Most people come back from a trip to Switzerland with a Toblerone or two, a watch if you’re lucky. But David James came back with something harder to find: the conviction to build Made in Canada watches to Swiss standards. The result is Calgary-based Enchant.
Canada has actually had much more of an impact on global timekeeping than you might think; one famous Canadian was largely responsible for the concept of timezones. As with a lot of early timekeeping, the reason behind the idea was a practical necessity for the railways that were spreading across North America in the 1800s. Everywhere used solar time for their timetables. When a horse was the fastest way to travel, that didn’t hugely matter, but once trains sped things up, those different concepts of noon caused confusion across the lines.
Sir Sandford Fleming, a consultant for the Canadian Pacific Railway – later the Canadian National Railway – therefore proposed a solution. He divided the world into 24 timezones, spaced evenly along longitudinal lines. In 1884, 27 countries met for the convening of the International Meridian Conference and Fleming’s idea became reality, with London at its heart.
Interesting historical aside as it is, there’s a more salient point to Fleming’s story; he and the Canadian railways are the direct inspiration behind Enchant’s debut collection, the Canadian Nord.
Styled after vintage railway pocket watches, the Canadian Nord has a classic small seconds layout, hours and minutes on central feuille hands and a fitting railway minute track around the periphery. A large, easily gripped crown rounds off a large, 44mm case for maximum legibility.
While original railroad watches would have been crisp white with black numerals, Enchant instead draws from the landscapes that would have been passing by travellers of the Canadian Pacific Railway, with in-house dials in deep Forest Green, Navy Blue Voyageur, and crisp White Glacier. The first two pair the sunburst, coloured dials with silver hands; the third is more traditionally Swiss with white lacquer and thermally blued steel hands.
Inside is the ETA calibre 6489, a manual-wind number with a 52-hour power reserve which, as you can see through the sapphire caseback, has top-grade finishing with edged bridges and contrasting blued steel screws. It’s a proven fine Swiss manual-wind calibre set into a watch entirely assembled in Canada. It’s also a pocket watch movement, which makes its use in a large, 44mm watch inspired by railroad pocket watches the perfect fit.
With prices starting from £3,301, the Canadian Nord is a solid debut. It has all the hallmarks of classical Swiss watchmaking but with a distinctive Canadian flavour and in-house dials. But on that final note, Enchant is set to take things one step further with a more direct appreciation of Canadian landscapes using the demanding metiers d’art of miniature painting.
Enchant’s David James isn’t the only person to draw inspiration from the rugged Canadian landscape. Between 1920 and 1933 The Group of Seven did just that. Renowned for using bold colours and thick paint to capture the Canadian wilderness on canvas, the art collective would travel to remote locations to paint en plein air. The best-known image associated with the group is probably Thomson’s The Jack Pine — a lone pine rising from a rocky foreground in fierce colour. Between the intense colour contrasts, use of thick paint strokes and Post-Impressionist style, it inspired an entire school of artists to follow suit.
Enchant takes a similarly influential work – Group of Seven co-founder Lawren Harris’s Lake and Mountains – and miniaturises it over the course of 25 days onto a watch dial. Using a paint brush thinner than a single hair, it’s a faithful interpretation of a work 30 times larger. Despite being sized to fit a 40mm case, there’s no loss of impact or detail, down to Harris’s thick signature brush strokes.
If the Nord proved Enchant could assemble watches in Canada to Swiss standards, the Rare Handcraft collection asks what else the country can do. Necessarily limited to 10 pieces and priced at around CAD $40,000 (approx. £22,000), it’s a substantially different proposition, but no less Canadian than Enchant’s railway-inspired debut.
By combining historical storytelling with Swiss watchmaking sensibilities, Enchant is beginning to set itself apart from the growing Canadian independent watch scene. With two very different collections – one accessible, one artisan – they’re only just getting started. Canada might be a long way from becoming a global hub of watchmaking, but with brands like Enchant, it’s a part of the world every collector should be keeping an eye on.
More details at Enchant.
