Looking back I realize that blacksmithing has alwys been a part of me. But there's no evidence of it in my family -I'm first Canadian generation to Italian immigrant parents who have never had a smith in their family tree. But I know the smithing bug has always been with me. When I was younger it was tucked away at the back of my soul, gently nudging me every so often.
My first blacksmithing experience didn't happen until ... around 16 years ago, when I was back in university. I had a photo-shoot assignment for a class so I decided to visit the local "pioneer village" - it was right next to the university. I remember it like it was this morning.
It was winter and I had shot around 3 rolls of film in the village. I decided to visit the blacksmith shop. As I went to pull the big doors open, something happened to me (I don't tell many people what happened because people always get this weird look on their face like I'm some kind of nut). Needless to say, it was a watershed moment for me.
This was the last time this village had a master smith working there (they ended up hemoraging money and couldn't afford to keep master trades-people). His name was Ives and he was from Quebec. He was a great guy. He let me look around (behind the rope, right up to the forge) and answered every question I had - I was there for 2 hours. Even though I had never been in a smithy before, it felt like I had spent my entire life in one.
I loved that shop. It was an authentic 1800's forge - beam and clapboard shop, cedar shingles, brick hearth and flu, great bellows, big old Peter Wright anvil on an oak stump, pot belly stove in the corner, ... the works ... not a welder to be seen anywhere. The floor was wood boards, cobbles and compacted sand (wood in the front half of the shop, cobbles in the working half and compacted sand around the forge and anvil). Tools were everywhere, ironware hung from hooks and from the rafters.
As soon as I left the shop I went to the park office and applied as part-time help doing odd jobs and covering people on their lunch breaks and such. Ives agreed to teach me some basics - heating, drawing out, making s-hooks and j-hooks, etc. I surprised him and myself at how quickly I picked things up. I worked there for 2 summers ... Ives left to go back to Quebec at the end of that first summer. That they wouldn't give me the shop fulltime and the way the administration ran the place were what made me leave. But I took a re-kindled passion for smithing with me (I say re-kindled because I truely do believe that I've done this sort of thing before - this is where the weird looks come in ... ).
Then came some quiet years while I finished my degrees, and then I got a job, right out of teacher's college in an elementary school with a great shop complete with a natural gas forge, anvil and sheet metal shop. I haven't looked back since - going on 10 years at that same school. And now I'm starting to build my obsession and my dream forge in my own home. Luckily I married a woman who shares my passion for history. She's a weaver and spinner and she sews while I do woodwork, woodcarving and smithing ... we're both cooks. We're absolutely perfect for eachother, and we support eachother's dreams. It doesn't get better than this.
