Woodworking through crisis
Couple has suffered many setbacks, and pandemic is just one more hurdle to overcome
If you ever meet Bruce Asbil at a craft show, search his face for scars. There’s one on his right cheek, a wound from his beloved woodcraft. There’s another one on his forehead, a reminder of the car accident 23 years ago that claimed about eight millimetres of his frontal lobe, leaving him with lasting memory problems.
These scars are reminders of the rough times Bruce and his wife, Tracie Siegle, have endured. All families have their misfortunes; Asbil and Siegle have had more than their share. There was the car crash in their 20s, followed by a cancer diagnosis for each of them, in their 30s and 40s, respectively.
Now they’re both 50, and they’re shifting their small woodturning business to survive the global pandemic by moving it online.
“COVID is just another obstacle in this crazy word we call ‘life.’ Bruce has had so many restrictions put on him. We both have,” Siegle said in an email.
“It does not mean you cannot still have a happy, productive and meaningful life.”
The effects of the 1997 crash still linger. The couple were then living in Kemptville, near Ottawa. Siegle was a library technician; Asbil was a high school wood-shop teacher and accomplished woodworker. He designed sleek high-end wood furniture with graceful curves that was featured in magazines.
The couple were driving their brand new blue minivan back home from Toronto on Dec. 7 after picking up a gun rack to work on from one of Asbil’s clients. He was tired. Siegle took over the drive in Kingston. Asbil took off his glasses and reclined the passenger seat as she steered them home on Highway 401. Somewhere between Gananoque and Brockville, a semi-trailer veered across the median and hit them head on.
“This time of year is hard for
me,” Siegle said in a FaceTime interview. “Bruce doesn’t remember. He calls Dec. 7 his day of rebirth.”
“Day of rebirth,” Asbil echoed. Asbil broke bones in his face and suffered a catastrophic brain injury. He lost part of his frontal lobe as a result of the accident, the part of the brain responsible for expressing emotions, memory, problem solving and more. Siegle, for her part, suffered soft-tissue damage that still causes chronic pain.
Asbil spent until Christmas Eve in an induced coma. He woke with double vision and profound anger. After many surgeries, doctors eventually rebuilt his forehead with a plastic mould and tissue from his thighs.
When the couple were finally able to return home after 10 months, life was still full of physiotherapists, occupational therapists, psychologists, counsellors and more.
Slowly, Asbil relearned how to read and how to solve problems. His anger began to fade.
With the help of a vocational worker, Asbil built up enough stamina and hand-eye co-ordination to work with wood once again, though he couldn’t return to teaching.
“I’m a woody at heart and always will be,” he said. “Have to be.”
The client who owned the gun
rack gave Asbil a lathe worth about $10,000 to help him reposition himself as a woodturner. Instead of crafting furniture, he now creates smaller items such as pepper mills, pens and bowls by shaping the wood with tools as the lathe spins it.
The couple moved to a rural property near Peterborough, where Asbil started converting their two-car garage into a wood shop.
But before long, he was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma and began chemotherapy. His friends from the local woodturners guild finished the shop while he was undergoing treatment.
The couple opened a small business selling Asbil’s products, BwA Woodturning. They started with one craft show, then two, building their business up slowly. Siegle runs the money side; her father Henry
helps them at the shows because both halves of the couple tire easily. Asbil and Henry chat with customers, crack jokes and explain Asbil’s woodturning process.
“They love to spin tales,” Siegle said. “They’re a hoot and they seem to have always done very well with the ladies.”
Soon after Siegle turned 40, she got a diagnosis of her own — bladder cancer — followed in quick succession by two surgeries.
The couple doesn’t dwell on the details, though. To them, each diagnosis was just another hurdle.
And that’s how they view the pandemic. The cancellation of craft shows initially threatened their business, leaving them without a way to meet customers face to face.
With the help of a government program, Siegle set up awebsite and moved BwA online. She taught herself how to take professional-looking photographs of Asbil’s creations with her phone. She connects with customers by email, social media, and online markets such as Shop Signatures and HandMade for the Holidays.
The garage-turned-workshop became Asbil’s sanctuary. He blasts AC/DC and sings along as the lathe spins, taking frequent breaks for naps and to show Siegle his work, and so she can remind him what he’s supposed to make next.
These days Asbil is crafting smaller, easily malleable items, such as tree ornaments and brightly coloured, wood-handled ice-cream scoops. He’s also turned out hundreds and hundreds of eye-popping acrylic seam rippers for sewing that fit inside bubble mailers for easy shipping.
The couple still connect with their customers, writing personalized emails when responding to inquiries and orders. And they recognize those who are helping them along in this remote new world, sometimes leaving a box of Turtles in the mailbox for the carrier who picks up their many packages.
“So many people have been good to us for so many reasons,” Siegle said. “I think this whole pandemic would be better if people would just step back and be kind.”
She sees parallels between the frustration Asbil experienced after the accident and how some people are responding to the pandemic. Siegle offers this advice: Remember you’re alive. Be thankful you are not sick. Be thankful for your family and for support, however it comes.
“You can just keep looking at it negatively or eventually you can say, ‘OK, we’re still here. How do we make this situation a better situation instead of continuously being angry about it?’ ” she said.
“Anger only hurts you,” Asbil said. “But (it’s) a big one to get by.”