• created 2002
• glacier white granite
• 33” H x 20” W x 28” D (84cm H x 51cm W x 71cm D)
• public art collection, City of White Rock, BC, Canada

In 2002, Michael Binkley won a competition to carve a memorial sculpture to honour the memory of Mark Hoggins, a White Rock, BC, Canada resident who drowned tragically while kayaking in a storm a year earlier. The competition was held by a group of friends of Mr. Hoggins and they were impressed the most with Binkley’s concept that included the favourite images of the deceased – the ocean, kayaking and orca whales. The group financed the production of the sculpture and donated it to the public art collection of White Rock, BC, Canada.

Binkley’s composition consists of a male in a sea kayak and an orca surfing down each side of a breaking ocean wave and their poses accentuate the motion of the wave. The sculptor released the figures by opening the inside of the breaking wave, yet kept the delicate details of the whale’s tail and the kayaker’s paddle secured against the mass of the wave. Binkley carved the sculpture from a variety of grey granite that was quarried in the Whistler, BC, Canada area and is called glacier white for its very light colour. Binkley used a variety of surface textures to define the different elements of the sculpture, yet all are a matte finish which gives the stone the ability to successfully hold shadow.

The sculpture is mounted on a circular pedestal of concrete with a textured finish and capped with a memorial plaque. It is situated at the west end of White Rock Beach near the kayak launch.