From burning money to inking skin
Tony St. Dennis: engraver, sculptor, tattoo artist
Not many people burn money for a living, but this is just how Tony St. Dennis spent his first week on the job at British American Bank Note Company Limited. (In 2014, the Ottawa-based security printing company was subsumed in the Canadian Bank Note Company.)
“I started working there in 1967 when I was released from high school,” says the Almonte resident. “I began by working on the floor and stayed with the company for 42 years.”
His first assignment was to burn faulty $10 bills — many skids of them stacked six feet high. It was a dramatic beginning to an unusual career that touched various art forms and led him to another unusual career in retirement. He is now an established tattoo artist.
It all began, says the grandfather of six, when he “turned left instead of right” after graduating from high school.
“In those days, you could get a job anywhere,” says St. Dennis. “If I had turned right, I would probably have worked for the government and retired at 55. Instead, because I had some artistic interests, I went to British American Bank Note.”
After some 18 months with the company, he was offered an apprenticeship in siderography. “A siderographer transfers engraved dies onto steel plates for printing,” he explains.
Following his five-year apprenticeship and another two as a journeyman siderographer, he was offered a second apprenticeship as an engraver. This, he says, was the aspect of the work that had led him to the company in the first place.
“I had been working closely with the engravers and would engrave a Christmas card for my wife, Theresa, every year,” says St. Dennis. “Most of them came from jewelry or stationary engraving and there were other artists there, too. I took training from them all.”
As a master engraver, one of his tasks was to engrave the signatures that appear on banknotes. But, he says, “I wasn’t pigeonholed into one area of engraving. I continued doing everything.”
His artistic interests remained important outside of his work. As the founder and a past president of the Almonte and Area Artists’ Association, he met artists who worked in various media. He found the work of one sculptor particularly interesting and decided to try his hand at stone sculpting.
“I had to prove to myself that I could do it,” he says. “I sold a few marble sculptures and have also done some soapstone carvings and worked in bronze. I also do etching, engraving and jewelry engraving. I enjoy art in all its forms.”
Soon after he retired, a new artistic challenge came his way. “When I was working at British American Bank Note, some of the guys would ask me to design tattoos for them,” he says. “Then, after I retired, a friend gave me some equipment so that I could try tattooing.”
He soon discovered a new talent, and his tattoo business “has gone crazy,” he says. Over the last few years, St. Dennis has made a name for himself as a tattoo artist, all the while continuing to work in other art forms as well. All the result, in poet Robert Frost’s words, of taking the path less travelled by 50 years ago.