I was delighted to get a call from an old friend and long-time client this past week. Bill Kelly, now retired, of Kel-mor Gravel Pit had called me to inform me that his beloved ‘Scoops’ now lived in his new home at a sports park in Chilliwack, named in Bill’s honour. Bill has been a long-time supporter of the sporting teams and events in our city and this was a fitting honour.
The story began back in 2005 or so. Bill called me up and asked me to pay him a visit at his gravel pit which I knew well. When I got there we had our usual cordial chat, discussing the projects I was working on which he always took a keen interest in. Then he asked me to create a LANDMARK which would act as the sign for the gravel pit. I came back a couple of days later with some concept art which he loved. He paid the deposit on the spot and I went back to our shop to begin work. The project was an eight-foot-tall robot, with backhoe buckets for his hands. It was fabricated from scrap steel and was perched on a stand with the Letters KEL-MOR around it. Since this ‘sign’ was to advertise and promote gravel sales I asked Bill to mount this robot to the top of a giant gravel pile near the entrance. Bill agreed. But he took things one step further. He took out a small advertisement in the local papers asking readers to name his new sign. The winning entry would receive a complementary truckload of gravel or topsoil as a prize. Amazingly, Bill received more than four hundred entries and the name chosen was ‘SCOOPS’. Bill would mount the steel robot to a flatbed truck and enter him in all of the local parades. When the locals became worried about the missing robot Bill would put up a temporary sign that stated Scoops was off on an adventure and would soon return. Scoop did become a well-loved landmark and welcomed patrons to the gravel pit for many, many years. Bill retired a couple of years ago and sold the gravel pit but when the city created the sports park in his honour it was decided that Scoops was to be relocated. The pylon holding Scoops in the air was wrapped in order to graphically represent Bill’s long-time business. This weekend Janis drove me by the park to get a peek but the temporary construction fence prevented me from getting a good picture. I’ll keep an eye on the finishing progress of the installation and hopefully get a better picture soon!