Haida Climate - At Home in Haida Gwaii

In my mind, I'd been there frequently.

Recently, I finally got to go there physically.

In conversation with a National Geographic reporter 20 years ago, Haida carver Bill Reid had this to say about The Spit.

"Though the world view might hold that man migrated over a Bering land bridge (to North America), the Haida know that the Raven coaxed the first men from a clamshell on the beach at Naikoon."

Reid's compelling yellow cedar carving of Raven and First Man in UBC's Museum of Anthropology is for many of us our most intimate and mesmerising introduction to Haida culture. And so, while I explored the Spit, on a recent week's hiking and fly-fishing expedition to Haida Gwaii, Reid's iconic work was never far from my mind.

Clamshells lay in the receding tide. Seagulls wheeled in from the Strait, plummeting down to feast on beached squid. Knarled kelp and ovoid-shaped driftwood lay beachside, the ocean, beyond. Everything was bathed in that extraordinary diffuse light unique to the Queen Charlottes. Headlands faded in and out of focus, then vanished in a sea-mist. The peace was palpable.

A visit to Haida Gwaii is like securing a ringside seat at the dawn of time.

And this "Galapagos of the North" is the main event. "Galapagos," since the islands escaped the last ice age and are now home to several unique flora and fauna.

And in common with all startling performances, the Charlottes reveal constant surprises.

At night, herds of diminutive island deer graze on road verges, oblivious to the glare of car headlights.

By day, as I fly-fished the gin-clear waters of the Kumdis River, huge crabs zigzagged between my waders, scrapping over pink anemone dinners.

Later, in the evening, while I soaked in a hot tub, a bird bopped along nonchalantly and perched on my head.

At other fishing rivers, black bears standing on the opposite banks, watched our fly lines curl out as we cast for coho salmon. Well-fed, the bears sniffed the breeze with their distinctive elongated snouts, Darwinially evolved over time for such specialised seafood foraging activities as uprooting beach boulders in search of crab.

Regularly-scheduled flights land both in Masset on Graham Island and Sandspit on northern South Moresby.

Sandspit set the tone for our Queen Charlottes' adventure where, nestled in the arrival (and departure) lounge sits a small 41/2-metre red dugout canoe named Bijaboji.

At the age of 22, island resident Betty Loman Carey (now 92), paddled the dugout from Anacortes, Wash. all the way to Alaska, on her dad's suggestion that the dugout might provide "budget" summer transportation.

Resilience is most Haida Gwaii residents' middle name: that, and a sense of humour.

From Sandspit we took the short ferry ride north to Graham Island, where B&Bs provide comfortable bases for hiking and river-fishing.

In addition to iconic Rose Spit, we hiked the short one-km trail outside central Port Clements, which winds through forest duff spiked with pink, coral fungi to a huge, ancient, partly-carved Haida canoe.

It's one of several unfinished canoes now resting in Haida Gwaii, abandoned deep in the forests after smallpox and other introduced epidemics wiped out 95 per cent of the Haida people.

In Naikoon Provincial Park, the East Beach Trail leads to another wreck. In 1928, the log carrier Pesuta foundered in seas offshore, running aground and enabling nearby Tlell residents to recycle its beached lumber cargo into homes.

"Tlell is a state of mind," Carolyn Hesseltine tells visitors to the Queen Charlotte City tourism information centre, encouraging them to explore the community's artists' studios and other hidden spots like the Upper Tllel river, where kaleidescopic cutthroat trout rise vividly to an evening fly hatch.

Hesseltine could also add that every Haida Gwaii community is a "state of mind."

In Port Clements' local grocery store, an artist's statement painted on the butcher's walls encourages folk to "believe in your dreams and cry at movies."

"Yes, self-expression is very important here in the Queen Charlottes," says host Delina Petit Pas, at the Port Clements Coffee Shop, Myles from Nowhere. "Our coffee tastes so good because Charlottes' water is full of natural tannin," she adds, before filling us in on local history.

Seems this wee village on Masset Inlet was originally called Queenstown, but the postal folk rejected the name as duplicative. "So, in 1913, the townsite owner named the settlement after the local M.P., Herbert Clements, who reciprocated by getting Ottawa to build a government wharf here."

North of Port Clements, the village of Masset is where we go, after beachcombing for fresh agates on Agate Beach, to source exquisite Haida-carved silver jewellery.

My sister-in-law from Ontario has saved up to buy herself a silver bracelet, which, in a true B.C moment, we silently admire sheltered by weather-beaten Masset totem poles.

We then take time to visit the cemetery outside town, a quiet, moss-covered sanctuary where sun filters down through rainforest lichen on to moss-covered graves and seashell wreaths.

It's hard to imagine a more peaceful resting place, in marked contrast to other destination urban cemeteries such as Paris's Pere LaChaise and L.A.'s Forest Lawn.

Hesseltine's final suggestion for penetrating to the heart and soul of Haida Gwaii's Graham Island, is her most inspired.

For $50 per person, guests can call ahead to book a traditional Haida dinner feast at Roberta Olson's Keenawiis Kitchen in Skidegate overlooking Aliford Bay. Here, Olson's treats roll out, served on scallop plates: Naaw (octopus), gilgil (dried, smoked red flat salmon), kaaw (dried herring roe on kelp), skuu (black dried seaweed), seafood chowder, crab salad with wild sea asparagus and buck venison stew with chanterelles.

Surrounded by Haida paddles, drums, carvings and paintings created by one of her three sons, we listen to Olson's gentle directions to her young helper Allegra.

Olson is low-key and modest about having cooked for such luminaries as the Princess of Japan and TV celebrity-scientist David Suzuki, allowing herself a chuckle, however, when recalling the time she guided former U.S. president Jimmy Carter to view the totems at Ninstints on neighbouring South Moresby Island.

Seems Carter slipped and temporarily lost his footing, disappearing into one of the huge holes in the rainforest duff. The look on the bodyguards' faces, she says, was "priceless."

More artists have set up in the Sandspit Airport departure (and arrivals') lounge, when we prepare to leave Haida Gwaii.

There is Igor, originally a gypsy from Slovenia, now a summer photographer in Dawson, otherwise, a Queen Charlottes' resident.

Igor is helping Australian-born basket weaver Kathy Pick who is setting up a display of her canary grass basket weavings, while talking of the Giant Moss Balls she recently created in Haida Gwaii for a show at Vancouver's Grunt Gallery.

Camaraderie and bonhomie prevail. Passengers swap jokes and tales.

Our Ontario relatives are pleased with their salmon haul. Some Haida residents are taking fresh halibut to Vancouver to "make sure our sons at university are eating right."

In my backpack are two clamshells, gifts for our now-adult daughters who, as toddlers, silently mesmerised by its power, would slowly circle Reid's Raven sculpture in the MOA.

All my clothes smell of cedar.

Canadian educator and humourist Stephen Leacock once said, "British Columbia ... if I had known what it was like, I wouldn't have been content with a mere visit. I'd have been born there."

The same could be said of Haida Gwaii.

Vancouver journalist Isabel Nanton is the author of The Sierra Club guide, Adventuring in British Columbia.

IF YOU GO...

Visiting the Queen Charlotte Islands can be a budget experience since airmiles trips to Sandspit are considered a good deal by seasoned travellers.

- Rustic Rentals offer budget car rental services.

- B&Bs are available in all communities

- www.qcinfo.ca will take you to the Queen Charlotte

City Visitor Information Centre on Graham Island.

- www.langara.com is the website for fishing adventures

and accommodation.

- North to Alaska by Oar -- Bijaboji by Betty Lowman Carey is published by Harbour Publishing ($34.95).

© The Vancouver Sun 2006