Valhallarc offers a wide range of archery and bow-making products. Everything is made in Quebec, using local materials and partners.
The rhythm inside Valhallarc’s workshop is deliberate: a drawknife sweeps along white ash, shavings fall like curled feathers, and a stave slowly wakes into a bow. Its maker, Benois Paradis, treats every stroke as a link in a chain that runs back to hunters who stalked Québec forests centuries ago. Valhallarc exists for that chain: wood, muscle memory, and inherited technique. Because Benoit believes heritage is meant to be practiced, not preserved under glass.
A childhood spent fashioning wobbly backyard bows led him, years later, to train with master bowyers whose combined experience tops a century. Today, he builds two families of traditional bows. “Primitive” models are carved from a single log, each grain line guiding its own geometry. Laminated versions pair local hardwoods with hickory backings for draw weights suited to modern archers. Handles receive moose or deer leather from nearby tanneries. The goal is utility that ages with its owner, not showroom polish.
Passing that knowledge on matters as much as perfect limb alignment. Through weekend intensives, he teaches participants to fell a sapling, split it, carefully season it over the weekend, and coax its natural curve with controlled heat and patience. Students leave with sore shoulders and a new respect for materials, but more importantly with the confidence to repeat the process for the next generation. Benois frames his mission simply: share techniques too often forgotten so they endure for years to come.
Filming our People We Met segment, we asked why he refuses CNC routers or mass production. He set the stave aside and answered in a whisper the room could still hear: “A bow stores more than energy. It holds the wisdom of everyone who shaped wood before us. Lose the touch and you lose the wisdom.” In the finished curve you can read that conviction, rings of time, hours of quiet craftsmanship, and a promise that progress is possible only when roots run deep.
Benoit Paradis invites every archer, crafter, and nature-seeker to pick up that promise, draw it to the chin, and send heritage flying forward.
