In 2009, Great Canadian was proud to host Canadian pro photography team Horst & Shirley Baender, who traveled from Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan to Baker Lake to join two weeks of our special 'Dance with Caribou' trips. Horst has been involved in photography since the start of high school, taking photos of birds & bees and things that please. He was also a stock photographer with a number of agencies over the last thirty years. Due to the changing nature of stock, he quit that venue and instead he and Shirley market their images themselves by supplying retailers with products utilizing their images on products such as mouse pads, coffee cup coasters, art cards, as well as large framed images for office/home decor. Their retailer base includes four western provinces, the Yukon, NWT and soon Nunavut. All work is done 'in-house' by both Horst & Shirley, their main subject being unique prairie images, with wildlife being a relatively new subject. They have photographed the grizzly bears of the Khutzeymateen and the Kermodi bear of the west coast as well as polar bears in the Chuchill & Wapusk National Park areas.  Horst was educated as a forester at the University of B.C. in Vancouver, with additional field experience in Pleistscene (surficial) geology.