Guitar maker embeds Arctic artifacts in acoustic creation

RANKIN INLET – He's built custom guitars for Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones and the late Noel Redding, who played bass for Jimi Hendrix.

But George Rizsanyi doesn't just build guitars for the stars, he builds guitars for entire countries.

Riszanyi is one of the brains behind the Six String Nation project, which built an acoustic guitar out of 64 pieces of material from across Canada: a piece of Wayne Gretzky's hockey stick, a chunk of the Bluenose, and a part of shelf that belonged to John A. MacDonald.

The guitar also has three pieces of Nunavut embedded in it: baleen and a muskox horn from Iqaluit, and part of a walrus tusk from Rankin Inlet.

That piece of tusk was given by Brian Hart, who used to run the Kivalliq Outreach Program. The program grew into a new project that might have a lower profile, but is no less important.

Hart and Riszanyi recently spent two weeks in Coral Harbour, running a guitar-making course for 12 residents there. The pair brought 12 acoustic guitar kits with the toughest steps, like the steam-bent wooden sides, already completed. But the necks, bridges, tuning pegs and other guitar parts were assembled by members of the class.

"To live well up here you have to be creative," Rizsanyi says over a can of Sprite at a hotel in Rankin Inlet. "I've never taught 12 people at once but they were incredible."

There's little room for error building a guitar, Rizsanyi said, but the class, half of whom didn't even play the guitar, did well.

"It was just an amazing response," Hart says. "You could just see people's confidence grow."

During their visit, an outbreak of solvent sniffing occurred among some of Coral Harbour's young people. Seeing that happen during his time there had Rizsanyi preaching the therapeutic aspects of guitar-making.

"It's a very spiritual craft. A lot of good stuff comes out and a lot of shit comes out."

Rizsanyi is the son of Hungarian immigrants who fled during that country's 1956 anti-communist uprising. At the age of two, he landed at Halifax's Pier 21, and moved with his family to southern Ontario. He now works out of Bridgewater, N.S.

He jumped at the chance to visit Coral Harbour, and had the full support of his wife. "She insisted I go," he said, adding he'd like to bring his whole family north if classes planned for other Nunavut communities, which haven't yet been confirmed, get the go-ahead.

"It adds to my inventory of stories to tell people. We're better people when we get to know other cultures. It makes me a better person," Rizsanyi says.

Hart puts the cost of the project at between $15,000 and $17,000, which was funded by Brighter Futures. Rankin Inlet, Arviat, and Iqaluit have all requested their own classes, and Hart said if funding can be arranged, Rizsanyi will be back.