While he’s whittling away for hours at a time in his basement workshop on Cariboo Trail, woodcarver Don Caldwell makes a point of staying true to the craft, the style, the subject, its essence, and no detail is meaningless.
Nearly every piece Caldwell has carved in the last 38 years, it’s fair to say, has a story – something he’s either made up for the animal he created, or something he’s seen himself in the wild.
Having spent most of his professional life in the wilderness of western Canada, working with Alberta’s Fish & Wildlife agency for more than 20 years, before he retired in 1979, and bought a ranch in the Cariboo and took a job as the director of the British Columbia Guide Outfitters Association, representing the guiding industry for another 14 years, he has seen a lot.
“It’s coloured my thinking on a whole lot of issues,” says Caldwell of his time outdoors, while looking over the bear, moose, deer, elk, orca, seal, ram, raven and cougar figures on the large bookshelf in his living room in 100 Mile House.
He knows most of these animals and their anatomy and he talks about the pleasing aesthetic lines and natural shapes he tries to capture when he carves them.
The origin of one piece Caldwell goes more in depth about is one called “Snack Time.” It’s a grizzly bear perpetually propping up a large rock with one paw and feasting on the grubs and ants underneath. Caldwell and his wife, Marg, were just married years ago when they saw this grizzly in southern Alberta, doing the same thing near an old mill site in a mountainous area southwest of Pincher Creek.
“I took her with me on patrol one day,” Caldwell explains.
“We were really fortunate. We were able to watch him for about 40 minutes or more [from about 250 yards away]. This is what he was doing. He’d put this [boulder] down; go a few feet, smelling, and lift another one up.”
Caldwell estimates the rocks must have weighed between 300 and 400 pounds.
“They’re an incredible animal,” he says of the grizzly. He had to carve him.
Another source of inspiration Caldwell mentions is Northwest Coast Indian art, particularly the Haida art form. Caldwell talks about staying true to the Haida art form, while at the same time mixing some of its ancient elements with some of his own ideas. He’s created some great award-winning pieces that way.
He doesn’t regularly sell his carvings, but he did donate one carving to Bridge Lake Elementary School, which fetched nearly $700, and sold another one, a chief’s walking stick, which went for about the same, close to $700.
Asked why he doesn’t regularly his sell his carvings, when there’s clearly a good market for them, Caldwell smiles and answers that Marg won’t let him. It seems she really loves the figures he creates and wants to keep them to admire. (She also mentions maybe passing them down to their children one day.)
Downstairs, in Caldwell’s workshop, there’s a cork board tacked with over half-a-dozen blue and red first- and second-place ribbons from carving contests in Kamloops and the Shuswap. Caldwell says he doesn’t know any other woodcarvers in town, and that woodcarving shows and contests are in decline.
“It’s an awesome pastime. [But] it’s not easy. It’s something you have to work at.”
Another question is put to him – Is woodcarving a lost art? – which he considers a moment before answering.
“I hate to say this, but good carving, probably is. What I see, and I really don’t like it, is a lot of made for tourists stuff – more mass-produced – they don’t care about the detail one way or another.”
