Masterpiece installed

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This article was published 03/05/2025 (367 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A massive and impressive bronze sculpture depicting 11 caribou crossing a river was installed Friday morning at the Brandon Riverbank Discovery Centre, fulfilling a vision that took nine years of planning, designing and creating.

“What an awesome day — it couldn’t be better,” said sculptor Peter Sawatzky.

“This is the most complex and biggest piece that’s going to be here, so everything went well, and I’m thrilled,” he said.

The sculpture, titled “Seal River Crossing,” is eight feet high, 34 feet long and about eight feet wide. It is placed along the Discovery Centre entrance on Conservation Drive.

“I just love caribou,” Sawatzky said. “One year I flew up north to a hunting camp, and when we flew over the Seal River Crossing, there were literally hundreds of caribou in their fall migration. And that’s when I had the idea for a sculpture, so I started sketching.”

Sawatzky made a 29-foot-long bronze caribou sculpture for a prominent Winnipeg family in 2007. It stands at Portage and Main. The artist said he promised the Richardson family that he wouldn’t make another sculpture like it, but that changed when he was approached by the Discovery Centre nine years ago.

“They said they wanted to build a sculpture garden for me at the Riverbank,” Sawatzky said.

“It was so very kind of them, and I was thrilled. So I cleared it with Harvey Richardson that I would cast another caribou piece for a public garden, and he said, ‘Yes, go ahead.’ So I accepted.”

The official name of the garden is the Peter Sawatzky Sculpture Park.

“This is the first of 14 pieces to be installed in the park,” said Riverbank executive director Dean Hammond. “We already have two of Peter’s smaller works here. We have the herons in front of the building, and then we have the deer by the Fusion Stage amphitheatre.

“So it’s a great day, and to see it come together is pretty touching,” Hammond said.

The caribou sculpture was delivered to the Discovery Centre at about 9 a.m. on a 42-foot-long flatbed truck owned by a friend of Sawatzky’s.

Using a zoom-boom — a forklift with a telescopic arm — the operator picked the pieces off the truck and placed them on the base, which Hammond called a “work of art in itself, with its curved kidney bean shape.”

The base is made of concrete aggregate and was installed last fall.

Holes were drilled into the base for the steel rods that will hold the sculpture in place, with the help of cement caulking, said Sawatzky.

“There’s one main piece that has five or six pieces in it, but the main caribou is one. And then I’ve got a mother and a calf, two single cows and two other big bulls,” he said.

Significant funding for the caribou has come from private donations as well as provincial and community grants. Hammond said he hopes that once people see the sculpture, it will entice more donations.

Once the weather warms up, there are plans for landscaping, lighting and signage around the sculpture, so people can enjoy the art — which is exactly why Sawatzky said he creates.

“I just want people to feel good and have peace and happiness at what they’re seeing. And I heard some of those comments a couple times today, and that makes me feel good.”

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