SILVER FOX ART CONTEST 2026

Thank you, Salisbury.

This Saturday August 14th 2026 we celebrated the exhibition and award ceremony of the 1st Silver Fox Art Contest, as part of Community Days in Salisbury, in a very special place: the Gaxiola Art Gallery, Salisbury's first permanent art gallery.

Why a silver fox

More than a hundred years ago, in the early 1900s, a woman from Prince Edward Island boarded the wrong train and ended up in Salisbury. At the station she struck up a conversation with R.A. Brown, and from that conversation came the town's first purchase of silver foxes. That same year Fred Colpitts began with three pairs and went on to build the largest fox ranch in the British Empire. And it was not only businessmen. Business partners Connie Colpitts and Pearl Colpitts owned the Little River Fox Ranch, where they raised champion silver foxes and led sales at Hudson's Bay. Our foxes topped the sales in Montreal, New York and London. That is why Salisbury is, to this day, "Home of the Silver Fox."

That era ended with the Second World War, and today no ranches remain. The descendants of those foxes run free through our woods, and that is worth celebrating too, because we now understand better than we once did that a wild animal deserves to live free.

What does remain alive is the story. And a story only stays alive as long as someone keeps telling it.

Imagen from: ALBERT COUNTY MUSEUM & RB BENNETT CENTRE

Silver Fox, 1970 Salisbury, Westmorland County, Canada.

Which is why we held this contest

In September 1940, Salisbury held a fox-raising contest. Eighty-six years later, our town gathered once again around the same animal, this time with pencils, brushes and tablets in hand. When a three-year-old draws a silver fox, they are touching a century-old story without knowing it. When an adult artist paints one among wildflowers, she is telling that same story in different words. That is what art does: it turns the past into something you can feel, not just read on a plaque, and that is the very purpose that drives the Salisbury Arts and Culture Centre.

Imagen from: ALBERT COUNTY MUSEUM & RB BENNETT CENTRE

A group of men at a fox raising contest held in Salisbury. 19 September 1940, Salisbury, Westmorland County, Canada.

And why this space matters

28 artists from our community, aged 3 to 43, took part. Every one of them received a certificate, because each piece was an act of courage.

But the best part didn't happen on the walls, it happened in the room. Neighbours greeting one another. Grandparents seeing their granddaughter's drawing hung like real artwork.

In a small town, the places where people gather without having to buy anything or belong to anything have become rare. That is what nourishes a town: gatherings. And the ones that begin in childhood last the longest, because a child who saw their work hanging in a gallery at five years old knows, forever, that what they make has a place in the world.

GAXIOLA ART GALLERY AND PARTICIPANTS

Imagen from:  (GMR)

🏆 Our winners

Category A · Ages 3 to 6 

🥇 Hannah Gaxiola — Flory el Silver Fox de Salisbury 

🥈 Hailey Amarah Santiago LeBlanc — Many Hues, One Heart 

🥉 Madelyn Guthro — Fox on a Walk

Category B · Ages 7 to 10 

🥇 Maddie Cormier — Silver Fox in Chalk 

🥈 Raven White — Fox in a Suit 

🥉 Avery Lewis — Town of Salisbury

Category C · Ages 11 to 14 

🥇 Fiona Lloyd — NB Icons 

🥈 Emma White — Elegant Fox 

🥉 Maddy Landry — Fox & the Chickadee

Category D · Digital Art 

🥇 Tessa Malone — Autumn Fox

Category E · Adults 

🥇 Stephanie Eagles — The Silver Watcher 

🥈 Catherine Leger — Among the Wildflowers 

🥉 Kathleen Lewis — Lavender Fox

With deepest gratitude

To our sponsors: Gaxiola Mexican Restaurant, Home Hardware, Dan's Damages, Independent, Art Camp, The Right Stop Market, Guardian Pharmacy and The Pizza Mill.

To the organizers: Salisbury Arts and Culture Centre, the Town of Salisbury and Arrow Amor.

PRIZES PROVIDED BY OUR LOCAL BUSINESS SPONSORS

Imagen from:  (GMR)

A very special thank you to our jury: Caroline Humar-Barrett, Alyssa Martin, Fabiola Martínez, Sarah Gaxiola and Mitl Gaxiola González. Evaluating 28 works in a single day, against clear criteria and entirely anonymously, is no small task. Thank you for giving us your time, your artists' eye and your commitment to fairness, so that every participant received an honest assessment of their work.

To the moms and dads: thank you for sitting down with your children, finding the materials and sending the photo in on time. A child's talent grows when someone takes it seriously, and you did.

To every artist, from three years old to forty-three. This contest existed because of you. And thank you to the Gaxiola family for opening this space at the Gaxiola Art Gallery and believing in art in Salisbury.

A town that knows its history and has somewhere to tell it is a town that will not lose itself. See you at the next one.

HISTORY SILVER FOX

The Silver Fox of Salisbury

Some towns carry their history in their name. Salisbury carries it in a nickname: "Home of the Silver Fox."

THE SILVER FOX

Alan Adams spotted this Silver Fox. Adams calls the Silver Fox brilliantly gorgeous. (Courtery of Alan Adamns)

It all began with a mistake. In 1914, a woman named Mrs. Tuplin, from a Prince Edward Island family involved in fox breeding, boarded the wrong train and ended up in Salisbury. The station agent, R.A. Brown, offered her hospitality, and in that conversation he heard for the first time about the fortunes being made from the silver fox. Intrigued, Brown purchased the first pair of silver foxes in Salisbury. A conversation between strangers changed the economic destiny of an entire town.

That same year, Fred Colpitts, a native of Little River, bought three pairs of foxes. From that beginning grew what would become the largest ranch in the British Empire. Through selective breeding, Colpitts refined the coat to a highly prized shade of silver and developed what became known as the Platinum Fox, drawing visitors from around the world to the area. His foxes led sales figures in Montreal, New York and London; a matched pair once sold for $5,000, more than $100,000 in today's money.

To put it in perspective: in the 1920s a pair of foxes cost between $500 and $1,000, and each pelt sold for $75 to $300. Together, the ranches of this region formed the largest group of fox farms in the world. Here, along these roads, among these farms.

SALISBURY NEW BRUNSWICK

Imagen from:  (Courtery of Mitl Gaxiola)

And it was not only businessmen. Pearl Colpitts and Connie Colpitts owned the Little River Fox Ranch, where they raised champion silver foxes and led sales at Hudson's Bay. There is even a photograph of a fox-raising contest held in Salisbury on September 19, 1940. Our town was already gathering around the fox more than eighty years ago.

How Life Was Then, and What We Have Learned

In those days, raising animals to sell their fur was completely normal and no one questioned it. Clothing made from animal skins was in fashion, and all of this happened before the animal rights movement existed. The families of Salisbury were not cruel or bad people: they were doing what their time considered honest, respectable work

But the truth about how those foxes lived must also be told. The animals spent their lives in wire pens roughly ten feet square, with a wooden box for shelter, and visitors were not even allowed near them, because the fox is a shy animal and naturally afraid of humans. A fox is a wild creature: born to run for miles, dig dens, hunt and hide. Confined for life to a small pen, and raised only for its fur, it did not have the life a fox is meant to have.

Today we understand this much better. In Canada and in New Brunswick there are laws protecting animals from cruelty, and many countries around the world have banned fur farming altogether. In March 2022, the United Nations Environment Assembly adopted by consensus the first resolution in history devoted explicitly to animal welfare, recognizing that the welfare of animals is linked to the environment, to sustainable development, and to human health and well-being. In other words: the world agreed that caring for animals is not a small matter, but part of caring for the planet and for ourselves.

The End of an Era

The Second World War brought the industry to an end: the demand for furs disappeared. The ranches closed. Today no fox farms are known to operate in Salisbury, though some wild foxes in the area still carry those genes.

And that may be the most beautiful part of this story: the descendants of those foxes now run free through our woods and fields. No one raises them to be killed anymore. If you are lucky enough to see one crossing a road at dusk, wearing the silver coat that made Salisbury famous, you are seeing something your great-grandparents never saw: a Silver Fox living the life it was meant to live.

Which Is Why We Held This Contest

When a three-year-old draws a silver fox, they are touching a story more than a century old without knowing it. When 28 artists from our community spend time imagining the Silver Fox, they are doing what their great-grandparents did in 1940: gathering around this special animal.

That is what history is for. It is not a fact for a test or a plaque by the highway. It is knowing where we come from, acknowledging honestly what we once did and what we have learned since, and understanding that things can change for the better when a society decides to change them.

These works are how Salisbury keeps telling its own story through art. 

OUR GALLERY

Gaxiola Art Gallery

A Place Where Art Stays

Salisbury has always had art and artists of all ages. But what it has never had until now is a permanent place to live.The talent was always here among us, what was missing was an address where you could always find it. This is the new home base, a new hub for art, Gaxiola Art Gallery is Salisbury's first permanent art gallery.

Behind this project are years of work in Arts and Culture promotion. Since 2017, when Sarah Gaxiola and Mitl Gaxiola founded the Arrow Amor collective, this family has insisted that this small town deserves a cultural life of its own, without having to travel to the city to find it. From that same conviction came the non-profit organization Salisbury Arts and Culture Centre, which brings forward the Silver Fox Art Contest that inaugurates these walls today

When a community opens a permanent space for art, it says several things at once. That its artists deserve to be seen That a child who draws is not wasting their time. That beauty is not a luxury reserved for big cities, but something made here too, between the Petitcodiac River and Main Street. In a small town, the places where people gather without having to buy anything or belong to anything have become rare. A gallery is one of those few: you walk in freely, you look, you talk, you leave a little different. A man of seventy and a girl of five can stand in front of the same painting and find something to say to each other.

It is no accident that our opening exhibition is the Silver Fox Art Contest. Twenty-seven works by artists aged 3 to 43, all devoted to the symbol that defines this town. The gallery opens with the hands of the community itself, not with work brought in from elsewhere. That is exactly the spirit we intend to carry forward.

This space will be whatever Salisbury and it´s artist want it to be. There will be exhibitions, workshops, gatherings and, above all, opportunities for local artists to show what they make. Our commitment is to sustain it.

Welcome to the Gaxiola Art Gallery. It belongs to you.