ARCOLA - Being raised across the road from a grain elevator and train track, Ivan Paradis fell in love with the old buildings.
As a child in Manitoba, he had the opportunity to go inside the elevators as he knew the manager well and also had an uncle who managed one.
Paradis was very intrigued with the buildings and the trains and began to build them from scratch in 1990, but they were on a larger scale. He has seen the models downsized.
Approximately three and a half years ago, Paradis and his wife Sheryl and three sons moved to Arcola, as there was more opportunity for work in the community.
Sheryl works at the Arcola Co-op gas station and his sons are also working, but Paradis is on disability, and he needed something to do.
He now makes tiny elevators and train-related buildings, but it is a lot of work to prepare to make one.
Paradis and his wife have travelled all over Manitoba, and he has built every elevator in the province. It begins with pictures, and they take around 30-40 photos, changing angles by five degrees. These photos are loaded onto his computer and the selection starts there.
He will make a blueprint of the project, determining the height and where the windows and doors are placed. This process takes four to five hours, as he wants the buildings to be small replicas of the big ones.
Most decals he can make on his computer, but at times Paradis needs to order them in, and this can be costly.
These little buildings are done at the smallest scale and aren't over eight inches high, so they need small tools to work with them.
It takes several different files, knives, pliers, nippers, rulers and tweezers to get the job done, and he has to create multiple templates.
Some elevators take longer than others, but he easily puts 40-60 hours in a piece, as the glue needs time to cure, and there are several glues he works with.
Painting is another time-consuming task, and Paradis has hundreds of colours to match up with the original grain elevator.
Every piece is cut out of styrene plastic and meticulously placed, and every feature on the big elevator is placed on the small one.
In Saskatchewan, he has seen and photographed one-third of the elevators, including those in Arcola and Stoughton.
Paradis attended the Farm Toy Show in Arcola, and he was pleased with the outcome. He hopes to attend more in the future.
He also plans to make larger ones for lawn displays and he takes custom orders.
To him it is considered a hobby, and he is hoping to keep it this way, but in the meantime, there is a plan to visit Stockholm, Alta., in the future to check out the four to five-foot elevators created there. There are also some near Yellow Grass.
Since his house is filled with models, and he is running out of room, right now he will slow down a little until the next shows in the new year.
