Darrell Greer
Northern News Services

RANKIN INLET (Feb 17/99) - For Rankin Inlet's Mike Bruce, who will be celebrating his 71st birthday tomorrow, carving has been a way of life since his childhood in Coral Harbour.

Bruce was born in Coral Harbour on Feb. 18, 1928 and moved to Rankin Inlet in 1972. He says he began carving as a young fellow and has continued ever since. Bruce has been hospitalized three different times with lung troubles, having one removed, but says his hospital stays never stopped his carving.

"I went to the hospital on Oct. 10, 1948, first to Winnipeg and then to Brandon. I returned Oct. 10, 1953, five years to the day. My carvings were quite popular in the hospitals. They were always bought."

While Bruce is best known for his miniatures of hunting tools, specializing in the seal and walrus harpoons and the bird and fish spears, he has made many other carvings, one of which prompted an unusual sale while hospitalized.

"I had made a carving of a woman with rather large breasts," Bruce says laughing through an interpreter. "Anyway, this guy tells me he wanted to buy the carving, but only if I removed the breasts, so I had to remove them to make the sale."

Bruce puts a great deal of time and care into his miniatures. He says they are all pegged together and when he reaches a certain point where he has to glue them, he has to wait for the glue to dry properly for three or four days before he can continue.

Because of his breathing problems, carving can be very unpleasant for Bruce because of the dust involved with woodworking, but, he says, it's all worthwhile when he's completed his task.

"Seeing the finished product, what I made from nothing, is what I enjoy the most," says Bruce.

"I don't have that many of my own works at home because I get requests and the carvings sell as soon as I finish them."

Bruce has only recently returned home from the hospital and says he feels he might be able to start carving again soon.

"Part of what I do is to preserve my culture because everything I carve I have used in my lifetime, except for the bird spear which I've never seen used, but the other three I have used myself to hunt.

"One main reason I continue to make these miniature tools is to preserve how they look and what their functions are."