These sticks were made for walking

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This article was published 28/03/2011 (5348 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

EAST SELKIRK — A funny thing happened to visiting Israeli Agriculture Minister Shalom Simhon when the province presented him with a walking stick, carved and painted by East Selkirk’s Gerry Beck.

Simhon started to cry. He was overwhelmed. The carved stick was so beautiful. Simhon insisted on meeting Beck and said the walking stick would hang on the walls of Parliament back in Israel.

Subsequent events flowed from that. Beck’s walking sticks were presented last fall to Israeli President Shimon Perez, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as well as to Premier Greg Selinger and Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

Pretty good for a guy with a Grade 8 education who spent 42 years in a foundry making steel castings for Amsco Cast Products.

And his proficiency in carving walking sticks grew out of something else he’s an expert in: fishing. Beck is a renowned fly fisherman. He’s the best of the best. He’s the Master of the Master Anglers. Just having a twig carved by him with a penknife would be an honour.

Beck is one of two Manitobans to catch 20 Master Angler fish in 20 different species. And he did it fly fishing. The species that eluded him the longest? The common jackfish. He reeled one in last year measuring just over 41 inches long.

When you catch a trophy-sized fish of a certain species, the government presents you with a bronze Master Angler badge the size of a loonie. If you catch five Master Anglers in five different species, you get a silver badge; 10 Master Anglers in 10 different species, a gold badge; 15 in 15 different species, a platinum badge. Beck has a Master Angler badge embedded with a diamond.

It’s not surprising that Beck took up carving while fishing. He would pick up what he calls “beaver sticks” — the chewed-off piece of poplar beavers leave behind and that are common on the “trout ponds” Beck frequents.

One thing led to another, and another thing led to walking sticks. There is no prototype for what Beck does. It’s his own idea.

Beck gathers diamond willow from the marshes of the Interlake. He strips and sands them and draws fish on them with a wood burner. Then he carves away the wood around them, and brightly paints and labels the fish and varnishes the stick. A typical stick will have up to 15 different species of fish carved on it. He’s also carved sticks with waterfowl, upland game birds, and owls. The entire process to complete a walking stick can take up to 50 hours.

Beck said the dusty foundry environment drove him to be the outdoors type. Every trophy fish he’s caught was at a Manitoba lake he could drive to, except for the arctic grayling. He also learned taxidermy when he was 14.

Fly-fishing forces a person to study the fish and insect world. That explains the shelves of books lining Beck’s walls. He has over 500 books. About 300 are on fishing. The rest are about wildlife and carving.

“Every fish has a niche in life where they thrive,” Beck said. “Water temperature is the first basic, plus the amount of daylight, controls the fish and their movements.”

Most people have never heard of the insects he studies, like chironomids that look similar to mosquitoes but don’t bite. Trout love them. Manitoba doesn’t have the streams one usually associates with fly fishing. Here, it’s mostly lake fishing.

“He’s gone out and caught fish that people just don’t catch on the fly, and he’s caught trophy fish,” said Steven Erickson, president of the Manitoba Fly Fishing Association, adding Beck is known in fishing circles across Canada.

Walking sticks and fly fishing go hand in hand, popularized by the British, Beck said. He tends to give his sticks away as fundraisers for charities like Casting For Life and the fly fishing association, of which he is a founding member, and to friends and family. His sticks have sold for over $1,000.

bill.redekop@freepress.mb.ca