We asked, and boy, did our pod of readers ever deliver. From Qualicum Beach, B.C., to Halifax to south of the border in Boston, dozens of kids sent in superb drawings for our narwhal art contest. Many even took care to craft high tales of the deep seas: there’s Lola the music fan, Maya the speedster, singer-dancer-Santa helper Nora — and many more.

Below are all of the entries, starting with the three grand prize winners. Rest assured, every single artist will receive a Narwhal souvenir. Thanks for participating!

The winners

Beatrice Thomson, 11, from Gatineau, Que., submitted this drawing of Sandy and her little baby Narnia. Sandy made a sea cake for Narnia’s birthday and she is bringing it to the party on her tusk.

Ethan Ezekiel, 12, from Ajax, Ont., sent in this drawing. Here’s some background on his submission: “Ethan has always been incredibly passionate about marine animals. One of his absolute favourites are the unicorns of the sea! When I told him about this contest, he got all excited and asked me, ‘Did you know they have tusks that are about 10 feet long?!’ He told me how scientists still don’t know much about these elusive creatures, and that he hoped to learn more about them soon.”

Rebecca Harty, 5, from Bawlf, Alta., sent in this drawing of Narrel. “She is going down to the bottom depths of the ocean with Ariel the mermaid. They are going to find a gem of wisdom to keep the castle safe from falling.”

Our special entrants

We couldn’t announce these winners without acknowledging the person that inspired us to launch this contest: Teddy Fribourg, 4, from Brooklyn, New York. Thanks, Teddy!

The Teddy masterpiece.

We also want to shout out these unique submissions:

Lena Desjardins, 10, of Ottawa sent in this submission. Lena also happens to be the daughter of our trusty developer, Chris, who designed The Narwhal’s logo. Talent runs in the family!

John de Groot’s daughter, Ella Rose, pained this narwhal drawing when she was 10. John liked it so much he got it tattooed on his arm!

The finalists

This submission comes from Zorza Plachta, 8, near Haines, Alaska. Zorza, whose favourite book is The Animal Encyclopedia, says: “This is a picture of a pod of narwhals swimming around. Narwhals start out mostly blueish grey, and then when they get older they get more black parts, and really old narwhals are almost entirely white. They live up in the Arctic. The picture of these narwhals is of medium young narwhals. The narwhal horn spirals, like a unicorn horn.”

Wesley Audette-Longo, 4, from Ottawa, decided to take a closer look at a solo sea traveller after learning that narwhals sometimes get closed in by shifting ice.

Teegan Walshe, 13, from Qualicum Beach, B.C., sent in this piece of singer-dancer-Santa helper Nora The Narwhal.

Sophie Quinn, 5, of Burnaby, B.C., sent in this piece with a note: “Gnarley the narwhal lives in the Arctic Ocean and she has so many friends. Gnarley loves all of them and so does her friend, Lizzie the mermaid.”

Sofia Dietrich Woods, 9, from Ottawa, wrote this lovely tale to accompany her piece: “Once there was a narwhal named Lola, she loved listening to music and playing with her friends. Once when she and her friends were playing, they saw a polar bear swimming in the water. They were so scared, Lola and her friends swam to Lola’s house. The polar bear just wanted to be friends with the narwhals because they were famous even if they did not know it. The polar bear was sad. He went home after catching a seal for dinner. The next day when Lola and her friends were playing, the polar bear came to catch some fish for lunch when he saw the narwhals playing. He started to cry because he didn’t have any friends of his own and he was jealous of the narwhals. Lola was playing tag with her friends when she heard crying. It was the polar bear that they had swam away from the previous day. She went up to the surface even though her friends warned her not to. She was a bit scared but she did it anyway. The polar bear told her how he didn’t have any friends. Lola felt sorry for him and she invited him to play, but when she went under water her friends had left. So, she played with Bruno the polar bear by herself. When a couple hours passed, Bruno had to go home. Lola had told Bruno that she would play with him tomorrow. The next day Lola’s friends came to play. They weren’t as scared of Bruno as they were the last time. They were still scared though when Lola went to the surface and they followed close behind her. They played with Bruno for hours. When Bruno had to go home, they said, ‘see you tomorrow.’ When Bruno got home, everyone was talking about him and everyone wanted to be his friend.”

Scarlett Selby, 4, from Toronto, sent in this colourful drawing. “Scarlett loves every iteration of unicorns and unicorns of the sea! Since the month of June and Pride, Scarlett has been very taken with all the rainbow flags around Toronto. They have inspired the creation of her Rainbow Narwhal.”

This sparkling gem comes courtesy of Ramona Geikie, 9, from Halifax.

Nina Mazereeuw, 12, from Boston, sent in this lovely drawing and a dark tale from the high seas.

Nikita Montplaisir, 11, from Montreal, likes narwhals because they are often pictured to represent the letter N, which is the initial of her name. This drawing, and the waffle, were inspired by the books of Ben Clanton. Nikita loves waffles too!

Nell Delay, 7, from Calgary, sent this story in to accompany her drawing: “Once upon a time, there was a narwhal named Coral. She wanted more than anything to breathe above the surface, but everybody knows that narwhals can’t breathe above the surface. ‘Maybe I can just have a peek,’ said Coral. So, she went up to the surface. She took a big breath in and peered above the surface. She saw cars and houses and people. She couldn’t hold her breath for long so she ducked back under. She couldn’t wait to tell all her friends at school what she had seen. The next day she went to school. She told all her friends at school about the surface. They wanted to see the surface so they went up to the surface and saw all the things. They ducked back under. Then they saw an adult. ‘I was watching you narwhals, narwhals can breathe above the surface!'”

This drawing comes from Mya Gushue, 7, from Halifax.

Matilda Varteniuk, 7, sent in this drawing and tale of Maria and her friends.

Lia Mosher, 8, from Halifax, sent in this sparkling piece.

Kingston Sullivan, 6, sent in these narwhals named Toadette and Toad. “They are 15 years old and are married with no baby narwhals. They live in a frosted glacier and their favourite food is super mushrooms They are special because of their tusks and Toad has two tusks.”

Kenna Zenner, 9, sent in this piece of a little narwhal family.

Kalia Klassen, 4, from Abbotsford, B.C., sent in this drawing featuring herself and her little sister, Nina, riding on top of a narwhal named Kalila. Kalila the Narwhal has a colourful tusk and long orange and red hair.

Kaitlyn Harry, 4, from Bawlf, Alta., sent in this drawing of Spotty. He is going to eat lunch — the seaweed around him.

Jimmy Ladubec, 4, from Waterloo, Ont., sketched this piece of Narcal. “Narcal has had hundreds of narwhal babies and one looked like a shark, but then it turned out just to be a crumb. Narcal is special because he is magical and even though he is a boy he can have babies. His spots make him magical.”

Isabelle Curran of Rhinebeck, New York, sent in this drawing of Mr. Willy.

Emily Audette-Longo, 7, from Ottawa, explored escape possibilities for narwhals that get caught in shifting sea ice.

Eleanor Dobson, 3, from Calgary, sketched this abstract piece. Eleanor loves narwhals — mostly reading her narwhal books, so she thought it should be wearing glasses.

Daisy Varteniuk, 9, from Kitchener, Ont, drew this piece of Maya, a “super fast” and curious narwhal.

Alexandra Pastor, 12, sent this deep-sea sketch from Alexandria, Virginia.

Alexander de Groot, 10, sent in this piece of some very classy and cool narwhals.

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Every few months, without fail, a Narwhal reader sends in a drawing their kid made of the famed unicorn of the sea. And so, at a time when many camps are closed and families are spending more time than ever together, we figured: why not come up with a fun activity for the dog days of summer?

Here’s the deal: we want to see your kid’s narwhal artwork, no matter the skill level, whether they’re four or 14. Once they sketch their creation, snap a picture and send it our way by Aug. 23 to editor@thenarwhal.ca, with the subject line: Narwhal art contest. Make sure to include your child’s name, hometown and, if there’s a tale, the inspiration behind the art (Does their narwhal have a name? What makes narwhals special?).

We’ll review all the submissions, and pick three winners who will receive a sweet prize pack of Narwhal swag.

We’ll also be sure to share many of the wonderful works in our newsletter, on our website and social media. Looking for inspiration? Check out the piece above by four-year-old creative whiz Teddy Fribourg.

Break out those crayons or paintbrushes and get started!

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

On December 12th, 1937 the night before her 56th birthday, Emily Carr jotted this down in her journal: “Fifty-six years ago tonight there was a big storm out West and deep snow. My dear little Mother wrestled bravely and I was born and the storm has never quite lulled in my life. I’ve always been tossing and wrestling and buffeting it. How little I’ve accomplished! And the precious years are flying by and never, never one minute will the clock tick backwards.”

Throughout her life Carr expressed a deep and unrelenting desire to capture the essence of her natural surroundings, something she claimed remained elusive to her, haunting her throughout her work.

“I’ve been to the woods today,” she wrote one month later. “It’s there but I can’t catch hold.”

Whatever it was Carr was searching for, her hunt carried her throughout the forests and bays of Vancouver Island and Haida Gwaii. She felt sure the final remedy, her peace, resided in those old forests and deep green ocean bays.

Google Doodle in the style of Emily Carr.

“I am always asking myself the question, What is it you are struggling for? What is that vital thing the woods contain, possess, that you want? Why do you go back and back to the woods unsatisfied, longing to express something that is there and not able to find it?”

Her deep reverence for the natural world and particularly the coast of British Columbia turned Carr into an iconic artist, leaving behind a lifetime of patient, meditative paintings, her endless quest left in the paint strokes of crooked arbutus, a heavy cedar bough.

Untitled Forest Scene. Emily Carr. 1934.

“Search for the reality of each object,” she wrote “that is, its real and only beauty; recognize our relationship with all life; say to every animate and inanimate thing ‘brother;’ be at one with all things, finding the divine in all; when one can do all this, maybe then one can paint.”

Her writings reveal not only her reflections on the experience of painting and sketching the scenes before her, but give us an insight into her own experience of nature and how she envisioned a rich and nourishing relation to the natural world might deepen our bond with our landscape.

A Forest Clearing. Emily Carr. 1939.

“Go out there into the glory of the woods…Feel their protecting spread, their uplifting rise, their solid immutable strength. Regard the warm red earth beneath them nurtured by the myriads of fallen needles, softly fallen, eternally changing yet eternally the same. See God in it all, enter into the life of the trees. Know your relationship and understand their language, unspoken, unwritten talk. Answer back to them with their own dumb magnificence, soul words, earth words…”

A Rushing Sea of Undergrowth. Emily Carr. 1932-35.

“This perhaps is the way to find that thing I long for: go into the woods alone and look at the earth crowded in growth, new and old bursting from their strong roots hidden in the silent, live ground, each seed according to its own kind expanding, bursting, pushing its way upward towards the light and air, each one knowing what to do, each one demanding its own rights on the earth. Feel this growth, the surging upwards, this expansion, the pulsing life, all working with the same idea…life, life, life…”

Left: Boles. Emily Carr. 1935. Right: Heart of the Forest. Emily Carr. 1935.

In her writings Carr doesn’t give the impression that she finally came to know the great mystery of the forest she so longed to grasp. Yet, she expresses a maturing sense of contentment with the world around her as she aged. “Autumn does not dismay me any more than does the early winter of my body. Some can be active to a great age but enjoy little. I have lived,” she wrote in September of 1939, six years before her death.

Loggers' Culls. Emily Carr. 1935.

There is more fulfillment from Carr’s years of searching to be found, perhaps, in the legacy of her work and the enchantment with Canadian wilderness, First Nations’ totem poles and culture, the deep woods and dark waters she left behind. Maybe Carr was more like the forces of nature she tried so hard to understand. In her own way she brought something into this world the beauty of which she couldn’t know or comprehend, the lasting effect of which would outlive her entirely.

Shoreline. Emily Carr. 1936.

“Has a root or bulb the power to look up through itself and see its own blossom? Or must it live always in its own dark domain, busily, patiently sucking its life from the earth and pushing it up to the flower? How terrific the forces of nature are! To see root spilt stone appalls one. I think that has impressed me more than anything else about the power of growth. An upheaval is good, this digging about and loosening of the earth about one’s roots. I think I shall start new growth, not the furious forcing of young growth but a more leisurely expansion, fed from maturity, like topmost boughs reflecting the blue of the sky.”

Scorned as Timber Beloved of the Sky. Emily Carr. 1935.

On her birthday December 13, 1940, Carr wrote “I do not mourn old age. Life has been good and I have got a lot out of it, lots to remember and relive. I have liked life, perhaps the end more than the beginning.”

The main force behind her painting, she reflected, was its use “as a means of expressing myself, putting into visibility what gripped me in nature.”

Big Raven. Emily Carr. 1931.

Emily Carr died in 1945 at the age of 74 in her hometown Victoria, B.C.

Before her death she wrote: “Dear Mother Earth! I think I have always specially belonged to you. I have loved from babyhood to roll upon you, to lie with my face pressed right down on to you in my sorrows. I love the look of you and the smell of you and the feel of you. When I die I should like to be in you uncoffined, unshrouded, the petals of flowers against my flesh and you covering me up.”

An exhibit of more than 40 of her forest paintings will go on display at the Vancouver Art Gallery on December 21, 2013.

Quotes excerpted from "Hundreds and Thousands: The Journals of Emily Carr." Clarke, Irwin & Company Ltd. 1966.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

In 2011, Toronto-based writer, artist and environmental activist Franke James was asked by Croatian non-profit Nektarina to feature her artwork on an European tour. Unsurprisingly, James agreed, only to have the tour cancelled when the Canadian embassy in Croatia withdrew funding that it denied ever giving Nektarina, and made the non-profit aware that James “speaks against the Canadian government.”

James was not one to be silenced, as her new book reveals. Banned on the Hill: A True Story about Dirty Oil and Government Censorship catalogues the entire ordeal of being blacklisted by Harper’s government for speaking out against the tar sands, and puts the paper trail Canadian diplomats left of their censoring ways on display.

DeSmog: You’ve been spreading a message of environmental awareness that runs counter to the Harper government’s pro-oil stance since 2003. Did you have any inkling that something like the government’s squashing of your European tour might eventually happen?

Franke James: No! Who would ever think you could get into trouble for writing to the Prime Minister asking that we make polluters pay? Is this Canada or the Kremlin?

I've been very openly criticizing the Conservatives for their short-sighted 'economy versus the environment' stance for years now. But I never expected them to lash out at me as an individual citizen because we live in a democratic country where free expression is protected under the Canadian charter. When I discovered what they were secretly doing behind-the-scenes I realized I needed to dig for evidence.

And that led me on a two year journey of collecting evidence, applying for access to information documents, and writing Banned on the Hill. This story needs to be told. It's shocking and it's very undemocratic. Canadians need to know the extreme message control that the Harper government is exerting over ordinary, law-abiding citizens. Our fundamental right to speak up and disagree with the government is at risk – and that is so wrong.

DeSmog: You won a big victory against censorship by successfully crowdfunding a campaign to bring your “Do Not Talk About Climate Change: It Is Against Government Policy” posters to the streets of Ottawa, and you’re on your way to achieving stretch goals to bring the posters to other cities. Could you tell us a bit about the posters?

FJ: Thanks! Yes, it's very exciting to see my  posters up on the streets of Ottawa – and the animated online ads on The Hill Times. That is the government’s favourite “insider-news” website. So it was a real kick to buy space there and use the government spokesperson’s own very chilling words in the ads, “the artist’s work dealt mostly with climate change, and was advocating a message that was contrary to the government's policies on the subject.”

I’m sure the visual of the Parliament Buildings dropped into the tar sands caused a few Cheerios to be spat out. I made that image to emphasize an important point – if that really was the surroundings for the Parliament Buildings, it would not be tolerated. They would not permit the air and water to be polluted that way because it would endanger the health of the Prime Minister and the MPs.

DeSmog: How do you think crowdfunding changes the face of arts/media resistance to government censorship?

FJ: The opportunity for activists to fight government censorship – and communicate positive social messages – through crowdfunding media space is tremendous.

It's essentially a judo-flip on Big Brother message control.

Our voices joined together have the power to change governments – and by that I mean we can leverage mass media to speak up and tell the government what issues are important to us and why. If we make a big noise that climate change is an issue that voters care about, then our so-called “leaders” will follow and bring in laws to put a price on carbon. That would be a game-changer for every business because it would send a message that they can no longer pollute the atmosphere for free.

And on an individual level, crowdfunding is transformative. People who contribute to a crowdfunded campaign can see that by taking action they can make change happen.

So, crowdfunding is a tremendous activist tool. It gives power to anyone with a message to take it out to the world. It is a very democratic system. The catch is you have to be able to persuade people that your message is worth funding. Before “crowdfunding” existed artists and activists had to rely on funding from government, non-profits and corporations. But censorship is a problem with all of those entities.

DeSmog: On a related note, did you face any government-related intimidation or resistance to the crowdfunding campaign and the outdoor posters in Ottawa?

FJ: The Indiegogo campaign running now in Ottawa is the second crowdfunded show I've done and in both cases I’ve taken measures so that the shows did not get blocked or censored. (I know of climate activist media campaigns in the US which have been censored.)

I did not announce publicly where or when the show was going live. This was a good strategy because I am sure if the government had known the show was going up on November 2, 2011 in Ottawa, they never would have released the first batch of Access-to-Information documents on Halloween, 2011. Those initial 165 pages were extremely advantageous to me when I was speaking to the media, because they proved that the government was not telling the truth about the funding. The funding had been approved internally, but was killed by the Deputy Director of the Climate Change office, Jeremy Wallace. The 2 documents are in Banned on the Hill on pages 174-175 (pictured below).

Also, in my November 2011 outdoor show in Ottawa, I had the creative of six posters pre-approved by senior executives at the outdoor company before I put any money down. This was necessary because they had a clause in their contract that said they could pull the artwork, and you’d still have to pay for the space. For the new show in May-June 2013, there was only one poster design, and that was pre-approved too.

DeSmog: Has their been a positive response to the campaign from the public?

FJ: Excellent response. Lots of people are concerned as I am with the silencing of environmental voices and the erosion of our democratic rights. As of today, 206 people have contributed over $12,300.

DeSmog: Do you have any further plans for the use of crowdsourced funds, aside from putting the posters on the streets of other cities?

FJ: Yes! Some fun stuff is being planned! But right now we don’t know which city is next. Vancouver or Calgary is within reach – and possibly Washington, D.C. if we raise enough money.

There will definitely be fun new ways for people to participate and see their impact. We need to get the message out that it is essential to talk about climate change – and take immediate action.

People can help make it happen by contributing. The Banned on the Hill campaign ends on Indiegogo Friday afternoon, June 28, at 11:59pm PST.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.