A monumental task....

Back in the summer of 2008 I was asked to assist the Curve Lake First Nations People in a community park project. In the center of their community sits a cenotaph stone dedicated to the people of their community who lost their lives in WW1, WW2 and Korea....

I was asked to design and organize the surrounding park area into a properly functioning space for annual community events. The place to start was with the monument itself!

After speaking with the committee, I got the sense of what they were looking for in terms of the monument. I decided to give it a better height and reposition it so that the face of the stone pointed in the right direction (facing the main entrance). The committee then told me that the monument was to sit in a medicine wheel with the red, white, yellow and black colours displayed in a proper order.

The Chief of Curve Lake requested to me that the base of this monument be made to last a couple hundred years or so... I designed it to be at least 6 inches thick with re-bar set in and also to have some foundation piers that go below frost.

The end result looks much like the concept drawing I did. The project is still in progress so the finished park will have to be photographed in the coming year...

I look forward to continue working with the people of Curve Lake on this project!

A Stone Mason in Toronto

A couple of years ago I was fortunate enough to meet up with a very talented group of stone masons working in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA).


Just a few examples of some stone masonry work in my designs can be seen below and in the photo above:

In the above photo, Natural stone retaining walls and random flagstone path (Credit Valley Flagstone and wall stone). This was a brand-new stair/wall system put in for better access to the client's front door from the driveway.

In the above photo, Natural Owen Sound square-cut flagstone in a Grey-buff colour mixed with black square-cut for a bit of accent. This is a patio that had been put in to provided a great space for entertainment.

In this photo we see the work in progress as the front walkway is completed for one of my clients. The photo at the beginning of this post is the end result of excellent Stone Mason work and quality landscape construction work. The stone used here is called Indus Valley Sandstone in a grey colour.

For stone mason work in the Greater Toronto Area you can contact me for further information regarding design or I can refer you to a contractor for estimating the work on your natural stone projects.

What inspires...part 7

One the most exciting things to see in a landscape is a combination of plantings staged within a setting of rockery that looks both pleasing and harmonious to the eye.





What inspires me when I create and arrange planting beds with rockery is to observe how Nature does it first! The tower of rockery on the right and the picture above is from a limestone outcropping found in The Beaver River Valley near Georgian Bay, Ontario. You can find this lookout along a hiking trail in the Old Baldy Conservation Area.


There are so many places that Ontario has to offer for the casual observer to feel truly inspired about Nature.