September 8, 2025
I didn’t realize it at the time but the last two nights I spent in Grande Prairie would be my last visit to Alberta province during this trip. My destination today will be Prince George, BC and I will cross the Canadian Rockies for the last time.
The drive to Prince George was to be 6 hours but I encountered an unexpected diversion along the way. Nothing wrong at all, but something that had not popped up on my radar and I found VERY interesting.
Chetwynd, a small town of about 3,000 people, is home to the Chetwynd International Chainsaw Carving Championship. As I was driving in to town I saw lots of these lined up on both sides of the highway, and a concentration of them once I got to Tim Horton’s to stop for coffee. I went back to the “Welcome” sign where the first two I posted were and started taking pictures.
These are all chainsaw carvings, done over a number of years. I will explain shortly.
The competition is held the second week of June and 12 carvers are invited to participate – 4 from Canada, 4 from the United States and 4 from other countries around the world. Each carver is provided with 40-50″ diameter, 8 foot tall piece of western red cedar. They have 35 hours to create their entry.
I don’t know how that 35 hours is spread out, but I would think each artist is probably allowed 10-12 hours per day to work, with meal breaks, and then given time to sleep. The contest runs 4 days, and on the last day there is a 90-minute “quick carve” contest, with those works being put up for auction. The major pieces stay in Chetwynd and are scattered all over town. It seems that the artists have free reign over what they can produce, and there is an amazing variety of works on display.
Here are two shots of the detail on the front of the dragon shown above.
All of this is done with chainsaws, and they are gearing up for the 20th annual competition in June, 2026. I believe technology has improved to the point where woodworkers have smaller, more precise saws for detail work, and some of the pieces I saw had just a stunning amount of fine detail.
I was a little bit challenged with the bright sunshine, and some of my photos didn’t turn out too well because the objects were backlit. I tried to move around to get the best shots.
I will have more photos in the next post. You may also Google the town or contest name to see lots more photos online.
I was really blown away by them, and wished I had more time to spend in town to seek out more of them. Some of the ones I saw were done as far back as 2007 and I didn’t look at all of the signs indicating who the artist was, where then were from and what year the work was produced.
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