When I was at the Ontario College of Art, a new weathering steel was being developed. It is commonly called Corten, and is a nickel steel alloy which rusts to a rich dark brown and then stops, and does not corrode. It is an ideal outdoor medium for sculptors in welded steel.

My first piece in this material was in 1992, when I completed the Northern Ontario Bull Moose. Moose scent other moose by opening their mouths to enable their olfactory nerves to detect pheromones. Installed at Tilley Endurables at Don Mills Road and Eglinton, it was not likely that he was going to be successful in his quest. At least, not until 2000, when then Mayor Mel Lastman created a 'Moose in the City' campaign, and commissioned artist Charles Pachter to create fiberglass moose, have sponsors donate them and then have artists paint them and dot them throughout the City of Toronto. Many of these other city moose remain to this day.

This is a life-size moose, 9 feet to the top of his 'rack'. He is hand-built of 1/8th inch Corten Steel plate. He weighs 1200 lbs, about the weight of a real moose.

I chose to use big slabs of steel for this huge muscled creature, rather than using the technique of tiny shards that you see in the other Corten works on this website. I felt that this expressed the power and majesty of a remarkable animal that lucky people get a live glimpse of in our Northern forests. But each time I see him again, it is his chest I touch. He has a Canadian heart in there.