Through The Forge

By Kevin McKay
Posted: Wednesday, December 1st, 2010
Photo by: Kevin McKay

Peter Forbes had searched for his niche for years when he happened upon a picture of a carved wine barrel top. The picture led him to where he is today.

“It was an epiphany,” he says. “I took one look at that picture and thought to myself, ‘this is it.’ I was making signs at the time but millions of people can make signs. I knew I needed to be unique and, if I did this, I could be.”

Many years ago, when he was still a young man, Peter’s artistic talent blossomed. To his credit, he realized he did not have the necessary life experience yet to turn art into an occupation, let alone a career.

“I was working up on Grouse Mountain at the time and had become one of the shift supervisors for the trams,” says Peter. “I had all these paintings and was allowed to display them in the gallery for a show. I sold all of them in one weekend. I knew I had ability because I had always been doodling, but I also knew I had nothing to say yet with my art.”

Peter’s chutzpah is evident, and it showed up in how he became employed at Grouse Mountain. Under the legal drinking (and serving) age, he applied to work at the old chalet with the use of some creative exaggeration on his job application.

“I told them I had formerly been the cocktail waiter for the Canadian Ambassador to Holland,” says Peter. “While this was not true in the strictest sense, I had lived with my parents there for 10 years when my father worked for the Canadian government. The manager told me I had the job and that I should go home, get changed and come back for my first shift of work. When I got there, they wanted me to set up the chalet restaurant for dinner. I had no clue what to do, but did the best I could. When she asked me why I had set everything up wrong, I told her that was how we did it in Holland!”

Now, certain he needed experience in order to realize his potential as an artist, Peter did what so many young people did in the late 1960s and early 1970s: he hit the road. After travelling to the Rockies and working on the railroad for a time, he returned to Vancouver with money in his pocket, wanderlust in his heart, and no idea where to go. He sat down in a travel agency and noticed a poster on the wall of a beautiful village.

“I told the agent I wanted to go to that very spot,” Peter recalls. “She didn’t know where the village was either, but we looked closer and realized it was a small town called Irapetra in Crete.”

Three days later, he was standing there looking down on that village, completely alone, far from home and unable to speak the language. “I wandered down, wound up staying for weeks and absolutely loved it. I had a wonderful time.”

A dictator ran Greece at the time, and when he arrived at the airport, it was overrun with soldiers. “I was scared but, as it turned out, they liked tourists and their money, so I was tolerated.”

From Crete, Peter travelled through parts of Africa, Europe and Turkey before he returned home to Vancouver. He gained some of his all-important experience during those days.

“I saw beggars and stepped around dead bodies on the street,” he says. “I learned to eat anything put in front of me. I discovered travel is great, but it doesn’t get any better than the Lower Mainland.”

While running a restaurant, Peter married one of his waitresses, only to see the marriage end after a year and a half. Instead of drowning his sorrows, he signed on for some sailing adventures. As he prepared for his second voyage, aboard a boat a Seattle man had built himself, Peter was asked to help finish some detailing.

“This fellow handed me a chisel and asked me to finish the end of his teak railings,” he recalls. “I had never held a chisel in my life. I took a couple of shots at it, and the chisel slid through the wood, and it just felt right. I decided on the spot that the book was full and it was time to let my creativity out.”

Peter went to work for a company making signs where he taught himself to be a woodworker; pretending he knew what he was doing, while trying not to cut off any limbs. It was while working as a sign maker he chanced across the photo of the carved barrel that set him on his career path at long last.

Even before he saw that photo, many people had told Peter he should run his own business. He set out but not without overcoming some hurdles.

“I’m a right-brain thinker, so math is not my thing, but I can carve,” he says. “Like everything I do, I taught myself how to [carve] because if you learn from someone else you invariably pick up some parts of what they do. First, I had to learn how to keep the barrels together. Then, once I had mastered how to carve the barrels, I had to learn how to market myself. I started in British Columbia with the wineries. I used a few tricks I learned along the way to get to the key people in the organizations and started getting some jobs. People got to know me and my work. Now, I’m hooked and will only work for myself. I finally like my boss.”
Peter set up shop in the shadows of the Iron Workers Memorial Bridge, where he makes each design unique and individual. An old-fashioned tradesman, Peter takes pride in his workmanship, which has included jobs for wineries, restaurants, companies and many individuals. The only barrel carver in Canada, he knows of two others in North America, though their art styles are very different. Peter laughs and admits, “My tools are mostly chisels, but I will use anything sharp including my wit!”

In addition to carving, Peter creates beautiful custom signs and still paints, though mostly for himself. He has done some writing and intends to write more when he is older. About the creative process he says, “People ask me to teach them to carve. I can teach them the skills, but not imagination. What I am doing to a piece of wood is removing everything that is not the bear, like native carvers do. I have an affinity with them and the Thai carvers. If a big chunk of wood blows off while you are working on a piece, you just look at it until it reappears as something else. They will ask me how I came up with it and I just tell them I didn’t – the wood came up with it!”

To view some of Peter’s barrel carvings and custom signage or to contact him, visit www.barrelcarving.com