Steinbacher frequent snow carver for Festival du Voyageur, snow maze

For more than 40 years, Lyle Peters has been showing his creative side every winter by carving sculptures out of snow for the residents of the Southeast and Winnipeg.

Peters, who has been teaching collision repair at Steinbach Regional Secondary School for 20 years, started carving snow when he was 25 years old to beat winter boredom.

“I think I tried to do something in ice at one point, and the block that I froze to carve on, I couldn’t get it out of the container that I tried to make my ice in. So then I just thought, well, I’ll just pack some snow then. And that’s how it started,” said the 63-year-old.

Peters sculpts for his own pleasure. The first carving he did was of a hockey helmet for his backyard and finding the experience enjoyable he continued with a polar bear for the front yard. This eventually morphed into carving for the Festival du Voyageur, The Royal Canadian Mint, the snow maze in Ste Agathe, and Steinbach’s Mennonite Heritage Village.

His participation at Festival du Voyageur began as an amateur about 15 or 20 years ago and then progressed to participating in the festival’s International Snow Sculpture Symposium in around 2016. The symposium is inside the festival grounds and has carvers from around the world demonstrating their skills.

“And then I did the symposium for, I don’t know, three or four years, but I always kind of had to take off work, and then I said I’d rather just do pieces around the city to promote the festival,” said Peters.

The year’s Festival du Voyageur is celebrating 54 years and snow sculpture coordinator Christel Lanthier said while organizers love Peters’ work, they really appreciate his attitude.

“It’s more about the attitude. He’s actually very good, very technically good at his sculptures, but also he has a really great attitude, and he just loves the festival and has come back around and has to be involved,” she said.

“And we love having him come to carve for us. He’s got a really good eye for design, and..it’s fun to include a variation of artists and his work speaks for itself.”

This year, the festival, which runs from Feb. 13 to 22, has 30 sculptures inside and outside festival grounds and organizers have decided not to have a theme this year, which gives freedom to carvers. For this year’s sculpture, Peters was asked to carve an ambulance, which is currently sitting on the corner of Archibald Street and Provencher Boulevard in Winnipeg. He estimated it took his team of five less than 20 hours to just do a rough-in of the piece.

He originally proposed the design a few years ago when St Boniface Hospital was updating its emergency department. The ambulance would have stood in front of the hospital.

“And I went there because I got my aortic valve replaced in my heart. So, I thought, they’re redoing their emergency, I should do a snow sculpture, just kind of in appreciation,” he said.

The time it takes for Peters to make a snow sculpture depends on the intricacies of the design. He also shared that dirty snow is hard to sculpt as it can damage his tools, while clean man-made snow, or “snice” as he referred to it, is a dream to carve.

He said carvers make their own snow sculpting tools and some of the tools he uses are gardening tools, autobody spoons, and sanding tools such as nailing plates for rafters. Peters uses his skills as an autobody repair technician when snow sculpting.

“I did 20 years at Loewen Body Shop, before I came to teach and there’s a lot of the tools (that) kind of translate to carving. So, a lot of the tools that I started with and still use would have been used in (the) collision repair industry.”

His carving team usually consists of family and friends. This year his son, Tegegne, who started helping his dad carve as a child, has taken on a more full-time role.

“The most enjoyable part…I would say is kind of seeing the idea (go) from paper, and then getting your block, and then seeing that progress into what it was actually supposed to be. And along the way there’s obviously lots of adaptations and adjustments you have to make based on what’s all happening and the quality of the block. So, it’s just enjoying to be a part of the whole experience from beginning to end,” he said, noting his favourite piece to work on was of a globe of the world e created for last year’s festival.

Peters’ brother, Kevin, who has been carving with Peters for 30 years, said the cold is the hardest thing about this job.

“The snow can change when it’s colder. The snow is, I guess, the most challenging. Sometimes it’s icy, sometimes it’s dirty, sometimes it’s soft, too soft…(but it’s rewarding) after it’s done and people enjoying it and (make) compliments.”

Kevin’s favourite sculpture was one of a whale’s tail and a church for the Snow Maze.

Peters and his team have been carving for the snow maze since it opened eight years ago. Peters approached owner Clint Masse about carving for him and since then he has carved castles, churches, a Hobbit house, and this year he carved a barn with three tractors inside. Masse said Peters’ carving of a church one year was “exceptional.”

“(It had) lots of architecture on the outside. It had a whole ice wall with the light shone in from the west. It was pretty awesome,” said Masse, noting the sculptures bring a different element to the maze which keeps about 18,000 people coming back every year.

Peters hasn’t yet decided what he’ll carve for this year’s Mennonite Heritage Village’s winter carnival on Feb. 14. Program coordinator Jaysa Theissen called Peters’ skills “phenomenal” and “a blessing.”

“He’s just a great local talent. The snow sculpture that he did by Old Church Bakery, and he always does them around town, they’re just beautiful. He’s very talented and it’s great to be able to showcase that at the museum.”

Peters has been carving sculptures at MHV for a number of years for its carnival. Thiessen’s favourite carving is that of intertwining MHV letters.

Peters said it’s fun to have his artwork on display.

“I don’t know if it’s, yeah, gratifying. And everybody that works with me, yeah, it’s a fun time. It’s a cheap way to be busy and doing some stuff in winter,” he said with a smile.

What keeps Peters going every year is a need to complete a bucket list of design ideas, sculpting is a fun winter activity, and he likes seeing his designs come to life. He noted he would like to donate his time to carving snow sculptures for charitable organizations, such as the Bethesda Foundation where he carved a mother and child a few years ago that stood outside its cancer clinic.

When he retires, Peters plans on going international with his carvings by applying to different winter festivals around the world.