As a student in a rural school in the 1940s, she liked art. Her teacher noticed and, years later, the teacher convinced the student she could paint huge murals.
"I'd never done anything like that before," says Elaine Ducharme Rensby, who painted two murals in the Battlefords Chamber of Commerce building during its construction in the 1970s. The mural on the main floor depicts a landscape typical of agricultural activities in the area, and the one in the basement meeting room offers an expanse of boreal forest, complete with trapper's cabin and wildlife.
Even as she undertook the project, Elaine wasn't convinced she could do it. But Alex and Pearl Balych were.
It was Pearl who had been Elaine's teacher all those years ago. Both came from the Glaslyn area, and Pearl was only about 10 years older than her student.
At age 21, Elaine moved to North Battleford to take a waitressing job at Mrs. Danilyw's lunch counter where the old bus depot used to be. Just a few years later, Pearl and Alex bought the Roxy Photography Studio and Pearl, no longer a teacher but still confident in Elaine's artistic potential, put her to work retouching and colouring pictures.
"I loved it," says Elaine.
Pearl, active in many community efforts, had Elaine and others painting backgrounds for an event at the Civic Centre in Saskatchewan's centennial year, 1967. She also had Elaine paint backdrops for entertainment at the fairgrounds grandstand in one of her many volunteer projects. One was of a city skyline, says Elaine, while the other was of a barn and horses.
In the '70s, Pearl and Alex became fixtures at the Chamber of Commerce, Alex as commissioner and Pearl as receptionist, secretary and tour guide (eventually becoming interim commissioner in 1980). Over 1976 and 1977, the current building was constructed under Alex's leadership and Pearl once again put a paint brush in Elaine's hand to decorate the interior. No more painting backdrops on sheets of plastic or wooden boards. Elaine was to paint the murals directly on the walls. She did both murals within the same year.
There was extensive activity going on around her as she painted, says Elaine, and the carpenters and other workers there provided her with creative ideas to include in the murals, as did visitors, as well as the Balychs.
The mural upstairs, which came first, was painted on drywall.
"Alex wanted an airplane," she says, because he was a pilot and he and his brother once operated the first commercial air service based in Meadow Lake. He must have provided a picture for her to use as a model, she laughs, because she doesn't know anything about airplanes.
A farmhouse she used to see on the way to Prince Albert was included. A typical red barn was painted in the same farmyard. A mother can be seen in the garden. Elaine says she's hollering at the young boy in the cow corral.
Pearl suggested adding Boys Scouts with tents and canoes.
A visiting farmer suggested a mouse, which visitors have fun trying to find among the many details.
There's a bike rider, tractors and farm machinery, telephone polls, fences, stokes livestock, roads and trails, and even a trestle bridge. All reminiscent of a prairie farming area, with a little story behind almost every detail.
Downstairs, the second mural, was painted directly on concrete on two of the basement wall. The scene downstairs is filled with details as well. One of the main features is a trapper's cabin. It represents a cabin that belonged to her great uncle, complete with the bench in front where the inhabitants used to sit in the evening. Around the cabin are a trapper's tools, such as traps and snowshoes, and a woodpile with saw and axe.
Animals are the main inhabitants of the forest mural, a bear, a moose, two deer, a fox, ravens, ducks, a whiskey jack, chickadees and a squirrel among them.
It was in the room with the forest mural that Elaine recently received a big surprise. Thinking she was attending a church barbecue, she arrived at the gathering to find it was actually a celebration of her 80th birthday. Friends and family were there, waiting to see the wonder on her face, and she didn't disappoint.
"She was surprised," says Kim Welton, a fellow member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who helped organize the event.
It seemed appropriate to hold the birthday in the room where her largest mural was located, now dubbed the Balych Mural Meeting Room.
In addition to visiting with family and friends, Elaine shared stories about the murals in the building. With 35 years passed since she created them, even she didn't remember everything she painted into them.
However, after 35 years, the murals look freshly painted. They've hardly even faded, she notes, perhaps because they are out of direct sunlight.
After she finished the chamber murals, Elaine did only a few more, and none so ambitious. She did a castle scene in the former Old Heidelberg restaurant in the Frontier Mall.
"That's gone now," she says.
She also did one at River Heights Lodge, which featured the cabin where she grew up. She hasn't seen it in years.
She did another for a school out of town, but dismisses it as something that didn't turn out as she'd hoped.
Looking back, Elaine seems surprised at her own work.
Prior to the murals, she had painted only one other piece, a small painting of the her family home, which travels from home to home amongst the family members.
Home was in the Halfway House area, so named for being halfway between Glaslyn and Meadow Lake.
"There's nothing there now," says Elaine, although the Geographical Names Board of Canada still has Halfway House listed as a conservation area/recreation site.
Elaine was one of 10 children of parents Moses Ducharme and Edith Forrest Ducharme. Her mother came from Forest Bank, which was named after her grandfather, Richard Henry Forrest, and a friend of his of the last name Banks, says Elaine.
Her mother was a teacher until the time she married, and for some of Elaine's childhood, Edith home-schooled her children.
She grew up surrounded by the kind of scenery she painted in the Balych Mural Meeting Room. There are no wolves in her painting, but she remembers hearing them howl.
She had moved to North Battleford when she met her future husband, Fredrick, who grew up in the Bjelde Creek area. A year and a half later, in 1959, they married. He worked in a bottle return warehouse, a job he enjoyed until he retired. For a time, she continued with the photography studio, sometimes working at home, and at one time worked for Turner-Warwick Printers as a darkroom technician.
Elaine and Fredrick never had children, but they filled their days with work, hobbies and travel.
In the winter they loved snowmobiling and in the summer they loved camping. Meadow Lake Provincial Park was probably their favourite place to go, she says. The berry picking there was very good.
But they went further afield, too, to places like Cypress Hills in southern Saskatchewan, Banff and Jasper in Alberta and further into the mountains in British Columbia.
Fredrick loved the mountains. In one of the few times Elaine has done any artwork within any of their homes, she painted a mountain scene in a house they have since sold, painting and all. It was painted on a wall, and it's probably painted over now, says Elaine.
Although she didn't do much painting after her mural experiences, she did a lot of sewing. She used to enjoy making clothing for other people, including wedding gowns. Some gowns came from a pattern, others were inspired by photos. It's been about 10 years since she's done any projects of that magnitude, she laughs.
There was also gardening
After 54 years of marriage, Frederick passed away April 3, 2013. Elaine continues to reside in the Battleford home they moved into in 1999.
For the past several years, living with arthritis, Elaine has counted on the help of her youngest sibling, Marilyn Ducharme, who lives in the Rensby home with her.
In 2011, Elaine attended a Forrest family reunion where three family trees were developed and recorded. She believes it's important to preserve family information for the genealogical research of future generations, from getting into the habit of writing people's names and the date taken on the back of snapshots to including a wife's maiden name on a grave marker. She has already arranged to have her maiden name on a joint marker for her husband and herself in the Battleford cemetery.
This interest in recording history melds well with her church's upholding of the ancient practice of performing ordinances for deceased ancestors. To this end, the Mormon church has amassed a huge genealogical resource, which it shares with the general population. Having a part in performing these ordinances is satisfying, says Elaine, as it offers hope even to those who have departed.
That Elaine has left her mark on lives of the people around her, many of whom she has never met, is evident. From her devotion to temple work to the Chamber of Commerce building murals that still glow as if painted yesterday, Elaine's reach has turned out to be much farther than her grasp.
