Going with the grain

Feeling connected through a love of trees and the artistry of woodworking in Oxford County

Rooted in the landscape

In the quiet countryside in Oxford County, tree-lined roads leads to an incredible story. Those trees, especially the maples, are reminders of the past—hard winters, harvest celebrations, children riding bicycles at dusk and colourful sunsets over the fields. The maples, planted decades ago by the Men of the Trees organization, serve as a reminder that the people of Oxford County have always felt that caring for woodlands also meant caring for the community. That belief took root in 1974 when the W. Leslie Dickson Arboretum began. Les Dickson, a conservationist and former mayor of Norwich Township, worried that native Canadian tree species were disappearing quietly, one forest at a time. The arboretum was created not simply as a collection of trees. 
It served as a living lesson—a place where families could wander shaded paths and rediscover their relationship with the land. What began with 38 species has grown into hundreds of native and ornamental trees and shrubs from around the world. Through floods, closures and changing caretakers, the arboretum endured because people understood something important. Traditions, like woodworking, survive when communities decide they matter.

From Ashes to artistry

On autumn mornings, there are wood artisans from across the county who still walk among forests with the same reverence farmers once reserved for fertile fields. To them, every tree carries a future story hidden beneath bark and grain.

Brent Houston learned that lesson as a boy. At Kintore Custom Hardwoods, Brent, his wife Paula, and his three brothers work side by side in a business born from heartbreak. When the Emerald ash borer (an invasive beetle species) swept through the family woodlot, the ash trees that had stood for generations began to die. Many landowners simply cleared the damage and moved on, but the Houston family saw something else. It wasn’t an ending, but a responsibility.
Their grandfather, Richard, had taught the Houston boys woodworking long before they could properly lift a board. He taught them how walnut cuts differently than maple, how ash can be shaped with steam, and how patience matters more than machinery. Most importantly, he demonstrated why wood deserves respect because of the decades trees spend becoming something that craftspeople shape in a few hours.
Instead of letting the dead ash decay unused, the Houstons salvaged the timber. The trees threatened by destruction were transformed into tables, charcuterie boards and handcrafted furniture. Even their showroom was built from the rescued ash. Brent often jokes that the business quite literally rose from the ‘ashes,’ but behind the humour is something deeper and that’s his determination to honour what was lost by creating something lasting.

Finding stories in every grain

That same spirit is reflected in the workshop of Dave Schonberger at Ottercreek Woodworks. As someone who has spent years studying the Carolinian forests of Norfolk and Oxford County, he had a deep appreciation of the rare hardwoods that grow in the rich soil of southern Ontario. To him, wood is not raw material. It is a memory. He handpicks every board for its knots, colour changes and grain patterns because imperfections tell the tale about where a tree stood and what it survived.
In 2018, Dave invited others into that story through his Tree to Table experiences. Guests shaped their own charcuterie boards while learning about the forests that once stretched endlessly across the region. Some participants arrived thinking they were simply making serving boards but soon learned with the left understanding that craftsmanship is also conservation. The smell inside his workshop carries traces of cedar, walnut, and fresh sawdust. Sunlight falls across unfinished boards while stories drift easily between strangers. Dave believes people crave this connection because modern life moves too quickly. Woodworking slows time. It asks people to notice details. A knot becomes beautiful instead of flawed. A scar becomes character.

Preserving history through handcraft

At the Ingersoll Cheese and Agricultural Museum, another kind of woodworking story waits quietly behind glass displays and weathered beams. The museum itself was built using pieces of a dismantled barn, reconstructed to resemble a 19th-century Oxford County cheese factory. It’s home to more than 45,000 artifacts, including many woodcarvings by Wilson Johnston and his large-scale extraordinary work, Pathway to Giants. Carved from four different woods over two painstaking years, the massive artwork tells the story of early settlers travelling from Pennsylvania into the Ontario wilderness during the 1790s. Visitors stand before scenes of broken wagon wheels, towering trees, dangerous rivers and weary families building homes in the dense forest. Every figure, every wheel spoke, every tree trunk in Wilson’s artwork was shaped by hand. Visitors often gaze at the carving for long periods of time, perhaps recognizing that handmade objects contain elements of the people who made them.

Crafting for connection

It is a belief that lives on in the work of Adam Eddy, who began Eddycrest in 2008. It was more than just a company. It served the needs of his growing family. Adam, an engineer with a love of woodworking, started building furniture that solved practical problems while bringing warmth and beauty into everyday life. Among his earliest creations were crokinole boards inspired by family gatherings where he would play the beloved Canadian game with his great-grandmother. The game itself was invented near Tavistock, where the World Crokinole Championship still draws competitors each year. But for Adam’s family, crokinole was never only about competing or winning. It was about evenings around the table, exchanging quips with cousins and the sound of wooden discs sliding across polished wood.
Adam refined the traditional board design with engraved details, hidden storage and built-in scorekeeping. What began as a personal family project eventually became the travelling Eddycrest crokinole board, which landed in homes across the country. His most meaningful creation came from watching his mother work who was a professional quilter and seamstress. She spent countless hours sewing at tables never designed for the realities of creative work. Adam observed how she moved, struggled for the space she needed and sought
the tools she frequently reached for. From those observations, he designed a sewing machine table built with technical precision and a deep understanding of what his mother’s craft meant to her.

More than woodworking

A sense of connection and meaning seems to be a thread running through every workshop, forest trail and carving in Oxford County. Woodworking is not only about wood. It is about listening carefully enough to understand what people need—a place to celebrate artistry, family traditions and storytelling.

Long after the sawdust settles, those things remain and you’ll find them in Oxford County