Haida Heritage Centre at Ḵay Llnagaay

First lesson learned of the Haida language: when a "K" is underlined it is pronounced like a glottal stop, like saying a hard "k" sound with your tongue placed at the back of your throat instead of touching the middle of the roof of your mouth.

Second lesson: Ḵay Llnagaay means "Town of Sea Lions".

Which is only relevant if you want to know that the marvelous Haida Cultural Centre is located on an ancient village site of that name, which was presumably so called because it shared space with members of the Otariidae family, but more about sea lions another time.  I promise.  

The Centre was opened in 2008, and designed to model (with modern architectural elements) a traditional Haida village.  A series of long houses, also called great houses, is placed on the curve of a beach, with a carving shed at one end and a modern exhibition space at the other.  the bay itself is lovely, protected by a picturesque island and facing out to Hecate strait, just a few hundred metres from the current village Skidegate and within sight of Sandspit across the channel.

Six long houses each have a pole placed out front, which represent one of six ancient villages in Haida Gwaii: Skidegate, Cumshewa, Taanu, S'gang Gwaii, Skedans and Ts'aahl.  Six master carvers and their apprentices each took on a pole (James Hart (Skedans), Norman Price (Skidegate), Garner Moody (Ts'aahl), Tim Boyko (S'gang Gwaii), Guujaw (Cumshewa) and Giitsxaa (i.e., Ronald Wilson: Taanu))

The Centre is also home to the Loo Taas, a wonderful canoe carved by Bill Reid for Vancouver's Expo in 1986 and then paddled all the way up here to the beach.  When I expressed interest in why such a valuable canoe is just parked out in the open to all the elements I was told a little sheepishly that the one I was looking at was a fibreglass version (called Loo Plex) and the original is getting some repair after someone tried to clean it with something that started to take the paint off.  Major ooops.

Mind you, the guy who told me that was a black basketball player who also told me Alert Bay was located on Vancouver Island, so who knows if that is really true?

Allow Me To Introduce Us

Haida Gwaii is a collection of more than 150 islands located off the northwest coast of British Columbia, although some of those so-called islands barely register as rocks poking themselves out of the water at high tide.  It is the most remote archipelago in Canada, a 7 hour ferry ride from the town of Prince Rupert across the notorious Hecate Strait, just south of the Alaska Panhandle.

There it is highlighted in red
Ignore other colours and letters unless
you are a Western Canadian and can translate 

Only two of the islands have any sort of settled community of the human variety: Graham Island to the north and Moresby Island to the south.  And if it wasn't for the airport at Sandspit it is quite probable that Graham Island with its 6 communities would be the only source for a cup of coffee and on-land human interaction.

There is open Pacific on the west coast (next stop, Japan), with a range of mountains forming a small spine of definition.  There's no continental shelf to rest your wine glass on here folks - the mountains plunge deep, deep, deep in the ocean.

op-art topographic map
far out man

There is flat bog here, especially in the upper middle reaches of Graham Island, with scrubby little trees and swathes of peat.  Rivers and lakes abound.  The beaches in the north and especially in the east are spectacular, with long stretches of sand and surf.  The rest of the space, particularly in the southern bits, is deeply forested with red and yellow cedar and Sitka spruce and pine and alder and hemlock, and even deeper mounds of mosses and ferns on which the most persnickety of fairy tale princesses would be thrilled to lay her weary body and drift into a hundred years sleep.

 shallow water off east and deep plunge off west

Which all means there is an enormous variety of plants and animals, both land and sea, some of which are unique.  As the islands emerged from the last Ice Age earlier than did the rest of the province, some escaping glaciation altogether, it's no wonder that these plants and animals adapted and evolved differently than those of the mainland and even other islands further south.  This supports use of the moniker "Galapagos of the North" which has been attached to describe Haida Gwaii freely in travel brochure and scholarly journals alike.

I guess it is pretty clear by now that I like maps
(wait until I get to charts!)

Arrival

Me: "Could you please direct us to the Inn?  Is there a taxi that can take us there?"

Helpful Sandspit Airport Gift Shop Person: "Um....come outside with me.  See that building?  With the green roof?"

Me: "That one next door?"

HSAGSP:  "Yes, that's the Inn."

So for the first time, probably anywhere we've traveled, we walk about 100 paces to our overnight accommodation, a barn of a place with a few pickup trucks parked outside.  Inside is much the same as the outside except you can replace the pickup trucks with their obvious owners parked at the bar.

Classic Canadian motel with its built-in tissue holder and bottle opener in the bathroom

Welcome to Haida Gwaii!  

This trip has been a long time coming: years, decades.  We both have explored almost every bit of accessible coast in BC except this bit, the most northerly and remote cluster of islands. As such it is not inexpensive to get here, and even more expensive to explore thoroughly, given the lack of roads, particularly in the southern islands, which form the Gwaii Haanas, a national park and marine conservation site due to to its biodiversity and historical significance to the Haida First Nations people.

Sand spit at Sandspit 

Scudding whitecaps and sun crashing through clouds that tumble on the wind met us as we stretched our legs and followed the road to town, which was a few odd businesses dotted along the shore road, with the "shopping mall" being a small grocery store and liquor store combined, a library, a thrift store and maybe one or two other doors.  We picked up some rations (a bottle of gin and a case of tonic water) then went back to our digs, passing a giant salmon which dwarfed an eagle salivating at the prospect of a salmon this large but that is not constructed of wood and copper.

Wood and copper salmon piece by Lon Sharp

'Dang that would be a nice piece of fish!'