Skip to content
Join our Newsletter

Saw strokes

Carving chairs with a chainsaw is an art and a symbol
1531saw
John Hurford

You can carve just about anything, whether ice, soap or stone, even meat and bone. You start with something whole and begin to cut and craft, in the process removing the totality of a thing to produce an object that’s somehow more complete, that has a shape and size people relate to on a deeper level. It’s an art.

John Hurford starts with a stump. Then he fires up a chainsaw, usually a Husqvarna of about 15 pounds, his favourite on account of their shape and balanced weight. He chews through the stump, dust and chips streaming aside, until a stylized chair begins to emerge. And then he gives it away. That’s the process, the art.

“Just about all the carving I’ve ever done is for a group or activity or something,” he says. “I don’t carve them for myself.”

Aside from recent bouts of rain, the sun has been beaming steady for over a month through the spotty tree canopy of Al McIntosh Loggers Sports Grounds. With the annual Squamish Days event set for this weekend, volunteers and local athletes have been milling about the area with mounting zeal, the hum of heavy equipment gently vibrating the chain link fencing that encircles the gaming grounds.

That’s where Hurford has been spending most of his time. He sits by a woodstove just south of the main field, one foot on the ground while the other, which is broken and heavy with a cast, is propped up on the crossbar of his crutch. Dressed in an orange T-shirt and blue shorts, the bespectacled Hurford seems unfazed by the injury, maybe because he sustained it while volunteering on these very grounds.

Hurford started getting cozy with chainsaws when he was about 15 years old. Fifteen or so years later, carving was just something he got into, kind of like how microwaving cold pizza sets some kids on a path to culinary excellence. He’s shy about his age, but it’s safe to assume there’s a few decades of experience behind each tug of the starting handle.

His involvement with Squamish Days has seen him carve chairs all over the world, from here to Austria. In the ’80s, when the late Johnny Cash came to Squamish to perform at the event, Hurford and a buddy carved the man a chair.

“We had a stage that we built on a semi-trailer,” he remembers. “It was a Friday evening, and Johnny Cash was doing his thing. We carved the chair for him, and then he invited us into his trailer, and we went in and talked to him for 15 or 20 minutes. He took the chair with him. He’s not around anymore, so it’s even more important.”

But seldom are the recipients of such notoriety. More often than not, they’re kids or foreigners, people from countries not so steeped in forestry traditions. And, when chairs are carved under the auspices of Squamish Days, there’s always a charity benefiting from the proceeds of raffling them off. This year, it’s Big Brothers and Big Sisters Squamish. Called the Squamish Station World Championship Chair Carve, this year’s event runs for over two hours and starts at 3 p.m. Friday, Aug. 1.

Hurford took the title last year.

“The best one doesn’t necessarily mean the most technical one — it’s just the one that’s most appealing,” he says. “In my case last year, I carved something that was pretty popular and still would be: I carved an inukshuk into the back.”

The back is the canvass, the slate into which a symbol is carved. Other carvers use the whole chair for expression; Hurford has a photo of a chair carved into a toilet, a difficult task, he notes. It’s up to the crowd to pick the winning design.

“There’s a lot of people watching, so we ask for volunteers who have come from a long ways away — not locals, because they know who we are. They come up, and it’s one, two, three.”

Hurford isn’t too sure how chainsaw carving was born. Odds are, he says, people have been at it since chainsaws were invented, with the modern, gas-powered version coming to life in the 1920s. Just the same, he’s passing on the art, training Jacqueline McNickle, or LumberJacqueline, as the boys calls her. She’s got a few practice chairs kicking around the gaming grounds, one with a maple leaf back and the other a pine tree.

Those are enduring symbols, each one invoking Canadiana, hard work and, especially in the case of the latter, a way of life, one that seems to be ailing in British Columbia. Seldom do you find art without symbols, regardless of their implications. And creating symbols can sometimes be a personal thing; even if the meaning doesn’t resonate with the artist, the process often does. Is it hard, then, for Hurford to give away every last one of his creations? Have there not been some he’s wanted to keep?

“I’ve carved some I didn’t want to give away,” he says with a chuckle, “because they were so bad.”