Chopping out their niche Spark of inspiration sources the woodpile for home and toy box creations By: David Sanderson Posted: 3:00 AM CST Saturday, Nov. 25, 2023

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 25/11/2023 (1020 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

In 2015, the satirical CBC radio program This is That aired a piece about a fictional operation that sold so-called artisanal firewood, which was billed in the bit as ginger-scented, hand-crafted kindling that was “almost too pretty to burn.”

While most listeners had a good chuckle at the absurdity of it all, especially the hefty, $1,000-per-bundle price tag, hobby carpenter Nick Gidzak’s first reaction upon hearing the spoof was how perfectly suited the words “artisanal firewood” would be, for a business model that had been smouldering in his head.

How’s this for life imitating art?

Gidzak, along with his father Bill, presently runs Artisanal Firewood, a venture that turns out rustic playthings, home accessories and Christmas decor fashioned out of logs and tree limbs otherwise earmarked for a bonfire or hearth, near you.

People are often curious about their name, wondering if what they use is actual firewood, Bill says, noting after his son reached out to CBC’s powers-that-be, to ask whether artisanal firewood was copyrighted in any manner, he received a green light to employ the term as he saw fit.

The father of three and grandfather of seven is pleased to tell interested parties that it is definitely firewood, and that the two of them source and cut almost all of it themselves, in designated areas of the province.

“The beauty behind that, I say, is that if we aren’t completely satisfied with how something turns out, there’s always the option of burning the evidence.”

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“I like having nice things, I can make nice things that don’t cost much to build, so why can’t people who are maybe in the same boat I’d been in, financially, have nice things, too?”–Nick Gidzak

Nick, 42, a network services technician for a Winnipeg school division, was going through a divorce in 2015, ahead of Christmas.

He dearly wanted to get his two kids a special gift each, except money was tight, owing to child support payments and “all that other stuff,” he says, seated across from his dad and mom, Christine, in the living room of their Southland Park split-level.

Nick had always maintained a sizable woodpile on his property near Springstein, south of Headingley. One afternoon on a whim, he fetched a selection of similarly sized pieces, which he converted into a toy chest for his son, and a sled for his daughter.

The presents were so well-received that he began to look at the mountain of ash, birch and poplar resting in his backyard in an entirely new light.

Prior to that, Nick worked exclusively with store-bought lumber to make kitchen cupboards, wedding arches and bed headboards, mostly for friends and family. He started to think how much less expensive firewood was, and that perhaps he could use it to conjure smaller items — coasters, trivets, cribbage boards — which he would then attempt to sell at craft shows, to gain a few extra bucks, he says.

“My biggest thing when I started was price,” Nick goes on, reaching down to scratch Rudy, his parents’ miniature Doberman, behind the ears. “Because I’d been in the position of not having much in my bank account, I didn’t want to charge an arm and a leg. My way of thinking was: I like having nice things, I can make nice things that don’t cost much to build, so why can’t people who are maybe in the same boat I’d been in, financially, have nice things, too?”

Bill, 67, a continuing education instructor at the University of Winnipeg, got involved about five years ago, during a period in his life he laughingly refers to as his “first retirement.”

With a fair amount of free time on his hands, he began attending auctions in the hope of landing tools that would benefit his son in his growing endeavour.

Before long, he was returning home with so many planes, sanders and routers, that he established a workshop of his own, in a corner of his and Christine’s attached garage. (His wife rolls her eyes at the anecdote, commenting it’s been “forever” since she’s been able to park her vehicle in their garage.)

“At the start, I was giving Nick suggestions as to what he should try building next, which usually went in one ear and out the other,” Bill continues. “But now that I had a spot of my own, I didn’t have to bug him with my dumb ideas, any more.”

“It’s ironic to me that younger parents that see our toys find them revolutionary almost, when the truth of the matter is that they’ve been around forever.”–Bill Gidzak

Among those “dumb” ideas are a line of wooden cars and dinosaurs that mimic what the elder Gidzak toyed around with when he was a youngster growing up in the North End. As a longtime school teacher — before catching on at the U of W, he taught in the Dauphin-Swan River area — Bill recognized that kids who have been surrounded by video games their whole life usually lack imagination when it comes to play time.

“Wooden toys don’t come with a set of instructions; they encourage critical thinking,” he says. “It’s ironic to me that younger parents that see our toys find them revolutionary almost, when the truth of the matter is that they’ve been around forever.”

From Dec. 1-3, the Gidzaks will be registered vendors at Christkindlmarkt, an annual event run by the German-Canadian Congress that is being staged at Fort Garry Place, 81 Garry St.

There, they will be selling the latest addition to their line of goods: round, wooden tree ornaments boasting meticulously carved images of wolves, reindeer and evergreen trees.

Additionally, they will have a selection of live-edge logs, approximately 30-centimetres in length, which Bill hollowed out with the aid of a chainsaw, to serve as settings for eye-catching, three-dimensional nativity scenes.

“I came up with the idea for the dioramas a couple of years ago, but I wasn’t sure how they’d go over, in an age of political correctness,” Bill says, referring to multiple reports in recent years about people protesting public nativity scenes, on the grounds of religious freedom. “Maybe the best advice I ever got came from an elderly lady who told me I should go with my gut, and if someone didn’t like them, or was offended, they wouldn’t buy them. Anyways, we sold two that year, 10 last year and we’re hoping to at least double that number, this time around.”

Bill, who is Ukrainian, has also begun using a jigsaw to make small wooden tridents, the sort adorning Ukraine’s official coat of arms. All proceeds from the sale of their “tryzubs,” which can be hung from a Christmas tree or nailed to a door, will be used to purchase food and supplies for Ukrainian refugees, he says.

Finally, if there was still any doubt that Artisanal Firewood is exactly as advertised, Bill lays that to rest when Christine points out that the flame in the fireplace is ebbing, and it would appear they didn’t bring in enough logs to keep things going.

“Hey, I can’t say I was ever really happy with this one,” Bills says, getting out of his chair to toss what, seconds earlier, was a tea-light holder he’d brought out for show-and-tell purposes, into the blaze.

david.sanderson@freepress.mb.ca