Progress towards construction of an expanded wolf enclosure at the Thompson Zoo is in limbo, but Spirit Way Inc. continues on with its promotion of tourism in Thompson through its website, marketing, souvenir sales and maintenance.

"There will probably be a letter written to city council in the next couple of weeks to explain what's happening [with the wolf enclosure plans]," says Volker Beckmann, volunteer project co-ordinator with Spirit Way Inc., who admits that delays could set the expansion plans back a year, as it was originally hoped that construction of a new enclosure could begin in June. "It's very disappointing."

In the meantime, Beckmann says Spirit Way remains busy with other day-to-day activities.

"We still sell wolf coins," he said, referring to the silver dollars that Spirit Way Inc. had minted at the Royal Canadian Mint in 2006. There are only about 100 of the 99.9 per cent silver coins remaining for sale at $10 each from the 1,000 that were produced.

Wolf posters featuring either a photo of the wolf mural on Highland Towers or the first 24 wolf statues are also still available, as are art prints featuring one of the wolf posters and the coin framed together.

"We get those made as people order them," Beckmann says, a process also followed with Spirit Way's laser light etchings. The framed prints are $195 while the etchings sell for $220. "People normally buy those higher-priced items as a farewell gift. We just order them as we need them."

Most souvenir sales take place at trade and craft shows that Spirit Way participates in three to four times a year.

"We don't have a store so we make them available at trade shows," he said. "It generates over $1,000 in revenue for us. It's to generate income but obviously it generates publicity, too."

On the marketing side, the Spirit Way website that launched two years ago has seen substantial growth in the number of visitors, according to Beckmann, from 300 per month before to 1,200 per month now, with the number of page views per visitor having increased tenfold. Beckmann says that more than half of visitors to the site are from outside of Canada.

Not all visits are virtual, either, as several people have been verified as master wolf trackers after completing the GPS wolf hunt to find all of the wolf statues in Manitoba, spread out among Thompson, Winnipeg and Churchill.

"A number of people have done that," says Beckmann, including one last year who was visiting Manitoba from Peru. "We've had a number of people really get a kick out of it."

Another task for Spirit Way includes dealing with the aftermath from people who vandalize their public artwork.

"We had some serious graffiti a week ago," Beckmann says. "We got it cleaned up as best as we could. We don't want them to gloat when it's up there for a couple of weeks."

Still, considering the number of sites and wolf statues around, Beckmann says vandalism hasn't been a huge problem, with two major incidents of graffiti and one serious case of vandalism when the heads of some wolves were knocked off. There have also been two cases of damage at the Northern Firefighters Tribute, something Spirit Way Inc. hopes to deter by installing some lighting.

"We always expected there would be some of that," Beckmann says. "It's been really minimal."

In the longer term, Spirit Way Inc. is also devoting efforts to completing the legal requirements to establish the proposed aboriginal art centre as a non-profit organization, and already has a board of directors in place as well as a request to the city to donate land on the west side of Mystery Lake Road near the Miles Hart Bridge, opposite the Spirit Way aviation tribute.

"They will then undertake the next step of this," he says of the directors. "You need dedicated people devoted to that project. We always said that the rockface sculpture and aboriginal art centre would be more complicated and take longer to complete."

Beckmann estimates the cost of establishing an aboriginal art centre at $10 to $12 million and anticipated that fundraising could take a few years.