COLWOOD, B.C. — Paul Lewis stops walking along the treelined trail and points up to a branch. “What’s that?” Paul is in the midst of a treasure hunt of sorts. But instead of gold, he’s looking for sculptures. “This one’s a little pygmy owl.” Paul points to a wooden sculpture of a bird that’s hidden on high, before walking a while longer and gesturing up to another tree. “Right there, a pileated woodpecker.” While Paul built all the birds, searching for more than a dozen of them is the sort of adventure his son Braedon would have likely loved when he was little. “We called him Bubba,” Paul smiles. “Bubba Noodle!” His son’s casual nickname turned permanent after a big biker stopped and asked the then-three-year-old what his name was. “[Braedon] looked up at him and says, ‘My name’s Bubba,’ Pauls says, reenacting his son’s bold introduction. “And everybody burst out laughing. He wasn’t afraid of this guy at all. He just stood his ground.” Although the boy grew up to be a young man, Paul says Braedon would always be his Bubba. After his son died unexpectedly, that’s how he chose to remember him. “I look at the positives, the fun times,” Paul says, fighting back tears. “That’s what gets me through it.” So, when it came time to memorialize his boy, instead of choosing a tombstone, Paul decided to pay tribute to Braedon in the trees, by making a family of eagles along the trail. “So, we have mama, which is Delaney, Braedon’s mom,” Paul points up to a large eagle’s nest he built, featuring a mother eagle holding a salmon in her talons to feed her baby. Soaring above them is the father eagle—a sculpture with a seven-foot wingspan attached to the highest branches with aircraft cables. “And then Braedon is the young eaglet in the nest,” Paul says, before revealing he created a secret compartment in that sculpture, where he placed a jar containing some of his son’s ashes. “It’s like, ‘Bubba this is you’,” Paul recalls saying. “‘This is where you’re living now.’” As Paul continues along the trail in the West Shore park, he reveals that this week marks the anniversary of his son’s death, and that he made all the hidden bird sculptures as a gift to the community—transforming his private tragedy into a positive public opportunity. “It’s about giving back,” Paul says. “The more positive you are, and the more you can for others, it’s going to come back tenfold.” And no matter what sort of treasure you’re searching for, if you’re doing it with the people you love, you’ve already found what’s far more precious than gold.
