ROB MURRAY: I’m speaking today with Chris Dmytriw. This might make you feel a little old, but this year marks the 25th anniversary of the 1997 film “The Edge” starring Anthony Hopkins that was filmed right here in Canmore. You actually had a small part to play in this movie. What did you contribute to the film?

CHRIS DMYTRIW: Anthony Hopkins gets to the lodge and he’s looking at the magazines, and Elle Macpherson says “He knows everything, ask him about whatever.” The owner of the lodge says “Well, let’s give it a go. I’ll bet you $5 you don’t know what’s on the other side of that paddle.” Anthony looks at the paddle and says “A panther, right? It’s a rabbit smoking a pipe” and he goes “I don’t believe it, how did you know that?” He flips it over and sure enough, it’s a rabbit smoking a pipe. Anthony says “It’s an old Cree legend. While the Panther stalks, the rabbit is unafraid, because he is smarter than the panther.” It’s kind of funny because it is not a Cree legend, it’s a smaller tribe in the Eastern lake district.

RM: You made that paddle, didn’t you?

CD: At the time I was a full-time artist. A good friend is a painter in town. He was part of the union and he was working on the set. They were short staffed and he asked if I would join them. When it came to the paddle part, I was the only one with woodcarving experience so they asked me to do it, even though I was really low in the ranks of people in the art department. It worked out that I got to help design the paddle and carve it. It was a really interesting process.

RM: 25 years later, this paddle story has come back around and you’ve found a bit of new life making these paddles for other people. How did this come about?

CD: A friend of mine, Rodger Retzer, said, “Hey, Chris, did you know there’s a blog about that paddle that you made? I answered it and I said that my friend made that paddle.” Right after that, someone called Rodger to get my phone number. So he called me, he’s from New York, and he asked if I would make a duplicate of the paddle. I said, yeah, sure, no problem. I didn’t think much about it. A few years after that, now that I knew about this blog, I was kind of keeping an eye on it and other people were asking for a paddle. As soon as I put on that blog that I’d made the original paddle I got tons of emails with people asking for them. I had no idea that scene, or that movie, connected so much with a lot of people. Then I started selling them on Etsy.

RM: How many paddles do you think you’ve sold?

CD: I’ve been doing this for a couple of years now, so I’d say somewhere between 20 and 30.

RM: You’ve mostly retired as an artist other than making these paddles, is that correct?

CD: Yeah. I wasn’t really going to be doing much woodcarving because it’s dusty, hard on the lungs, and it’s kind of hard on the wrists too. It takes a lot of mental focus to do a woodcarving because if you make a mistake it’s hard to fix  – you take off somewhere where there should be an elbow or a nose and there’s no putting it back on. I was doing a lot of clay because it was just really relaxing and fun, but I couldn’t really find a market for the clay. But I like doing the paddles because I don’t have to worry about making mistakes because I know what I’m doing. I find it very relaxing and I just work in little stints. I’ll do a two hour stint so my wrists don’t burn out. It’s nice to listen to podcasts while I’m doing it, and I don’t have to think, I’m almost on autopilot.