictures. And now Santa’s chair was very worn down, and the paint was worn off of it, and it looked kind of bland. It was painted originally gold, and that was it. And it was a very cool-looking, ornate older chair. I ended up repainting it and pinstriping it with a lot of red filigree swirls and then clear coating it. So that was one fun thing that I got to do,” Drouin stated. “Then they had these two, 12-foot nutcrackers that are at the entrance, the main entrance that you walk into before you get into the park. And they had been repainted by the park staff over the years. The nutcrackers really didn’t have a lot of character to them. We took them apart in three different sections, and got them over to the warehouse where I stripped them down, and then repainted them. I wanted to really make them look like a traditional Nutcracker with a lot of gold leaf and really bring out their character. Once they were clear-coated, they were put in place, [and] everybody was just amazed at how great they looked. It was so fun to do, but challenging. Gold leaf work is extremely delicate work, and I learned a lot from this project as well as my work on the carousel, which was an amazing experience.”
