Mainstreet Radio’s Catherine Winter profiles Minnesota carpenter John Harren. The Warroad resident makes the long narrow sled for Canadian hunters and trappers in the far north of Canada.
Mainstreet Radio’s Catherine Winter profiles Minnesota carpenter John Harren. The Warroad resident makes the long narrow sled for Canadian hunters and trappers in the far north of Canada.
CATHERINE WINTER: On a cold winter day, John Herron drills holes in a half-built toboggan set up on sawhorses in his workshop. His golden retriever carries a chunk of wood over and lies down under the sawhorses to chew. The workshop is as humid as a Minnesota summer day because Herron has been steaming boards to curl them into a toboggan shape.
He lays three boards side by side and bolts them together with cross pieces to make a simple flat sled. He fastens down the curl at the end with chains. Herron uses green wood, so the boards are heavy and hard to work with. But a finished toboggan is strong and flexible enough to be dragged over rough terrain, carrying heavy loads.
JOHN HERRON: So they've got to be built for strength. I guess, up in the territories, they tell me they'll put 2,000 pounds of caribou on one of these.
CATHERINE WINTER: Herron's primary market is northern Canada, where hunters and trappers haul gear and caribou behind dogs or snowmobiles. His toboggans are based on a native design. He got the idea to make them from an uncle who's a missionary in Canada. His uncle said Native people there could no longer find wooden sleds to buy because everyone who made them had retired.
Herron learned the craft from a retired toboggan maker in Manitoba. Now, he sells his sleds to Native people in northern Manitoba and Saskatchewan, and the Northwest Territories.
JOHN HERRON: A lot of the places they go, there's no roads. So if they want to go to village to village, or if they want to go out and hunt, or if they want to set traps or fish, they can't haul too much on a snowmobile. They have to have some kind of a sled behind them. It's a dog toboggan is what this is-- a three-board dog toboggan.
CATHERINE WINTER: Herron gets about $300 for a toboggan depending on the size. He says he likes to build them because there's an art to it and because there's a romance to thinking of them in the Canadian wilderness. But he sold some locally too.
John Carstens tugs his toboggan out from under a pile of snow near his dog kennel. Carstens lives a few miles up the road from John Herron. He's a test driver for the Polaris plant. Carstens was in the bathtub reading a magazine when he saw an ad for Herron's toboggans. He jumped out of the tub and called to order one.
JOHN CARSTENS: It's a real northern Indian toboggan. And you see them in all the Arctic pictures of the old Hudson Bay days and that. And I've seen this in magazines and that from the north. And then when I seen it in this advertisement in Mushing Magazine, then I found out it was so close. I said I'm going to get one.
CATHERINE WINTER: Carstens plans to use his toboggan to haul gear for winter camping and ice fishing. Carpenter John Herron says eventually, he may try to sell more toboggans to people who will use them for fun. But now, he's concentrating on building working toboggans for the roadless north.
I'm Catherine Winter, Mainstreet Radio.
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