Jane Gaffin is a Whitehorse-based freelance writer who specializes in mining.

Chuck Buchanan is an impressive Yukon artist who works with a variety of indigenous materials such as horn, antler, bone, stone and wood and has a cavalcade of achievements to his credit.

Some of his coveted carvings are part of the Yukon government's permanent art collection.

For his own theme park, he chiseled a hundred years of Yukon history into a 4,000-pound beige marble boulder, rounded and smoothed from sliding down a mountain during an ice age. "It's beautiful to work with," enthused Buchanan who transported the stone five miles along the highway on a front-end loader to its resting place at Heritage Park.

He's also fabricated Fibreglas wildlife mounts for museums and parks and has created life-size Fibreglas human figures. He casts bronze busts like the one of legendary policeman Sam Steele displayed in front of the Whitehorse detachment of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and another of poet Robert Service that graces the lawn of the Yukon Visitors' Reception Centre.

Buchanan is very knowledgeable about bronzing, which is an ancient metal alloy composed of copper and a smidgen of tin and has been used for many millennia to craft art pieces. His vast sculpting experience and knowledge about metals accounts for why his first heroic-size piece came together in record time and why he was able to meet the pressure-cooker deadline to unveil The Goldseeker statue as a highlight during the Canadian Mines Ministers' Conference held in Whitehorse on September 21-22, 1992.

Traditionally, "heroic" denotes one-third larger-than-ordinary-life size, he explained. "One life plus a third is a big difference. It makes a size 24 boot."

Unlike many artists of larger-than-life pieces, Buchanan is fortunate to have his name inscribed in perpetuity on a plaque attached to the base of the sculpture. He said he receives art publications in which artists are often listed as "unknown".

"That kills you off," he emphasized.

In Buchanan's case, there is no doubt who is responsible for the magnificent limited edition art. Documentation has cinched his reputation and qualifications to successfully bid other work of such magnitude and detail.

Any one pausing a moment will notice the fastidious features incorporated into his sculpture--from the prospector's whiskered face to the beaded rifle scabbard. The bronze dog looks so realistic that real dogs are perplexed when aggressive barking draws no response.

Buchanan and Bruce Patnode, the project co-ordinator and designer, were allotted ample time to develop the prospector maquette in late 1991 and make a limited number of random changes to the miniature prototype. But it was June, 1992--three months before deadline--that they knew with certainty the Yukon Prospectors' Association's project was going ahead.

"It was one of those deals where I would have liked to have had a lot more time," Buchanan confessed in a 1993 interview. "I was only allowed eight days--and they were long days--to bring the creation from maquette to the full-size sculpting in the bronze in the foundry at Kalispell, Montana. Bruce (Patnode) came down the last day and helped with last-minute details."

Basically, a statue of this size is math, he offered. Once the artist comes up with the idea in miniature, then it is extrapolation from thereon, and only restricted physically by how far and how often the sculptor is willing to run up and down a ladder.

Whether the piece is a human or animal form, the anatomy has to be correct. A 16th of an inch error on a maquette measurement could be fairly substantial by the time the maquette is enlarged to the nine-foot measurement. The finished product could end up considerably out of proportion. Therefore, the sculptor has to constantly cross-reference the maquette to the extended three-dimensional version.

He thought it would have been nice to have the time to walk away, let it mellow for about 10 days, then come back for a look with fresh sight. The mistakes leap out, he said. "Maybe the hat was crooked or his eyes weren't straight.

Unfortunately, we had to do our last final touch-ups walking out the door."

The next time he saw the statue it was cast in bronze and too late for changes. "I suppose you never stop changing things," admitted Buchanan, obviously as pleased with the final result as is the public who assumed immediate ownership of the landmark. "Too many changes might make it less attractive. In that sense, I guess it was good we couldn't keep changing it."

Most of his previous sculpting has been in stone, bone, antler and were small pieces in comparison to the Goldseeker statue. "I had done very little sculpting in the clay which is nothing more than talcum powder and Vaseline. It is mixed into a paste and heated to give a nice workable material. The more talcum powder added, the harder it sets when cooled. If you hit a happy medium, there is enough strength to hold itself in place so you can make changes if you want."

The tall, confident bronze prospector and his malamute companion weigh about 1,800 pounds combined; the base is another 900 pounds. Add in the rock and miscellaneous material, the whole creation tips the scale around 4,500 pounds.

The $80,000 pricetag was indicative that the Buchanan-Patnode team achieved the best value for every dollar spent. Buchanan did the artwork on a forgiving basis as a contribution to all Yukoners.

Interestingly, residents can determined the city's air quality by the color of the prospector statue. Despite the on-going oxidation process, the statue has retained a rich, dark uniform color that has not altered much since the artpiece was erected in 1992. Bronze has a lovely characteristic of ageing nicely.

The small amount of carbon monoxide and wood smoke in the air has not affected the patina to any great extent. The bronze didn't turn a blotchy green as often occurs with statues erected in cities subjected to acid rain. Thanks to the Yukon's semi-arid climate and long winters when there is no rain falling to oxidize it.

Buchanan has been into artwork and sculpting for as long as he can remember. He has inherited a talent from his craft-oriented mother who can make something beautiful out of nothing as well as having a gift for fabricating animals, a talent bequeathed from his paternal grandfather who died before Chuck had a memory of him.

Many years later, one of Chuck's uncles came to visit. He related that his father had been a Saskatchewan hunter and a taxidermist. He would have been pleased to see his work living on through his grandson, the uncle said.

In a way, Buchanan was somewhat forced into sculpting because of his own wildlife museum. He and wife, Marilyn, and their son, Shane, and daughter, Misty, were developing the Yukon Museum of Natural History and Frontierland Theme Park located about 50 miles south of Whitehorse near the historical burg of Carcross. Later, in 1986, his retired parents moved up and rounded out three generations living on the same six acres.

Previously, Buchanan said he had been working with skin and fur and sculpting mannequins for the taxidermy industry because of a dearth of commercial forms to choose from for the northern variety of game species.

"By necessity, I was forced to sculpt some northern mammals. It progressed from there, bringing forth my carving and the artwork," he added.

Sculpting is fairly simple, he advised. "Sculpting is anybody's idea of art. Anybody can sculpt anything they want. It's just a matter of working with the clays and waxes available. You just keep changing it until you find it pleasing. Then you turn the piece over to a bronze foundry or bronze it yourself."

Once, when a two-week course was offered in Lacombe, Alberta, on how to do old-style bronzing the inexpensive, time-consuming method, Buchanan and his son went down to learn step-by-step procedures from Susan Sturgeon. Then the father-son combo came home and built a small foundry in Carcross to bronze pieces restricted to about 50 pounds. The main product produced was the bronze signage seen in abundance throughout the Frontierland Theme Park.

Buchanan, a Metis, was born in Manitoba. But at a tender age, his parents moved to British Columbia's isolated Queen Charlotte Islands where Chuck was raised until 13 years old on Graham Island, near Port Clements, where his dad worked as a logger.

"That's where I developed an appreciation for wildlife and nature because we were surrounded by it," said Buchanan, who has three brothers and a sister. From Queen Charlotte Islands, the family moved to Golden, a town in the Rocky Mountains of southern British Columbia near the Alberta border. "There was lots of wildlife but a different style than the Queen Charlottes," he noted. "I started whittling and carving and gathering materials in an effort to teach myself taxidermy."

When Buchanan finished high school in Golden in 1967, he boarded a bus a day before graduation ceremonies and ventured off to experience life and see the world. Unknowingly, he was swept into the big northern movement of the mid-1960s. The Yukon was featured as the last frontier where individualists and outdoor buffs could flourish. Economically, times were good, mines operating, jobs plentiful, which spun off into other opportunities.

One of those "opportunities" launched Buchanan's career. He began digging outhouse holes to upgrade government campground facilities in the Tagish-Carcross area. "I didn't know anybody when I arrived," recalled Buchanan whose high school diploma was eventually mailed to him. "But many people who came with that 1960s influx are still here plugging away."

The story goes something along these lines: Buchanan got his start digging holes. The permafrost was about a foot down. He could stay busy by digging to a certain depth then move to the next hole, shoveling each until he hit the permafrost, then return to the first hole and dig a few more inches into the thawing ground.

When he became a businessman, working for himself, he had forgotten about his humble beginnings…until he purchased the property near Carcross where he had plans for a wildlife museum and theme park.

One June day, when the property was still raw, undeveloped land without power or plumbing facilities, he found himself hosting a Yukon Fish and Game Association function. Buchanan thought he'd better dig a few outhouse holes.

"I was digging away and hit permafrost. Ah-hah! I'll move to the next one. Hit permafrost again!" He kept up his routine, just like he had learned to do in the past.

Then he suddenly realized it was 20 years to the day after his first episode at Tagish and he was only 20 miles away from where he'd started. "About the only thing different was I owned my own shovel this time," he said. "On the other hand, I wasn't getting paid to do it, either. In 20 years, I had progressed to my own shovel!" he quipped.

Nevertheless, Buchanan had followed his dreams as is epitomized by his bronze prospector who commemorates those who bucked incredible odds when seeking their own dreams. How one measures his successes and what is meant by striking pay dirt is a matter of personal perception open to his own interpretation.

"It was a fun project," said Buchanan about the bigger-than-life statue. "I'm glad Bruce (Patnode) worked hard and made the opportunity available. I kind of ran the idea by him about 1989. I guess he never forgot about it. Of course, the important ones are listed in the Hall of Fame. They got there for good reason. Putting together some clay and getting the statue bronzed was simple compared to finding a major mineral deposit," he concluded, modestly.

Oh, yeah? It may seem simple for someone who's knowledgeable about what he's doing, which, as mentioned before, is why The Goldseeker project came together in record time.

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Whitehorse-based prospector Allen Carlos sponsored preparation of this article for posting on the Yukon Prospectors' Association's Website.

See related articles Bruce Patnode: Designer of the Prospector Statue and The Yukon's Favorite Prospector.