Sjoerd Witteveen
Stephen Taylor of Bigwin Drive in Aurora shows off theTyrannosaurus Rex he built out of snow on his front lawn on the weekend.
Aurora
February 13, 2008 08:56 PM
8 tonnes of snow brought to life
By: Teresa Latchford
When life gives you snow, make a giant Tyrannosaurus Rex.
Cars line the small, residential side street in Aurora and pedestrians rub their eyes in disbelief.
The dinosaur stands 15-feet tall, 20 if you include the length of the tail and is sculpted entirely out of snow; about eight tonnes of it, estimates creator Stephen Taylor.
“People just seem to be blown away when they see it,” he laughed. “I don’t think people realised there was someone this mentally imbalanced in the community.”
The truth? He does it to amuse his family, friends and neighbourhood children who encourage him to sculpt something every winter. But at 47, he is capable and still young at heart, he kidded.
It all began when Mr. Taylor was unemployed. His neighbour jokingly suggested he build a snowman in his yard for lack of something better to do.
Mr. Taylor began to make the snowman to humour neighbours, but soon found himself creating a life-sized sculpture of a lion.
“I had no idea I could even sculpt,” he said. “I put flood lights on it and my wife, Christine, was so surprised when she came home.”
Since his first creation, he has sculpted a dragon, the CN tower and three characters from the movie Shrek on the request of a child living on his street. He hasn’t created one on his front lawn for three years because of the lack of snow in the winters.
This year there has been plenty of snow and his four-year-old daughter, Shannon, asked him to make her a dinosaur.
Even his dentist brought all of his employees over to see it between patients, he was impressed with the whiteness of the Rex’s teeth.
The entire project took Mr. Taylor a little over 24 hours to complete.
“I can’t tell you how many jackets, pairs of socks and stuff I went through,” he explained. “It was really cold.”
But despite the frigid temperatures last weekend, he was out trying to use humor to beat the winter blahs.
He doesn’t do it for a living, he just simply enjoys brightening people’s dreary winter.