Bernie Wood’s Birdhouses
If you know Bernie Wood at all, you won’t be surprised to hear he’s making birdhouses from the flotsam and jetsam of shore debris. You’ve seen the sign for his used bike shop in Port Hastings and the hundreds of bikes he has around his shop. You might even have one of his hand-drawn t-shirts.
I met Bernie at the Bras d’Or Lake Biosphere Expo and Artisans Market at the Lion’s Club in St. Peter’s in the spring. I was instantly captivated with the crazy birdhouses he had on display. Being relatively new to Cape Breton, I had never come across his bike shop and therefore knew nothing about Bernie. I did like the uniqueness of his designs, though, including the drywall screws that held them together giving them a kind of machined look.
Build me a birdhouse
Bernie’s first foray into birdhouse making started rather serendipitously. On a visit to his girlfriend’s cottage, a neighbor asked him to build her a birdhouse. “‘Is there any particular style or size or what?’ I asked. She said, ‘You build it. Just use your imagination.’ I said, ‘Sure.’”
“I went looking at my girlfriend’s place and there was nothing there.
So I grabbed the car, grabbed the buck saw and went down the shore. So then I get down along the shore, I’m in Washabuck… on the other side of Baddeck. Oh, the shore, there’s beach stuff, and all kinds of real nice stuff. So I grabbed a whole pile. Put it in the car, took it home.
“I didn’t use a measuring tape. Everything was just right off the top of the cuff, kind of thing.” He said he was amazed at the process. “I was like, wow, this is starting to look kind of different. It doesn’t look like anything you’d see in a store. For the perch he found a piece that was “ right gnarly and twisty and really unique. That’s what I went with.”
To put the whole thing together he said, “I knew nails weren’t gonna do it. So, I grabbed a hold of my drill, and just popped little holes in it, and started using Gyprock screws.”
He said the key was to let the wood do the talking. He sold the birdhouse for $20.
Bernie’s scrounging roots go deep
Bernie said he has been recycling and reusing longer than it’s been cool. His shop is a prime example. Although the framing and outside are conventional, all the covering inside is from scrap wood found along various beaches, especially after storms. Looking at all the pieces that went into covering the ceiling and walls, it’s hard to fathom the patience it took to collect and fit it all together. “It’s a jigsaw puzzle. It’s all little pieces put together. Yep. And like I said, it’s not the prettiest looking thing, but hey, if it works, then so be it.”
And as you’d expect, heavy garbage pickup is an event Bernie makes full use of. “All my tools are stuff that I picked up through heavy garbage pickup.” For example, his mitre saw. “My mitre saw came from the motel just down here. All it was, the angle adjustment screw was missing. Works great.”
For someone with his patience and perseverance, there’s treasures to be found. “So I come across everything from bike accessories to bikes, tools, plywood, timbers, whatever I need.”
Originally from Halifax
Originally from Halifax, he moved to Port Hastings with his family in the seventies. His father was a welder at the shipyards then and was an inspiration to Bernie. He said his employers “liked Dad’s kind of spunk, kind of thing. Yeah. He was always thinking outside the box. Very creative.”
He also gives a lot of credit to a shop teacher, Brother Paul, from the old Mabou Consolidated School where Bernie took woodworking. The school is closed down now but he said Brother Paul was always encouraging him to practice a trade that he could use in the real world.
At the sign of the tandem bicycle
Although I had never heard of Bernie, I see now he’s not hard to find. You’ll see a tandem bicycle hanging in a tree. And locals seem to know him well. While I was there a father who was originally from the area with his two young sons showed up to buy some bikes. They had just left the mainland in a hurry and weren’t sure how long they’d be here because of the wildfires that were raging. They were looking for some bikes for the kids to pass the time. Bernie helped them find a couple of suitable ones from the hundreds he has about the place that he’s collected and had donated.
Survivalist
Near the end of the afternoon Bernie told me, “Recently, (in the last 20 years) I’ve been dabbling in the world of survival. This has started taking off because of all the storms and stuff. Power going out. Running out of wood.”
This did not surprise me about him in the least. Most scroungers are, at their core, survivalists. Most of them expect the world to fall apart and many of them secretly hope it does and would probably be happier if it did. They’d be more in their element of relying on their wits and ingenuity.
Bernie’s ability to come up with a creditable birdhouse in a reasonable amount of time (about an hour and a half) from the flotsam washed up on the shore gives you a sense of where he would be if the world does fall apart. He would probably be just fine. He would be the guy with all the bikes and who knows where he can scrounge all the good stuff. And he’d probably still be making birdhouses for his neighbours.
