Yet, as the raising ceremony approached, it was unclear how to safely secure this work of Indigenous art upon arrival in Vienna.
The solution came from Karl Maru, an Estonian-Canadian tool design consultant—also active as a transport diver, hospital worker, businessman, entrepreneur, photographer, and delicatessen owner throughout his career—living in North Vancouver. Karl’s connection to the project was through his wife, Trudy Duller, who worked at the Austrian Consulate General in Vancouver and had been assisting with the diplomatic coordination. Confronted with the engineering impasse and equipped with a pencil, drafting paper, and a lifetime of mechanical intuition, Karl sketched a custom steel mount. Completed in less than four hours, according to project manager Peter Baird O.B.C., the design “[supplied] minute details of the mount required... the first of many dramatic examples of the abilities and capacities that Karl would bring to the project from that day forward.”
