Epoxy

Pitt Lake

Pitt Meadows, British Columbia, Canada

Also known as Pitt Meadows, Pitt River, Grant Narrows, Widgeon Creek

This is fresh water, forty kilometres from the sea, and it rises and falls with the Pacific tide.

Pitt Lake sits about three metres above sea level with no salt in it, but it has an open connection out. The tide runs up the Fraser, turns north into the Pitt River, and pushes into the lake, reversing the river's flow twice a day. Levels here shift by roughly a metre through the cycle, and the Pitt River itself by closer to two. That makes it one of the largest tidal freshwater lakes anywhere.

It was a saltwater fjord once. Ice carved the valley, and after the ice went the Fraser spent thousands of years building a delta across the mouth until the salt was shut out and only the tide got through.

At the south end the tide exposes mudflats at low water that vanish entirely at high. It is the only clock the lake keeps.

Details

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

Shop this Style $350.00 CAD

How this one was made

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

Pitt Lake is long and narrow with steep mountain sides, so the shoreline runs almost the full height of the board as two nearly parallel lines. The dam follows both at half an inch out, which means most of the length of this piece is two dam walls tracking each other down the board with a narrow channel of epoxy in between. Long, exacting, and unforgiving of a wandering line, because there is nothing else nearby to distract the eye from it.

Three islands sit in the lower half, each dammed on all sides. At the south end the water breaks into marsh channels and a creek that branches into fine threads, and those get finer than the dam holding them.

Two colours, the water and the black. The black does the border, the lettering, the compass rose and the star. Rose and star are syringe fills, both being shapes with points rather than curves.