Ken Danby, 67; Canadian realist painter known for image of a hockey goalie

Ken Danby, 67, a popular Canadian realist painter best known for his 1972 image “At the Crease,” depicting a masked hockey goaltender, died Sunday while canoeing in Canada’s Algonquin Provincial Park in northern Ontario.

Greg McKee, manager of the Danby Studio in Guelph, Ontario, said Danby was believed to have suffered a heart attack. The official cause of death will not be known until an autopsy is completed.

Danby’s realistic painting of a masked ice-hockey goalie hunched in the crease is considered by many to be a Canadian national symbol.

Born March 6, 1940, in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, Danby enrolled in the Ontario College of Art in 1958 and by the mid-1960s had found commercial success. In 2001, he was vested in both the Order of Ontario and the Order of Canada -- one of Canada’s highest honors.