Meet the woman behind a miniature world with a lifetime of stories
Ann Ernst, 82, has created about 20 intricate miniature scenes since the mid-1990s
Ann Ernst insists it's just a coincidence that her cat, who likes to hop up on the dining room table among her intricate miniature creations, is named Minni.
"It doesn't have a hidden meaning," Ernst said while surrounded in her Dartmouth, N.S., home by about 20 of the scenes she's crafted since the mid-1990s.
The 82-year-old picked up the hobby later in life and has become a prolific creator. Each piece is lovingly packed with colour, characters and countless details — some of which can only be spotted with Ernst as a tour guide through her miniature world.
"I just feel that if there's not a story there then I can't do it," she said.
"I have to have something that sort of hangs it together before I can create something. It's just got to have some meaning."
Each miniature — or mini as she calls them — has a narrative. Working at one-twelfth the scale to real life, she creates most of what goes into the minis from scratch. Anything she can't build herself she buys online.
It's why her family likes to call her techno-Granny.
"Heaven help us with the [U.S.-imposed] tariffs," she said with a laugh.
Getting the materials she needs isn't as easy as it used to be. Local stores dedicated to the hobby have closed. The closest place to order is The Little Dollhouse Company in Toronto, Ernst said.
"There's just nothing here in Nova Scotia that you can just say, 'Oh, I'm just going run over to the miniature store. I need a dresser. I need a table. I need a sideboard or something.' You just can't do it."
From selling veggies to green fees
The stories behind her scenes are about as diverse as her own. Ernst grew up a fisherman's daughter in Pleasantville, N.S.
Later in life, her family opened a retail market where they sold vegetables grown on their 20-hectare farm in the Westphal area of Dartmouth, where she lives today.
"Then we got tired of selling vegetables so we decided to build a golf course," said Ernst, adding no one in their family was a golfer at the time.
She said it was her family that carved Grandview Golf Course out of the landscape just down the road from her. She managed the course for 18 years. They sold it in 2006.
Since becoming enamored of the miniature world, she's joined the group Miniature Crafters of Nova Scotia.
"I've had my hands in a lot of little things," she said.
Not for sale
Ernst has no interest in selling her work. Instead, she's given many of her works to her children.
But that means they each have a piece of their mother at home, since Ernst likes to include a detail from her life into each one. One such detail includes a photo of her husband of 62 years, in his younger RCMP days, framed on a shelf.
If anyone happens to gaze upon her creations, she just asks that they absorb the stories she's trying to convey.
"I would like them to think about what they're seeing and not just say, 'Isn't that cute,'" she said.
"There's more to it than that."
