There were some hurdles to overcome along the way, but Stephen Yettaw’s time capsule sculpture is at the St. Paul UFO landing pad and ready to go for Canada Day.
This is the local sculptor’s third work in the town. He also created the Holodomor memorial at the Ukranian Cultural Centre and sculpted a new monument for the legion three years ago. Yettaw has also built monuments in Brazil and England. More locally, he’s done projects in Edmonton and Fort Saskatchewan too.
The time capsule depicts a UFO flying up from the ground, leaving a few maple leaves in its wake. The UFO itself is also decked out with three maple leaves in the style of the Canadian flag on its roof. A one foot by one foot hole has been cut into the stone with a stainless steel box in it. The time capsule items will be put in the box and it won’t be opened again for fifty years. Yettaw says the committee wanted something to go with the UFO theme but let him come up with the design otherwise.
It ended up being a very tight deadline though. “I had a limit of thirty days because I had trouble finding a stone big enough originally,” says Yettaw. “The original two stones I had lined up the farmers changed their mind and didn’t want to give them up. Then when I eventually did find a stone, we got hit with a snow storm in March. Because of that snow storm I wasn’t able to get that stone until about the 25th of May. Basically, I worked 26 days straight on it.”
Yettaw was hoping to make another small sculpture and put it in the time capsule, but the tight deadline for the capsule itself forced him to abandon those plans. Still, he’s happy with the results.
“I think of this time capsule as a piece of my own immortality. They’re going to open it in fifty years so hopefully they still think of me in fifty years and I hope they leave the monument itself long after that. I don’t know if I’ll be here in fifty years – I imagine I won’t – but at least someone will be giving some thought to me.”
The sculpture has been moved to the landing pad site. All that’s left to do is to pour some cement around it to seal it in place.