Warming huts, warming hearts Anvil Tree finds its niche in Winnipeg, casts eye on potential to build artistic hub Made in Manitoba
By: Aaron Epp Posted: 6:04 PM CST Thursday, Jan. 30, 2025

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This article was published 30/01/2025 (263 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

When the 20th annual Winter Adventure Weekend kicks off Saturday in Riding Mountain National Park, a gigantic snow pavilion will be a prominent feature.

The pavilion is 24 metres long and 24 m wide, with walls that are 2.5 m high. Snow sculptures are featured throughout and the centrepiece is a 5.5 m catenary arch.

It’s the latest project by Anvil Tree Inc., a Winnipeg business where art, design and fabrication come together. Founded in 2022 by an architect, an artist and a teacher, Anvil Tree is perhaps best known for fabricating the warming huts that populate the Nestaweya River Trail at The Forks each year.

“You’d have to glue together six different companies to do kind of the scope of work that we do,” says Peter Hargraves, co-founder. “It’s pretty niche.”

In 2009, Hargraves founded Sputnik Architecture Inc. The following year, the company launched the warming huts competition: an annual event in which local and international artists and architects install shelters along the Assiniboine and Red rivers.

That ongoing project inspired Hargraves to start Anvil Tree along with friend Chris Pancoe and brother-in-law Reyn Buhler.

“As a result of the warming huts, there was a need to have a company that could build strange, wacky, artistic and community-based projects,” Hargraves says.

He likens Sputnik and Anvil Tree to cousins; the latter receives about half its work from the former. Much of the work involves building projects that are outside the scope of the average metal fabricator, including complicated artistic sculptures.

Another section of Anvil Tree’s work involves projects made out of snow and ice, as well as consumables like straw.

“These projects that we’re working on are, generally speaking, art pieces,” Hargraves says. “We’re not talking serious high-profit centres, but I think the value to the public is very high.”

Buhler, who holds a graduate degree in counselling and was an educator prior to starting Anvil Tree, suggested the company’s name based on an image from Gary Larson’s The Far Side comic strip.

In the comic, it’s an idyllic summer day as an exasperated mother finds her young son sitting on a tree swing. Rather than fruit or nuts, there are iron blocks in the branches above him that threaten to fall at any moment.

“All right, Billy, you just go right ahead!” the mother exclaims, her hands on her hips. “I’ve warned you enough times about playing under the anvil tree!”

“I’ve always just loved that image,” Buhler says. “It’s kind of surreal and absurd.”

The company is headquartered in the Glenwood neighbourhood at the corner of St. Mary’s Road and Guay Avenue, not far from the banks of the Red River. The 52-year-old, 5,600-square-foot building formerly belonged to St. Vital Welding.

Hargraves, Pancoe and Buhler are committed to the neighbourhood. St. Vital Welding had a reputation for doing interesting projects people would peek over the fence to get a glimpse of and for being a place where area residents could get quality work done.

The three owners want to be part of the fabric of the community. They enjoy interacting with neighbours who want to learn about their work or hire them for a job, no matter how small that job might be.

“We do have a … sense of an obligation to carry on that kind of service in the neighbourhood,” Hargraves says.

Revitalizing the building is one of Anvil Tree’s projects.

Pancoe, who has an MFA specializing in sculpture and ceramics, and who previously taught fine arts at the University of Manitoba, envisions a time when the second floor of the building will be occupied by artists who collaborate with Anvil Tree.

Buhler foresees the space including a studio for workshops and teaching.

“I think that this has huge potential to build something of an artistic hub or creative hub,” says Pancoe, who grew up in the neighbourhood.

“This isn’t the kind of thing you just do on your own,” Hargraves adds. “It requires lots of skill sets and passion and energy.”

The three partners currently have one full-time employee, fabrication lead Tom Kroeker, and include Sputnik staff members among their collaborators.

Anvil Tree’s projects have included building Ptarmigan, a restaurant in Churchill the company built for Frontiers North Adventures; and renovating the box office at the Dave Barber Cinematheque in Winnipeg.

Last year, the company built a picnic shelter at Winnipeg Beach Provincial Park commissioned by the Coalition of Manitoba Motorcycle Groups. The $92,000 project commemorates Sadie Grimm, who in 1914 rode her motorcycle from Winnipeg to Winnipeg Beach at a time when there were no proper roads between the two places.

She was the first person ever to complete the trip by motorcycle and the feat earned the 19-year-old the Manitoba Motorcycle Club gold medal. It’s widely accepted she was the first woman in Canada to win a motorcycling competition open to men.

The picnic shelter, warming huts and snow pavilion are examples of the kinds of work Anvil Tree focuses on: projects that are free for the public to enjoy.

“On a more intellectual level, there’s also an accessibility there, too, where we’re not doing something that’s esoteric and hard to understand,” Hargraves says. “It’s just straightforward (and) beautiful.”

The co-owners enjoy their work for a variety of reasons.

“For me, it’s the brain exercise — the constant shifting of projects and materials and the challenge of the stimulation that comes with work that isn’t monotonous and is always changing,” Pancoe says.

“I would echo that,” adds Buhler. “(I enjoy the) variety, creativity, problem-solving, being able to be a part of hands-on construction. But I also love language, so I’m working with that side of the business and trying to grow how we represent ourselves.”

For Hargraves, seeing people enjoy the work once it’s completed is satisfying. He also appreciates the variety of projects.

There’s something to be said for a company focusing on one thing, Hargraves says, but that doesn’t interest him and his co-owners. They’re all in their early 50s and passionate about doing work that inspires them.

Maybe playing under the anvil tree isn’t nearly as risky as Larson’s comic makes it out to be.

“We have 15 good years ahead of us,” Hargraves says, “and for that whole time we’re going to have fun and do interesting things and we’re going to go to sleep tired every night.”

aaron.epp@freepress.mb.ca