Rest for the woodworkers at Silver Harbour Seniors’ Centre is a distant dream.
“Our rest comes in the summer,” says Mae Thomson. “Getting ready for the Christmas Market – Saturday, Nov. 26 from 10 to 3 p.m. -- is the busiest time for everyone at the centre.”
But surely, after the market, they can take it easy?
“Oh, no, we’re already working on next year.”
A volunteer at the centre since 1994, and with the woodworking shop since 1998, Mae knows the routine. On Monday morning after the market, she will return to the workshop, along with Ken Rees, 17 years a volunteer, and Neil Lerner, the newbie at 13 years.
Making sellable items for the Christmas Market fits in with their own projects and those, including repairs, they take on for others. Just keep your repair or DIY job on hold until 2017, they ask.
There’s always a place in the workshop, and lots to do, for anyone with an interest in working with wood. The three share the labour with help from Hosein, Al and Robert, recent additions to the volunteer crew.
Mae’s contribution to the Christmas Market includes making the gift cards, looking after the fiddly bits and “anything they don’t want to do,” and keeping the production line on track – an enormous task, given their prodigious output.
Ken makes the toys – the trains with their load of logs, the cradles, the airplanes, fire trucks and little racing cars, and the rocking horses, always the first items to sell.
Neil makes the bowls and cutting boards, the sets of wooden spoons, spatulas and specialty items made from rare wood donated to the centre. His wooden tables, each topped with a glass mosaic, are ready for summer patios, and his glass lanterns will cast a warm glow on those patios in winter.
Back home in Glasgow after the war, Mae learned a little of everything in the building line – plumbing, electrics and carpentry -- along with her Scout troop. Some Scouts were serving apprenticeships by renovating tenements still standing after the bombing raids. Mae, of course, pitched in alongside them.
She has her own set of tools at home in North Vancouver. “I’ve never had to ask a man to do anything electrical,” she laughs.
Power tools – saws and drills – attracted Mae to the woodworking shop.
“I wanted to get in among it,” she recalls. “We didn’t have any of that back in Glasgow when we were refitting the tenements.”
Ken has been working with wood ever since he built a bookshelf at school in Wales, in the Bedwellty district. He and his family immigrated to North Vancouver in 1960.
“My father-in-law came over before us and it sounded so great, we followed. Never regretted it.”
When Ken moved into a West Vancouver condo a few years ago, he was already working on projects at Silver Harbour, which made it easier to give up his home workshop.
Neil, at 72 the youngest of the crew and Canadian by birth, has been working with wood since he was old enough to swing a hammer. A farm boy from Saskatchewan, he got started building granaries. In his home workshop in North Vancouver, Neil works in stained glass as well as wood.
“When I get tired of wood, I can move to stained glass. But I much prefer being in the workshop at Silver Harbour, where we can work together and on our own projects.”
Working together includes much good-natured bickering and friendly competition over whose apron shows the most wear and tear. The aprons provide some protection but by the end of their daily stint, everyone is wearing a light coating of fine sawdust.
Well worth it, they say.
The proceeds from every bowl, rocking horse and piece of stained glass sold at the Christmas Market, along with the other crafts and, of course, the baking, go to support programs and activities for seniors at Silver Harbour for another year.
The Silver Harbour Christmas Market is on Saturday, Nov. 26, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Silver Harbour Seniors’ Centre, 144 East 22 St., North Vancouver. For more information, phone 604-980-2474.
Laura Anderson works with and for seniors on the North Shore. 778-279-2275
