MILLET, Alta. – Roger Shore lovingly rubs a hand over a smooth piece of black granite and begins to talk about the stones in his shop.
One polished stone is like a speckled egg, the edge of another is rough and pitted like a meteorite, others are dappled pink and white.
Scattered around Shore’s central Alberta farm shop are huge slabs of granite. Like any good farmer, Shore knows the history of each of them.
“Once you cut and polish it, you spend so much time with it, you know it.”
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Shore is one of the few stonemasons outside Quebec. Most of the headstones in Canadian cemeteries are quarried and cut in Quebec. But Shore has discovered the massive stones in prairie fields can be transformed into beautiful and unusual headstones, picnic tables or signposts.
The same stones farmers curse in the fields are often used for their headstones when they die.
Some who want Shore to make a headstone or signpost bring their own stones; others have Shore pick up selected stones from a field with his winch truck; others buy stones Shore has collected from across the Prairies or British Columbia and keeps in his shop.
When the stones are brought to his shop, Shore studies them for weeks. He looks for the grain. He ponders the shape and he plans the cuts.
“I try to get the most pieces out of one stone and I try and think what would look nice.”
Shore’s wife Linda said Roger, a painter and bronze cast artist, sells himself short.
“He does quite a bit of design work with the shape of the stone,” she said.
One stone sat in the shop for two months before he made his first cut with the giant wire saw.
Buying that saw was the key to Shore shifting from building stone fireplaces to cutting monuments. Huge three-foot pullies powered by a 4.5 amp motor guide the wire through the stone. It takes about two hours to make a cut two-thirds of a metre through black granite.
“You’ve got to be really patient. If you have no patience it doesn’t work,” he said.
The giant three-by-six metre wire saw sat unused for five years before Shore cut his first stone. He spent five years scrounging for materials to build a shop around the saw.
“We looked around for years to get all this stuff. Of course it damn near broke us changing onto this,” he said.
“That’s the scary thing. I didn’t know how to run the machine yet I was willing to buy it and build the shop.”
This is the first winter Roger hasn’t closed the shop to work on oil rigs for extra cash.
A combination of a mild winter and more people hearing about the headstones has kept the couple busy cutting, polishing and lettering.
After the stone is cut, the sides are polished with a series of diamond bits. Depending on the client, the headstone may have a simple bible verse or an intricate carving sandblasted out of the stone.
Using a special stone paint he adds color to the sometimes drab headstones. Shore said at first glance people don’t like colored headstones, but soon change their minds once they see the finished product.
“If people want something different, this is the one place you can come.”
