Terry Halifax
Northern News Services

Fort Smith (Dec 06/99) - Carver Sonny MacDonald has retired, but he hasn't slowed down one bit. Sitting as an advisor on five boards, Sonny continues to donate his time and his craft to the people of the North.

"The only thing I don't like about retirement is there are no days off," he jokes.

A smiling bear of a man, the people of the North have come to know Sonny as a man quick to crack a joke or share a story.

His talent to captivate an audience with a story, or his ability make people laugh, pales in comparison to his talents in carving with a variety of media such as wood, antler, ivory, stone and even mammoth ivory.

Sonny was born just south of 60, but has spent most of his life just across the line, in Fort Smith, NWT.

"I was born in the Muskeg," he said. "On the shores of Lake Athabasca in Fort Chipewyan, Alta.

"My folks hunted and trapped -- lived off the land," he recalled. "I lost my dad at a very early age, I was only five years old."

All the kids pitched in to help mom out, but it was a hard life growing up, he said.

He took up carving as a diversion and has been carving as long as he can remember.

"When I was just a pup, I acquired a pocket knife and I started whittling crutches out for slingshots and little boats made out of the bark of the black poplar tree -- even to the point where I'd carve a motor out on the back and made a little prop out of tin."

In his late teens, Sonny went to work in the mine at Uranium City at the age of 17.

"I lied about my age so I could work underground -- you had to be 18," he said. "I was a big strapping young pup and I never shied away from hard work."

When the mines closed down, Sonny moved out to British Columbia for while before joining his brother in Fort Smith, where he went to work on the powerline.

It was in Smith where he met Helen Hudson.

"I liked her cheeky attitude," he recalled through a smile. "I asked her to join me for coffee and it was love at first bite."

At the time, Sonny was working the line from the Talston River dam to the mine at Pine Point.

"I made arrangements with the drugstore to order an engagement ring and we were engaged in a booth in the Pinecrest Hotel," he said.

While out in camp he continued to carve, finding unique roots and stumps to whittle away at night.

His work was doing well at the shows he attended, but working exclusively in wood, he felt he needed to expand his horizons.

"Years back I used to just carve in wood," he said. "When I started to go to shows and exhibitions, people would ask, 'Do you carve in anything else?'

"So I kind of took it to heart that there are other materials I could be using," he recalled. "I began using the natural material more than anything else -- going with the grain, texture and the flow of the material and that's what sets me aside from many other carvers.

"I use what materials are on hand and that really keeps my costs down," he said. "Moose antler, deer, caribou, buffalo, muskox, Dall sheep and ivory -- whatever is readily available."

Sonny was commissioned to carve a chair for the Pope's visit to Fort Simpson in 1987. He spent hours on carving and designing the ornate throne.

"I was testing this chair time and again to see if it felt right," he recalled. "Unbeknownst to me His Holiness was a little shorter than I was.

"So about an hour before for the Pope arrived in Fort Simpson, they had to go out into the forest to cut a tree down to make a footrest, otherwise his feet would have been dangling down," he laughed.

"I spent about 100 hours working on that chair and His Holiness sat in it for all of 22 minutes," he recalled.

Every piece he carves has a story, but Sonny said his favourite is one was one about a boy, a loon and a market-grade hog.

"I was doing an art show in Edmonton back in '92 or '93 -- the Dreamspeakers Festival," he recalled.

"I had a loon there and many other items, but the loon had become kind of my signature."

"A young man asked how much this loon was and I quoted him the price," he recalled.

"He said, 'Oh I'd sure like to get that for my mother's birthday. I'm a little short of cash right now,' but he came back the next day and asked again what the price was," Sonny said.

"I told him I'd be prepared to knock a hundred dollars off.

"He said, 'God, I'd like to have that for my mother's birthday.'"

On the third day of the exhibition, the loon had still not sold and once again, the young man showed up to admire the carving.

"Just out of the clear blue I said, 'I'm an old horse trader from way back, you got any horses to trade?'" Sonny continued. "He said, 'No but I do have some pigs -- market hogs that run about 135 pounds each.'"

The boy's father had given him 15 hogs to raise and market as he'd seen fit.

"I said, 'If you get me one of those hogs all butchered, the fat rendered, the hams cured, the bacon cured and we'll have a deal,'" he said.

"No word of a lie, his eyes lit up like saucers and he said, 'Do you mean that?' and I said, 'I do.'

"So we had a gentleman's handshake. I gave him the loon and I finished the show and went back North," he said.

Weeks went by and Sonny forgot all about the loon and the hog and the young man's handshake, when a delivery truck pulled up to Sonny and Helen's place.

"Here was this market hog all butchered up," Sonny beamed. "The fat was rendered and the hams were cured and the bacon was cured.

"At Christmas time I got a beautiful card from the boy's mother stating that this was the greatest thing that ever happened to her," he said. "Things like that you really appreciate."

His plans for retirement include working with other artists to establish an arts curriculum for Aurora College.

"I would like to teach in some respect -- I have many years of experience working with different mediums," he offered. "Once you have the ability to carve, it's just a matter of working with the material and the material has to work with you," he said.

"The biggest drawback we've come across is the wage paid to the instructors," he said. "In order to draw high profile artists as instructors, they have to be prepared to pay the price.

"It can't be a one- month course -- it would have to be at least a six-month course.

"I'd like to see an accredited course with a Northern focus, using the NWT diamonds which are in very high demand," he said. "Making brooches, earrings, rings and pendants incorporating a Northern theme very unique to the western territories."

He has no plans to slow down in his carving, with new plans in the works all the time. Sonny likens the pieces of art he carves to pieces of himself.

"For as many years as I've carved, you sell the carvings at what you think is the right price and it seems like you're selling a little bit of yourself...so when I'm about 80, I guess there won't be very much left of me," he said, breaking into a laugh.