The first thing Joel Fawcett tells me is that he doesn’t like to get bored. A slow, steady scan of the room confirms this.
There’s a series of tuning forks perched on the upper lip of the window casing, and a collection of old colourful tin cans— Horne’s Good Luck Peanut Butter, Big Ben Chewing Tobacco, Black Cat Chewing Tobacco, Blue Ribbon Coffee, Beehive Golden Corn Syrup. There’s a beat-up guitar with a song list crudely scratched into its side. Nearby on the windowsill, there’s a flute, and on the wall, two banjos hanging. To the right of this, tucked under a black spiral staircase that was salvaged from a Montreal apartment, there’s an electric grand piano with black lacquer so shiny you can see your reflection in it. Joel picked it out from his grandfather’s showroom after he passed in 2018. (By the by, his grandfather, Roy, ran Fawcett Organ and Pianos in Winchester for more than 65 years). There’s also a giant slab of carved wood that Joel painted to look like a vintage gas pump, complete with a Shell Gasoline logo. There are tools and wild art and funny hand painted signs that say things like “Drop Acid, Not Bombs” and “Trespassers will be prostituded” (sic). My personal fave is The Tinker Bell, an intricate contraption with a hand crank that moves a series of long nails and rings a set of small bells. It’s freakish and yet so mesmerizing. Everywhere you look, there are unique items like these. And they’re all part of Joel Fawcett’s most wonderful — and as we say in the title, “curious”—world.
All photos: Olivia Barton/Olivia Lynn Design
Now 35, Joel continues his deliberate cultivation of wonderment and adventure. He was always curious, he says, but when he started hitchhiking across the continent at age 18, leaving behind the small-town life, that’s when he really started living. First, he went west. Then, he went East. For his final journey, he travelled from Chesterville to California.
“There was just so much out there in the world and it blew my mind. I don’t like to say I got addicted to the highway but that’s probably an accurate description.” His circumnavigation of North America lasted about half a decade, he says, and was so full of stories and characters that he had to write a book about it. And that is how he eventually got into publishing and bookbinding.
After about four years of writing Stained Glass, a novel he calls “a farfetched version of my diary”, Joel researched his options for getting it published.
“I was blown away at the cost of getting it into public hands,” he said. One publisher was so bold as to say the young author wouldn’t make it very far without his services. The very next day, Joel drove to Toronto and purchased the equipment to publish his own books. Nobody puts Joel in a corner.
That was the start of Chickadilly Studio, a small, off-the-grid publishing, bookbinding, and graphic design business that Joel runs with his wife, Stephanie, in Chesterville.
“We met when I was living under her neighbour’s tree in Winchester,” he explains with a mischievous glint in his eye. “She was 16 going on 17, and I was 20. Stephanie thought I was being romantic with all the candlelight, but really I just had no power.”
The couple is busy with many “projects”, the most important being the raising of their two bright and free-spirited children, Alice, 6, and Felix, 3. Chickadilly Studio—which has so far published 10 books, seven penned by Joel—is now mainly run by Stephanie, a quiet, creative type who loves to wander in the family’s van and camper setup (they call it the “Crazy Train”). She loves dreaming up new ideas, too, making her a great adventure partner. For his part, Joel spends his time making commissioned art pieces, finishing up the cabin that houses the studio, and running Top Notch Tree Service, a company he founded right around the time his firstborn entered this world. His summers are busy maintaining, removing and trimming trees, and, wait for it…chainsaw carving. If you drive by the studio, you’ll see the big wooden bunny standing guard at the roadside entrance and a full-size nutcracker to the left of the cabin door. When we spoke, he was working on his next order: a jackalope for someone’s lodge and a carved wedding bench.
“I have no idea how people find me,” he says. “And I never know what project will come across my doorstep. I like it like that.”
The longer you talk to Joel, the more the wild stories flow. They come rumbling and tumbling out of him, arguably the overflow of his soul. There’s no telling what will come next for him and his large-living family, but I can’t wait to read the book. I know it won’t be boring.
