It was as though all the participants for this weekend dry stone wall workshop were all 'hand picked'. Aaron a landscaper from Quebec and Simon one of his employees were quite a team who worked really well together building up one side of the arch and needed very little supervision. Mike and Ewen, two brothers from Ottawa and their friend Doug caught on to the concepts very quickly and covered a lot of the building of the other shoulder. Jake form Lindsay and Dan from Rochester carefully applied all they had learned in previous workshops and worked on the arch voussoirs and made sure the quality of the hearting was up to standard. Everyone had a chance to try their hand at shaping the rugged chunky sandstone material as well and very few stones broke the wrong way. I could not have asked for a better bunch of guys to get this unique Frontenac arch structure completed in the two days alloted for this workshop considering the scope of the project and the cold and windy weather. It seems amazing that 16 tons of random stone could be transformed to one beautiful looking arch and about 3 tons of very useless looking left over material at the end of Sunday.
