‘Prospector’s hobby’ truly a passion for local resident

On cold, dark winter nights, Ray Cousineau can be found in his office carving pieces of soapstone that he’s found throughout the year.
“Just in the wintertime at night I play around with this stuff, you know, do some carvings,” he noted last week.

Cousineau has carved birds, fish, moose, and totem poles among other things. Some are a deep black while other pieces have been weathered brown or are speckled with other minerals.
In the summer, he finds time to support his hobby, scanning his gravel pit and creeks near his Bear’s Pass cabin for good pieces of soapstone to carve.
“He’s got a quarry up there, a soapstone quarry, in one of his gravel pits,” noted his wife, Helen.
“We started finding them in our gravel pit,” he said. “In the bedrock around the gravel pit was where the soapstone was.
“We staked all the mining claims around there and we sold them all,” Cousineau added. “But you know, the mining company couldn’t get my soapstone because I wouldn’t let it go.”
He has an agreement with the company that bought the mining claims, in which they can mine everything else so long as they leave him his soapstone.
“A lot of times you’re digging in the gravel pit and you dig up a nice big chunk of it, and you just saw off of it what you want,” Cousineau explained.
Usually he finds pieces that have come loose, rather than trying to saw them out of the bedrock.
But while he is very passionate about it, Cousineau stressed, “It’s just a hobby . . . a prospector’s hobby.”
He still works at Cousineau Brothers Construction, a company he owns with his brothers, and has no time to work on pieces in the summer.
But after selling the Bonnie Blue on Scott Street more than 10 years ago, Cousineau found he had more time on his hands and decided to take his prospecting hobby a step further and begin making figurines.
Most of his pieces he carves from soapstone but sometimes he glues pieces of tourmaline together to make little animals, as well.
“When I found this vein of tourmaline . . . I took all this rock and put it in my pack sack. You can see the crystals,” Cousineau noted.
These rugged creatures are quite simple and easy to make—as long as you have an imagination to see how some rocks look like parts of animals.
As for carving soapstone, Cousineau said it “all depends on how soft it is.”
“If it’s soft, you can do it in two or three nights,” he remarked. “But if it’s hard soapstone, then it takes a good week to do a figurine at night.
“I wouldn’t be able to tell you how long each one takes.
“You know, a lot of these animals I do I don’t even know what they’re going to turn out to,” he admitted.
He just works away at them until they begin to take the shape of something.
Cousineau said he mostly uses a power saw file to do his carvings. He has different shapes of files for the detail, then afterwards he makes the carvings shiny and smooth using sandpaper and emery cloth.
He learned how to use all of these tools a long time ago when he was in elementary school.
“When I went to grade school here, there was a St. Mary’s School ran by nuns,” Cousineau recalled. “And those nuns, they taught us how to use coping saws and they taught us craftwork.
“We did all kinds of craftwork with plywood and plastics,” he noted. “They taught you how to do fancy stuff.”
“So that was really a start. I learned more from nuns than I did in high school,” he laughed.
“Everything I did in grade school I was proud of,” Cousineau added. “They made sure you varnished it right, sandpapered it right.”
Now years later, Cousineau has not forgotten those skills and is using them once again.
He hopes younger people, rather then watching television or going on the computer, also will become interested in prospecting and carving.
“A young person starting out, if you wanted to do carvings, all you would need is a hacksaw, a little coping saw, and file,” he remarked.
And, of course, a piece of soapstone.
After his pieces are finished, Cousineau gives them away to his family. Other pieces are donated to mineral programs and Ducks Unlimited for auctions.
“I’ve got one of my moose down in Chicago, plus a turtle,” he noted.
Usually, though, “He won’t part with them,” said his wife. And, indeed, there’s quite a large collection at their home.
“They used to be in my China cabinet but it wasn’t big enough so now they’re on my piano,” she said.
“They just keep getting better and better,” she added.