If you’re driving through Hawkesville, you can’t miss it.
A seven-foot tall bear carved out of an old ash tree watches over the intersection of Geddes and Broadway streets from Shirley and Irv Bauman’s home.
“We noticed a lot of ash borer, so over the last couple of years we could tell the tree was dying on us. It’s a nice big old tree so we waited and waited as long as we dared, but then I was afraid that ice would start bringing the dead branches down and it hung over the road. So then I contacted Wellesley Township and they came and took it down, but my husband wanted them to leave a seven foot stump,” Shirley said.
Her husband was interested in chainsaw carving and enlisted the help of Bob Bauman from Elmira, who had taken up the unique brand of woodcarving as a hobby.
Bob and Irv started carving it together on Mar. 18 and finished it the next day.
“The Saturday that they were working on it, there was an auction sale just outside of town, so there were a lot of people through town, so there were a lot of people out there taking pictures and saying they were putting it on Facebook, and it wasn’t even done yet at that point,” Shirley said.
Shirley says because Bob is fairly new at it they decided to do a bear because it’s supposed to be one of the simpler designs, as opposed to carving a person. She says there’s no real significance in it being a bear. Bob brought along some pictures and a small figurine bear, which his carving is loosely based on.
“For awhile I thought I’ve got to get a name for it. I had a few different suggestions, and then I didn’t carry on with trying to come to a conclusion,” Shirley says with a laugh.
She expected it would be somewhat of an attention-getter because it’s the main intersection of town, but she didn’t expect it to become a point of reference.
“People in town here when we first had it there, there were a lot of people who commented, oh they really like that addition to Hawkesville. Up at Len’s Mill Store they’ve been telling me that they use it as a landmark now to tell people how to get to the store,” Shirley said.
A few years back a different ash tree was breaking on their property due to damage from ice and windstorms. They took it down and Irv was interested in the chainsaw carving at the time and turned it into a chair, which can be seen from the Broadway Street side of their home.
After finishing the large bear, Bob returned a few weeks later with a little wooden carved bear to sit on the chair.
And the two bears and the chair might be joined by another wooden friend in years to come as another ash tree near the back of their yard is dying, too.
“I don’t know if it’ll become something or not, but it seems like my husband’s on a bit of a kick for that. It won’t be this year. I think we want to keep it for as long as we can. It’s not over the road and so if branches come down it doesn’t scare me as much,” Shirley said.
The tree they cut down that was turned into the bear used to have dead branches that when weighed down could hang over the road, causing a safety concern.
She’s not sure, but she thinks she knows where her husband’s interest in wooden carvings like their bear came from –the Art Walk of Tree Sculptures in Orangeville.
“Whenever we drive through Orangeville we always look at the people carvings that are along the street there. It just looks so cool, so I think that’s where my husband got the idea,” she explained.
