Joe McWilliams
Lakeside Leader

At the moment, Paul Kitchen of Slave Lake has around 80 canaries in a shed he built for the purpose in his back yard. They are cute little birdies of various hues, capable of some pretty, trilling birdsong. It’s a hobby for him, that grew from ownership of a single pair.

“I was only going to start with one pair,” he says. “But then I saw how many varieties there were.”

It’s safe to say he got hooked.

Now he’s got at least half a dozen varieties of canary, including lizards, yellow opal, red mosaic, harlequin, red mosaic egg and yellow border. Some are in two larger cages, with access to a wire enclosure open to the air. Others are in smaller cages – some of them for breeding or incubating. Breeding season is just over, he says; three nests still have young ones in them.

How it got started, Kitchen says, goes back to his childhood, when he raised and showed exotic chicken breeds on the family farm in southwestern Ontario. Later he learned his great uncle had raised budgies and a great aunt kept canaries.

“I didn’t see it, but when I learned that they had them, it interested me.”

He’s had canaries now since 2013 – first in his basement and more recently in the backyard structure.
Besides looking after the birds, he does two things with them: sells them and shows them – at one provincial show and one national, in Ontario. He’s a member of the Northern Alberta Cage Bird Association, whose annual show is in Edmonton in the fall.

“I meet other breeders and pick up good breeding stock,” he says.

The Ontario event is called the Canadian National Cage Bird Show and Expo. The last one of those Kitchen went to he made a connection that resulted in 10 new birds that he brought home to Slave Lake. New breeding stock is often of European origin, he says. The birds are brought in, quarantined, and then become available for purchase.

Canaries are small finches, native to the Canary Islands and the Azores.