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creating an artifact
Shortly after my parents (Roland and Angeline Boulet) were married, they
lived in a house near the
railway station in Alida, Saskatchewan, Canada.
There was a granite boulder in the backyard and my father, who has always
been somewhat of an artist/artisan, decided to see how hard it was to
carve on granite.
Using a ballpeen hammer and a steel chisel, he etched a pictogram of a
turtle onto the
boulder (he says that it actually looked more like a spider but it was
intended to be a turtle viewed from above).
A few years later, while living in a different part of town, my father
was asked to give a talk to the local cub-scout troop. At the end of the
talk, one of the cub-scouts approach my father and proceeded to tell him
about the frog that had been carved by the Indians on a boulder
in a yard by the railway tracks.
Not wanting to disappoint the child, my father listened carefully to the
story, knowing that the frog was really the turtle that
he had carved a few years earlier.
One day a while later, my father visited the person living in the house
with the granite boulder in the backyard.
Quoting my father, he asked the fellow if he had a boulder in the backyard
and the fellow replied that he did.
My father then asked if there was something carved on the boulder and the
person said that there was a frog carved on the boulder.
My father then asked if he knew who had carved the frog and the fellow
replied that it was "carved by the Indians".
When my father tried to explain that he and not the Indians had
carved the pictogram on the boulder, the fellow just refused to believe
it.
Background:
My father related this story to me and other family members on July 10th, 1999.
The events in this story would have taken place in the mid to late 1950s.
It should be noted that Alida is situated in a part of Saskatchewan
where Indian artifacts exist.
Consequently, it isn't entirely unreasonable for a non-expert to
assume that the pictogram carved by my father was an actual native artifact
(it is highly unlikely that it will ever fool an expert).
My father advises that granite is a poor choice of first medium for anyone
contemplating stone carving (granite is quite hard).
-Danny Boulet