Haida Gwaii

Here are some shots of our trip to Haida Gwaii, which means Islands of the Haida People, also known as the Queen Charlotte Islands. The name was changed after a long period of protests by the Haida and environmentalists to stop uncontrolled logging of the Islands and destruction of salmon breeding grounds. Some of the non-natives refuse to use the Haida name.

Please also look at Ian's blog post of the trip at http://summerinalertbay.blogspot.ca/

The trip took 10 days. A few of those days were overnight stops to coordinate all the ferries we had to take.

We left Alert Bay on the afternoon ferry on July 5th and stayed overnight to catch the BC ferry to Prince Rupert; a 16 hour trip. Lots of time for reading and napping and drinking coffee and watching humpback whales.

We spent the night in Prince Rupert so we could catch the ferry to Skidegate on Graham Island the next morning. This crossing is only 6 hours.



We spent two nights on Graham Island driving to northern end to the villages of Masset and Old Masset.



The final ferry was from Skidegate to Sandspit on Moresbey Island where we spent another night before being picked up by Moresby Explorers to begin the four day trip around the southern islands of Haida Gwaii.

From our B&B, Spruce Point, we could see part of Charlotte City, the largest town on the island. Very small, in fact.

The museum in Skidegate, just a couple of miles from Charlotte, is spacious and there's a view of the bay from the floor to ceiling glass windows. There are six totem poles that were raised a few years ago in the traditional way, people with ropes pulling it up and into the hole and making it straight.

The images on the poles represent the crests of the family and sometimes tell a story. This story obviously had a bad ending. The native bands along the coast are connected to bear clan through a legend about a young woman who was kidnapped by bears and married the bear chief and had two bear cub children. The people believed that the human spirit and animal spirits were so closely linked that they could pass back and forth through the two worlds.

After a day and night in Charlotte, which included oyster burgers for dinner, we drove up to the north end of Graham Island to Masset; about 60K away. There, we stayed in the Copper Beech House B&B which is owned by Susan Musgrave http://www.susanmusgrave.com/default.html, a Canadian writer and poet. You can see the copper beech behind the house, the tree with the dark leaves.

 The decor of our room and the whole house was eclectic and fascinating. There were odd, interesting objects every where you looked.

 These are signs you see in Masset Village. People all over BC are protesting the proposed Enbridge pipeline that would bring oil sands crude from Alberta to Kitimat to be shipped out in tankers down the inside passage. A spill would be disastrous for this environment.

Masset is known for  its sandy beaches. I was going to put a picture of ravens feasting on the remains of a crab boil on the beach but it was kind of gross. We've become fascinated with ravens since we've been up here.

We spent the nigt at this B&B run by Flavian, a young Frenchman in Sandspit.

The next morning we were picked up by Brian, our guide, from Moresby Explorers, and issued our gear: heavy rubber coats, hip waders, and gumboots. I am not friends with gumboots anymore.

There were six of us on the boat, including Brian, the guide (in the yellow life preserver). He was a very capable guide even though it was his first time doing a four day trip.

The rest of the trip was going from one point of interest to another on the various islands. Pounding away in the zodiac. Even though the weather was sunny most of the time. We soon realized that we needed the heavy gear to stay warm and dry when the zodiac was at full speed in open water.

Abandoned mining equipment from the 1920s on Louise Island. It was all steam powered.

An ancient Alder. The main trees are Sitka spruce, red cedar, yellow cedar and hemlock.

Brian showed off his boat maneuvering skills by dodging rocks and shallows and putting us almost inside this cave.

Shuttle reef had so many colors and varieties of seaweeds (a food source for the Haida) and starfish.

 These are fried egg jellyfish. They were all over the place near the float camp. The cook was frustrated with them because the squid stay away when the jellyfish were there. She wanted to make some calamari.




Not a great shot. This is one point on an island that is a rookery, or breeding ground, for Steller sea lions.It was covered with mothers and babies lorded over by the massive bulls who fought each other to protect their space on the island. There's a constant rumble and grumble from the animals. Several curious ones swam out to the boat to take a look at us.


This an example of a "culturally modified tree". The Haida sometimes set a fire at the base the tree that would burn into the core. If smoke came out at any point on the upper parts of the tree, they knew it was hollow and wouldn't use it for house beams.

They also stripped bark off cedar trees to use for weaving baskets and clothing. Bark doesn't grow back on the scar. The tree forms a huge fold of bark over it.

New trees grow from the decaying trunks of older ones called nurse trees. When the nurse tree rots away there are sometimes big cavities left underneath the roots.

There's no way to capture the size of the old growth trees. That's Kelly standing in front of one.

The trees grow on a relatively shallow layer of topsoil and hold on the rocky terrain with contorted roots.

This is where we had to anchor to get to windy bay. We scrambled over the slick rocks and crossed the creek to get to the trail.

The trail marker, this huge boat bumper led to the tiny trail through the mossy floor of the forest. I took so many pictures of moss!

We visited the ancient villages of Skedans, Sgang Gwaii, Windy Bay and Tanu. The Haida Gwaii Watchmen program is a joint project of the Haida Nation and BC Parks to protect these sites. The watchmen are Haida and live in cabins at the sites. They give tours and make sure there's no looting.

There would have been 20 to 40 houses in each village with twice as many monumental poles. Tall, ornate house poles at the entrance of the houses and memorial poles built to house the remains of an important member of the clan or commemorate his death. Poles have been looted, some have been removed for preservation in museums and some have just rotted away. 

Most of the poles that remain are funerary poles. The pole is put in the ground with the wider end of the trunk at the top with a cavity to hold the bent cedar box with the remains of the person. The person's journey to the afterlife isn't complete until the pole has weathered, fallen and completely returned to the earth. Then the spirit is reborn, always as a Haida.


Most of the remains at the villages sites are the giant poles used for the superstructure of the houses. There were four corner poles and two to six beams to support the roof. The walls were removable cedar planks that could be removed in hot weather and were always carried with them when they moved to a new site. Only the support poles had to be cut to rebuild.

These are the remains of a row of houses at Tanu. They were built close together and always faced the beach with thick forest or cliffs behind for protection from attack. The Haida were warriors who raided villages far down the coast crossing the eighty mile wide Hecate Strait in huge canoes. There have been Haida on islands for 12,000. At first contact with Europeans there may have been 25,000 Haida. Between 1880 and 1890 the population was decimated by smallpox and measles. The few hundred survivors abandoned their village for towns of Skidegate and Masset.

We stayed the first and third nights in the Moresby Float Camp, really beautiful and spacious inside. That's Elyse, the cook. Great food!

The second night was spent at Rose Harbor, the site of an old whaling station that closed in the 1930s.

We stayed in the rustic guest house below that is owned by Goetz, a multitalented German. He plays guitar and built his house and the guest house.

There's a wood fireplace that heats the water in the tank to give the guests a chance to have a hot shower. The out houses all have a nice view and are self composting. There's no smell at all.

This is Susan's house at Rose Harbor. She's a transplanted New Yorker who's lived there since the 70s. She raised her children there and her son, Heron, is the owner of Moresby Tours. Susan cooks fabulous meals for all the guests.

On the way back to Prince Rupert during the 6 hour crossing from 11 pm to 7 am, we decided to get a cabin and get some sleep. It was pretty nice, no?

We stayed in the Moby Dick Inn overnight before catching the ferry back to Port Hardy. It was nice to have a day to rest and walk around Prince Rupert which is not without its charms. Seine boats, great seafood and visitors from the far northwest of Canada.