A man from Richmond Co. lent a hand creating a tribute to the community of Humboldt and their hockey team.
Mitch Boudreau of Louisdale says he was honoured to have helped in the project- a large wooden statue of a hockey player with wings.
He says the idea came from Ryan Villiers, a friend who carves wooden statues with chainsaws.
Boudreau tells The Hawk it came down to the wire for the delivery of the statue.
“Two days before this went down to Humboldt, we were working on it, we started at probably 7:30 or 8 in the morning, and we were at it until 4:30 in the morning,” he says. “I was back in the next morning at 8 just to put another coat of lacquer on it before it went down so it would have time to dry.”
Boudreau says there were no plans for a completion date originally, but the Broncos’ former team president asked if they could have it for the home opener.
He says he and the other members of the group building the statue really wanted to have it done on time, even though they were set back roughly six weeks due to some issues with the first wood they used.
Boudreau says the main carver was very passionate about the project.
“Ryan had a vision of trying to do something for this tragedy,” he says. “Financially, Ryan couldn’t do a whole lot for it, (so he) figured he’d use his talent and try and come up with something memorable for the folks who lost their kids.”
Boudreau says he has no idea how many hours went into the project in such a short amount of time, but it’s in the high hundreds.
