Steven Sukkau
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
Winnipeg Sun
It started with an injury.
Robert Unik, a steelworker in Selkirk, Manitoba, was badly hurt on the job and found himself in need of a new career — and workers’ comp willing to pay for the education. Most would’ve reached for something predictable and safe. Unik had a different vision shaped not by practicality, but by passion.
“I was already carving,” he told me over the phone, stepping away from his buzzing power tools to talk. “So I told them, ‘I want to be a master carver.’ And they said, ‘Okay. Go find a school, and we’ll pay for it.’”
That decision would send Unik on a long and unlikely journey, culminating in thousands of hand-carved benches — each with a story, each a monument, and each unapologetically his.
Apprenticed to art
His official carving journey began not in a Canadian college, but in St. Paul, Minneapolis, where he trained essentially through correspondence. Upon returning home, he bounced between cabinet shops, learning from old-school master carvers until the title of “master carver” was quietly retired in Canada.
“I don’t know how to build a cabinet,” Robert chuckled. “I know how to carve.”
He spent decades teaching middle-years woodworking in River East Transcona, becoming a fixture in the school system. Then, amid the COVID chaos, everything shifted. A new principal decided Unik didn’t meet the paperwork requirements to stay on, despite having 17 years of independent teaching experience.
“They said, ‘You’re out of here.’ And I told them where to go.”
It could have been the end. Instead, it was a new beginning.
The benches begin
Laid off, Unik turned back to carving. His workshop filled with sawdust and orders. At first, it was bears, then small signs, then benches.
“Benches became my thing,” he says. “Now that’s all I do.”
But these aren’t just places to sit. They’re narratives in cedar and spruce — adorned with dinosaurs, monarch butterflies, gnomes, poppies, family crests, and Norse mythology. Each one tells a story. Each one takes seven to ten days of intense labour — though he could finish the actual carving in three, if not for the finishing, sanding, and painting.
His tools are electric grinders and power carvers, not the old-school chisels. But don’t mistake that for shortcuts. “I’m still holding the tools,” he says. “Still making every cut myself.”
He’s carved for schools, libraries, memorials — even celebrities. One of his pieces was nearly commissioned by Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top until Unik discovered the musician wanted it in red cedar, one of two woods he’s allergic to. “I would’ve ended up in the hospital,” he explains. “So I passed the job to a buddy in California.”
The power of Facebook and a well-placed bench
Unik has no storefront, no website, and no formal advertising. But he uses Facebook with surgical precision, posting in dozens of local and regional groups. “It takes me two hours every time I post,” he said. “But I’ve got over 30,000 followers now.”
He’s even turned down offers from major distributors who wanted to buy his benches at a discount and flip them at triple the price.
But that’s not why he makes them. Instead, he donates one or two benches a year. One of his proudest? A Ukrainian-themed bench raffled off for refugee aid, raising nearly $10,000.
One bench landed in Grand Marais. His dinosaur bench is a permanent fixture in the Selkirk Library. “They send me pictures of kids climbing on it. That’s the best part.”
Every bench tells a story.
A vanishing craft, a lasting legacy
Hand carving is, in his words, a dying trade. “Chainsaw carving is everywhere now. You can’t make money off it anymore,” he says. “And CNC machines have replaced most carvers in the shops.”
But Robert still teaches the old ways. Students come from as far as Lorette to take lessons in his Selkirk garage. “Last winter I didn’t have time,” he said. “This winter, maybe.”
His advice for young artists? “Don’t expect to get rich. Be patient. I’ve been carving for 47 years. It only really took off in the last ten.”
As we talked, I was struck by how little ego there is in the work. Yes, he’s proud of his benches — and he should be. They’re magnificent. But the real joy, the one that lights up his voice, is in seeing someone see them. “When a kid points to the carving and says, ‘Look at that!’ — that’s the moment.”
He’s carved for causes. For friends. For the memory of someone’s mother. And once, for a stranger who drove 2,500 kilometres from Texas just to pick up a bench.
In a world of mass production, Robert’s benches stand as monuments to stubborn craftsmanship. To handwork. To choosing art over convenience. They are, in every sense, one of a kind.
And in Selkirk, tucked into a backyard shop, one man keeps carving.
— Steven Sukkau is a Local Journalism Initiative reporter who works out of the Winnipeg Sun. The Local Journalism Initiative is funded by the Government of Canada.
