Ice Bear has arrived at the G20 Summit in Toronto and given us some wonderful sculptural challenges not least of all being that the temperature is about 28c and boy does ice not melt quickly!

We have created the Toronto bear in partnership with Equiterre and WWF Canada, a partnership that has worked really well… as before and as will happen hopefully in the future. We used Equiterre’s skeleton , the one that was originally created for Quebec City and subsequently travelled to Ottawa and Montreal… it is a skeleton that has now become very Canadian and is enjoying the fact that it has migrated permanently across the Atlantic!

The sculpting home team of myself, Duncan and Jamie Hamilton with Toby Sherborne as the amazing Mr Fixer was joined again by Peter Boy and his brother Jack both highly talented Inuit sculptors. Jack and Peter did a very successful pre-carve in Montreal taking off several tonnes of ice and thereby lightening the load both for the transporter and for the somewhat hot days worth sculpting of sculpting ahead.

Toronto in at the moment teaming with security surrounding the G20 as one might expect. My first concern was not so much that the ice would melt faster than we could carve it but that to get to the block of ice we had to wiggle our way through a police force that out numbered the Canadian population a thousand fold with what could be seen as a trunk full of lethal weapons! It was funny when somewhat later in the day we were visited by a dozen or so scary cops who swooned over Ice Bear and just loved having their pictures taken, spikes, chisels, daggers, sculptors and all…

The Carve went so smoothly and the bear looked wonderful, Equiterre and WWF were chuffed with all that they had, the not so many (securitied out) passers by loved it and with fingers crossed the press will appear later this morning to watch the melt and see the bear as a skeleton and a pool of water.

I will report further at the end of the day and will now attempt to upload a flip for you… standby!

Mark