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Local Carver Gains National Exposure:
By Sasha Speranzini.

The front cover of the June 2006 Lee Valley Tools magazine features a little bit of Deep River.
Fish, chipmunks and a variety of birds crawl over six of Gerry Grantham's hand-carved canes that were photographed for the national magazine.
"The manager asked to take the picture about a year ago" Grantham said. "I thought they had decided not to use it"
Grantham has sketched and carved since he was a child. "I had lots of operations on my legs when I was a kid, so I had lots of time to draw. I eventually switched from sketching to carving", he said. "Back when pocketknives wern't illegal on planes, I always used to carry around six or seven in my pocket with me, wherever I went I liked to whittle."
When he was 27 he moved from Britain to Burlington Ontario and from there to Deep River to secure a job with AECL as a toolmaker. During his 27 years at the plant he becaame more involved in woodcarving.
"Because I used a cane, I would walk in with a half finished one and then work on it on my break" he said.
When he retired he continued with his woodcarving and prefered to use carving knives over power tools and eyeballing instead of exact measurements.
"I dont use power tools because I did that all my life" he said. "At the Plant, everything was inspected and measured to a 1000th of an inch. It drove me crazy, so now I just go along with whatever."
Using only a Lee Valley carving knife and a half-inch gauge palm tool, Grantham creates his carvings from single pieces of wood..

His work includes flat-wood carving sketches, realistic animal figures, (at contests judges count the number of scales on each fish), and his now famous canes and staffs.
Grantham's wood carvings are so realistic, that on April 1 in a competition in Niagra Falls , a judge accused him of entering carvings made of material other than wood. "He said that they were plastic and that the chipmunks were glued onto the cane," he said. "I took it as a compliment"
Judges usually commend rather than criticize him, as is proven by about 100 woodcarving ribbons that Grantham has won since the 80's. He still enters contests and sais that he "wins a few" from time to time.
On June 7 , Grantham entered a woodcarving competition in Ottawa and picked up first prize in the animal-carving category with his creation of a weasel and a mouse having a conversation and second place for his carving of a chipmunk perched on a human hand. He also placed second in another category with a carving of a book ( a carving of a novel called "Chip" ).
Even though the Lee Valley magazine has appeared only on shelves across Canada , the carver has been receiving requests for his now famous canes from all over North America. "I've received orders from Baton Rouge, South Carolina, Montreal , British Columbia and Toronto," he said. "I'm currently working on 13 orders" he said.
Because Grantham's address was not listed in the Lee Valley Magazine and he dosent have a website, some determined customers have still found ways of sending in orders. "This one buyer from Saskatoon just wrote 'Gerry Grantham, Woodcarver, Deep River, ' and sent it to the Post Office" he said, "I got the letter".
With Grantham's carvings doubling in value over the past two weeks, he will continue to produce more woodcarvings. He won't however record pictures of each creation he makes. "I don't want people to point to a catalogue number and say 'I want that one' " he said. "Each cane I make is unique".