Epoxy

Lake Winnipeg

Matlock, Manitoba, Canada

Also known as Matlock, Interlake, Gimli, Winnipeg Beach

Rain falling near the Rocky Mountain foothills eventually arrives here.

Lake Winnipeg drains a basin of roughly a million square kilometres, the second largest watershed in Canada, reaching across four provinces and four American states and holding more than seven million people. The lake itself covers about 24,500 square kilometres, so the land feeding it is around forty times the size of the water receiving it.

That ratio is the problem. Everything the basin sheds, from farm runoff to municipal effluent, ends up in a lake that averages only twelve metres deep. Shallow water does not stratify, so nutrients stay available rather than settling out. Phytoplankton biomass roughly doubled through the 1990s and algal blooms have grown more frequent since.

Water sits here three to four years before leaving north through the Nelson to Hudson Bay. Long enough to matter, short enough that what the basin does upstream shows up quickly.

Details

Feature: Lake
Build: Epoxy
Material: Solid Walnut
Colour: Ocean Blue
Size: 10-1/2" x 16"
Completed: May 2025

Shop this Style $350.00 CAD

Detail of the Lake Winnipeg map by Keyway

How this one was made

Walnut, inset, with a black border groove running the full perimeter.

The two-basin shape is what shows up here. A wide north basin at the top, then the whole thing pinches down through the Narrows into a long trailing south basin that runs diagonally to the bottom corner. That lower section is where the dam work concentrates, because it comes apart into bays and inlets and small islands the whole way down while the upper basin is comparatively open water.

Three colours, though the black is doing very little. Blue for the water, white for the lettering and the compass rose, black for the border and the heart. The rose is a syringe fill, since those points and the outer ring have outlines too fine to dam.

White on walnut is worth a note. It is the highest contrast pairing we do, so any wobble in a letter edge reads immediately. That works both ways. It is unforgiving on the way in and it is the reason the lettering sits so cleanly once it is right.