A months-long project at G.W. Graham is done, and welding students proudly unveiled their life-sized Grizzly Bear barbecue this week. The senior metal shop class put the finishing touches on the ambitious enterprise a few days ago, mounting it on a platform covered in artificial turf. As the last square of turf was glued down, there was a profound sense of satisfaction and relief from the 20 teenagers who invested hours of in-school and after-school time into the work.
They unveiled it to the school Monday (June 19).
“It’s been a long process and it’s been a fun thing to do, and it’s nice finally seeing it done,” said Grade 11 student Laurynn Davidson. “People who’ve seen it have been shocked at how big it is and yep, she is big.”
“Just the look on their face has been so funny,” said Grade 12 student Kallum Vandyk. “Then I tell them it’s a barbecue too and that’s the thing that really gets them.”
Metal shop teacher Brad Bootsma had the idea to approach the endeavour like a job site. The full list of students contributing to the project included Davidson, Vandyk, Maria Barkey, Nolan Barkman, Wyatt Cavanagh, Marcus Dalton, Jared Holosney, Nathan MacNeil, Shea Pankiw, Owen Sheets, Reuben Vanpelt, Hannah Joy Nirwranski, Liam Harrison, Isaac Rychcowski, William Vernon, Cameron McCall, Hayden Pugsley, Tyler bergin, Colby McLellan and Brandon Smith
“We had project leaders. We had head welders. We had everything,” Davidson said.
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Vandyk said the biggest challenge for the group was getting the shape of the 4000 pound bear correct. They welded together the skeleton of the bear and covered it with sheet metal, and Vandyk said they struggled to get the shoulders rounded.
“We kind of were (perfectionists) about it,” he said. “We’d take a step, we’d look at it and go, ‘that looks bad. Let’s re-do it.’ But there were other parts where we figured we could cover it in fur and no one would see it.”
The ‘fur’ was thousands of pieces of rusted metal painstakingly applied over the sheet metal.
“It was exciting to put the fur on, because that meant we were getting close to the end,” Davidson said.
There was adversity. The bear’s face was extremely difficult. So too was the lid of the barbecue, hinged onto the bear’s back.
“The lid weighed so much, and getting it to slide into the hinges was the biggest struggle,” Vandyk said. “We had to keep cutting off the hinge and re-welding it on until we finally got it to match up. That was the most frustrating piece.”
UFV program technician Maciej Kaczor helped the students through a rough patch when their CNC Plasma cutting machine broke down. There were times when they felt like throwing their hands in the air and giving up. But in those moments, Davidson said they came together.
“The most fun moments were when everyone was hanging around and joking around, and we had lots of light-hearted moments,” she said. “When the struggles came on, the nice thing about this crew is we didn’t take it super seriously. We all wanted to see how good we could do and see what we could make, and the $15,000 at the end was a good motivator as well.”
The bear represents the students’ bid to win the prestigious CWB Welding Foundation Forged by Youth competition. Top prize is a $15,000 grant that would go to G.W. Graham’s welding program. Ontario’s Bayside Secondary School took top spot last year with a fully-functional go-kart. Second place ($10,000 grant) went to A.E. Peacock Collegiate in Saskatchewan for creating Santa’s sleigh, and the third place prize of $5,000 went to Ontario’s Ecole Secondaire Catholique de Hearst for their fire pit in the shape of a semi-trailer truck. Six schools won $1,000 each as honourable mentions.
With all due respect to last year’s entries, the G.W. Graham students are supremely confident they’ve created something better.
“They (Bayside) had 200 people working to build that one go-kart, and we’ve got 18-20 of us making this,” Vandyk said.
“I don’t know what could be better than this,” Davidson said. “We’ll see.”
For more info CWB Welding Foundation’s Forged by Youth competition, visit cwbweldingfoundation.org/programs/forged-by-youth-award.
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eric.welsh@theprogress.com
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