‘She was incredibly happy to see everyone’
Ukrianian couple living in Corner Brook reunites with dog after year apart
Anastasiia Chaika travelled over 10,000 kilometres from Corner Brook to Kyiv, Ukraine, in February, only to turn around and come right back again.
After seven months of living in the province with her husband, Anton, the couple decided to bring their dog, Athena, home.
"The decision to return to Ukraine to pick up Athena was made as soon as my husband and I decided to stay here for good," Chaika said.
"We immediately liked this place and felt that we wanted to be here."
MISSING PIECE
The west coat's landscape and scenery were a big selling point for the Chaikas.
"We understand that people who have lived here for a long time may not notice these landscapes, but now we want to photograph every step," she said.
While falling in love with the ocean and mountains that spread across the west coast of Newfoundland, one piece was missing: their two-year-old German shepard, Athena, was still in Ukraine.
"Every day we remembered her, looked at photos when she was a puppy and dreamed that soon she would be with us again," Chaika said.
"We started planning this trip to pick her up from Ukraine as soon as we arrived in Canada."
THIRTY-FOUR HOUR JOURNEY
The couple couldn't wait to show their dog the ocean and take her on walks in a brandnew environment.
Chaika, alongside her brother and mother, booked their plane tickets back to Ukraine two months in advance.
It was a four-day round trip to bring Athena to Newfoundland and Labrador.
"We left Ukraine (Kyiv) for Germany (Frankfurt) by bus, and travelled for 34 hours," Chaika said.
GOOD GIRL
Athena behaved calmly the whole way.
"We were worried that she would disturb other passengers on the bus, but everyone was very pleased with her behaviour," Chaika said.
BEOTHUK SNOWSHOE REPLICAS
That challenge didn’t deter snowshoe crafter and retired teacher Dave Mercer.
As reported by Kay Burns in September 2017 for Saltwire, a collaboration between Mercer and renowned Beothuk scholar Dr. Ingeborg Marshall led to Mercer crafting Beothuk snowshoe replicas certified by the Department of Innovation, Trade and Rural Development. The dimensions are five feet long by 16 inches across.
“The snowshoe frame is made with birch,” Burns reported. “Mr. Mercer carefully selects straight trees, and using metal wedges he splits the birch along the grain into long narrow pieces. The birch pieces are boiled in an open cooker to soften the wood for bending. The webbing for the snowshoes is made of caribou skin.”
INCORPORATING NEW INTO OLD
Crawford sources, splits and softens the birch for his snowshoe frames in a similar manner.
However, his level of production requires foregoing traditional tools for power tools like a bandsaw, belt and palm sanders, a planer and a cordless drill along with hand tools like chisels, filers and stitching awls.
He also uses a selection of synthetic twines in lieu of traditional rawhide.
In a detailed and compelling eight-hour instructional video series shot in collaboration with Labrador-based non-profit Them Days and the Heritage Foundation of Newfoundland and Labrador, Crawford demonstrates the process of creating his handcrafted snowshoes from start to finish.
“When you go into the forest to search for a birch tree, what I usually try to do is cut out a small wedge in the bottom of the tree with a bucksaw,” Crawford explains in the video series.
“I only usually go in about an inch to an inch and half. Just a tiny wedge. That will give you an idea of the growth of the tree, regardless of what you think it looks like, to decide whether you’re going to select it for snowshoe making or not.”
THE RIGHT WOOD
It’s important to avoid areas where birch trees grow in high concentration and to find trees with the optimal number of rings per inch.
“If we can get one that’s in a heavy wet area, a loner tree with a lot of the boughs hanging down, that will be a good tree,” Crawford explains.
“It promotes a lot of growth, and most of the growth is in the trunk, which gives you big rings. The importance of these rings is the bending capability of the wood.”
According to Crawford, four rings per inch is ideal.
It’s also important to avoid knots in the wood. The knot compresses and bends the rings to the center of the tree and reduces flexibility.
The frames are made from green birch for pliability while the crossbeams are made from birch that’s seasoned for about six months for stability and strength.
Some customers prefer juniper or oak for the crossbeams, and the twine colour combinations for the filling are often selected by Crawford’s customers.
TIME-CONSUMING
On average, it takes 20-30 hours to fill a set of adult snowshoes in a handwork process of knots, twists and weaves using approximately 200 feet of twine.
“It is a vanishing art,” Crawford said.
“We need someone to pick it up. It’s difficult with respect to starting. It can be very awkward when you spend days and days in the woods trying to find the right birch, and it has to be the right birch or you waste your effort, but the feeling you get when you finish creating something, and being able to pass it along, is something we need to get someone to pick up and get someone to share that with us.”