For more than three decades, Thomas led outdoor bound expeditions. His adventures took people beyond the weekend campsites, where he taught wilderness survival. Thomas taught all age groups the art of whittling wood and how to create the ideal cooking tools from various trees. There is an art to making the perfect cooking campfire, and Thomas knows which barks and woods to use to keep embers burning. These skills and countless others are needed for crafting an overnight campsite, and he brings some of these skills to bear on his Intarsia pieces of art.
The Canadian Boreal Forest contains countless species of trees, and Thomas can identify most. He delights in holding a raw piece of wood while envisioning the final art piece. Thomas appreciates the natural beauty of raw wood, its veins, patterns, and colors and carefully hand selects each piece for his art. In Thomas’s private collection, there are works that contain exotic woods found in remote regions of the world and are as valuable as silver and gold. Purpleheart, Sandalwood, and Cocobolo, the latter being incredibly difficult to work with, are a few of Thomas’s favorites. When handling a single piece before it’s inlaid into the final composition, one would believe they are holding a finely polished gemstone.

Thomas remembers city streets filled with cars from the ’30s, ’40s, and ’50s and thought it would be thrilling to drive a two-door coupe truck. He remembers the Beetle Car and how it became a craze and brought it alive with Intarsia. Everyone knows and loves Lassie and her beauty, and the piece Thomas crafted would give one a feeling that Lassie is by their side. Other inspirations that are expressed in his work are wildlife, specifically bears, and his love of golf. His private collection contains an ursine inspired work of Intarsia art and is loved by all that visit his cottage, which is located in the Canadian Boreal Forest and a stone's throw from the sixth-largest freshwater lake in the world. At dusk, the loons sing praise to another wonderful warm summer’s day while the wolves give the last call of the evening. And just before daybreak, fish can be seen jumping to catch their breakfast, while across Lake Winnipeg, Pelicans glide silently above the water in anticipation of their next catch. And under the thick canopy of tall Pine, Birch, and Spruce trees of the Canadian Boreal Forest, the tiniest beams of sunlight reach the forest floor where delicate flowers bloom.

All of the elements contained in Thomas’s Intarsia woodworking represent his life, and his exhibition contains Cedrus woods found from the Mediterranean to the Himalayas with the main emphasis on the Canadian Boreal Forest evergreen conifers (genus Thuja). Thuja are also called arbor vitae (Latin for the, "tree of life"). Two species of Thuja are found in Canada which is the Western red cedar and the Easter white cedar. The Western red cedar varies in color from pinkish-brown to a yellowish-white and is located along the Canadian west coast and western slopes of the Canadian Rocky Mountains. The yellowish-white cedar is used by the Canadian Aboriginal people for totem poles, canoes and lodges. Eastern white cedar is located some 3,000 km east of British Columbia in the Canadian Great Lakes-St Lawrence forest Niagara Escarpment region and trees of more than 700 years old have been found. The Eastern white cedar has hues of reddish or violet-brown to yellow and is believed to have medicine power and represents the Southern direction in the Canadian Aboriginal Medicine Wheel.