Allan de la Plante

An award winning and highly acclaimed photographer, author, publisher, keynote speaker and artist!

Allan has won many accolades for his photography of people of action. He began shooting hard core sports in the early Seventies, following the F1 Grand Prix circuit and the Canadian downhill ski racers known around the world as the Crazy Canucks. In 1974, he covered the Russia-Canada hockey series for the National Sport and Recreation Center. Between 1974 and 1976, commissioned by the Bank of Montreal, he created the first Canadian Gallery of Athletes. In 1976 he was the Official Photographer at the Montreal Olympic Games.

In 1997, Canada Post unveiled two stamps on Gilles Villeneuve, based on de la Plante’s photographs. It was the ultimate recognition of de la Plante’s work and Villeneuve’s racing life.

He has published books on topics ranging from Pope John Paul II to firefighters to Gas B-B-Que cooking. Perhaps his crown jewel though is the masterfully written, brutally honest book about his good friend from rural Quebec who set the world on fire behind the wheel of a Ferrari.

 

 Allan de la Plante spoke to us in January 2018.

 

Midsummer Festival

Each June we have a booth at the Midsummer Festival on the grounds of the Scandinavian Community Centre. In addition to handing out information about our club, we also sign up new members. Everyone is invited to come out to enjoy this fun annual event. If you have time available, why not consider volunteering to help with our booth?

Christmas Party

 

In December, instead of our usual monthly dinner meeting, we have our annual Christmas party. Our guests are welcomed into the hall by the cheerful sounds of the Runeberg Choir. We have a fabulous Scandinavian Christmas dinner, followed by dancing to live music.

Monthly Dinners

Our dinner schedule for 2024 will be: Feb 14th, Apr 10th, TBD. Social hour starts at 6:00pm, dinner at 7:00pm and the dinner speaker starts at about 8:00pm. The dinner is Scandinavian and usually starts with herring and salmon open-faced sandwich appetizers and ends with coffee/tea and delicious Scandinavian desserts. The theme for the after dinner talk is usually business related and hopefully with a Scandinavian connection but we also schedule other speakers of interest. Two meetings of the year we have no speaker. Instead, in February we have our Annual General meeting where we discuss business for the upcoming year and elect our new board of directors. In June, we have our annual joke-telling contest and discover who, among us, is the best teller of jokes.