Toni Onley

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Toni Onley (born Norman Antonio Onley) was a Manx-Canadian painter known for his watercolors of landscapes. He was born on November 20, 1928, in Douglas, Isle of Man, and moved to Canada in 1948, settling in Brantford, Ontario. He studied art at the Doon School of Fine Arts with Carl Schaefer and later studied in Mexico at the Instituto Allende (1957–1958). He lived in Vancouver and Victoria, British Columbia, and painted many watercolors of the Canadian north and west. His work often features skies, ice, trees, water and coastlines, and he also created abstract pieces in the 1960s, including the Polar series. He received several honors, including membership in the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts, a Canada Council grant to England in 1963, and membership in the Canadian Society of Painters in Water Colour and the B.C. Society of Artists. He was made an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1999. On February 29, 2004, he died in a plane crash on the Fraser River near Maple Ridge, British Columbia, while practicing take-offs and landings in a Lake LA-4-200 Buccaneer amphibious plane.