With a storm on the horizon, threatening to unleash its fury in Hecate Strait, the race was on to stay ahead of it by covering as much distance as possible toward the southern tip of Haida Gwaii.
I was aboard Maple Leaf Adventures’ Cascadia, a 42-metre-long luxury catamaran, on a week-long voyage to the renowned archipelago, 140 km. off British Columbia’s north coast. Cascadia is one of three expedition ships owned by the Victoria-based company, which has been exploring B.C.’s coastal waters since 1986.
We were lucky to have naturalist Michael Beaudoin and Haida elder Linda Tollas on board to help explain the sights and places we would see during our travels through Haida Gwaii.
Before boarding Cascadia, the other 16 passengers and I spent our first day and a half on land, in the northern portion of Haida Gwaii, after flying into the small community of Masset. Here, we hiked to Blowhole viewpoint and met local artists carving a 10-metre high community pole before driving to Skidegate where we enjoyed a salmon dinner at an elder’s home and visited the Haida Heritage Centre.
The plan then was to explore Gwaii Haanas National Park Reserve, accessible only by boat or seaplane, and where just a fortunate few travel yearly, given its remote location at the edge of the Pacific Ocean. Gwaii Haanas’ 138 islands and the surrounding waters in Hecate Strait and the Pacific Ocean were protected after the Haida Nation designated it a Haida heritage site in 1985, and held a blockade on Lyell Island to stop logging.
Our voyage eventually took us to Windy Bay, where the blockade occurred and where the Gwaii Haanas Legacy pole was raised in 2013. The pole celebrates the 20th anniversary of the agreement between Canada and the Haida Nation to protect and cooperatively manage Gwaii Haanas, which encompasses about 15 per cent of Haida Gwaii.
But there’s another smaller island in Gwaii Haanas everyone was keen to see — the remote, ancient Haida village site of SGang Gwaay (formerly known as Ninstints). SGang Gwaay, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and a National Historic Site, was the first Haida village recorded by early European visitors in 1787, and most importantly has the largest collection of Haida poles still standing, in their natural site.
But getting to step foot on this bucket list destination was not guaranteed, especially with the advancing storm, with gale force winds expected, in the strait well known for its unpredictability.
“Because there’s a big weather system coming in, the plan is to do the whole run from Skidegate to the south end on the first day,” said our expedition leader Jeff Reynolds, one of Cascadia’s 10 crew members who is also a marine biologist and in charge of our itinerary.
“Motoring all day, the first day isn’t what we normally do and a 90-nautical-mile-long stint in one day is rarely if ever done. But Haida Gwaii has some crazy weather and we have to roll with the weather,” he said.
“This is going to be as nautical as it gets.”
The passengers, all from British Columbia except a few from Calgary, Toronto and Ottawa, were willing to forgo shore excursions that first day and travel non-stop to get as close as possible to SGang Gwaay before the predicted storm hits Monday afternoon.
Despite some rough seas travelling on Saturday, we made it about half way down Moresby Island, the largest island in Gwaii Haanas, to our first anchorage at Beljay Bay, safe from 50-knot winds now blowing in the strait.
The good news was that we looked to be on track to get to SGang Gwaay by Monday morning and, despite the rain, still planned to explore nearby Kunga and Tanu Island on Sunday.
That evening, looking out from my suite’s large window on the ship’s top deck, I realized I was seeing Canada as I’d never seen it before — unspoiled, teeming with life and exactly how it would have looked when mariners first visited her shores 240 years ago. In comparison, the Haida have been here for at least 13,000 years, according to archaeological evidence.
During the most recent ice age, about 15,000 years ago, small parts of Haida Gwaii were not covered by ice. This enabled the survival of many plants and six of the 10 native land mammals that are unique to this part of the world, nicknamed Canada’s Galapagos.
One of those mammals is the Haida Gwaii black bear, which has larger jaws and teeth than black bears found on B.C.’s mainland and are 30 per cent smaller.
Before the trip concluded, I would see the world’s largest black bear on two different occasions, searching for hard-shelled crustaceans near the shoreline, as well as transit orcas, a humpback whale, Stellar sea lions and Dall’s porpoises.
And with about 1.5 million seabirds calling Haida Gwaii home, the list of birds we spotted during the trip is a long one, including puffins, auklets and murrelets to name just a few.
But perhaps most surprising to me was the diversity of marine life here. Beaudoin, who donned a wet suit and plunged into the 50-metre-wide channel of Burnaby Narrows, that separates Burnaby and Moresby Islands, brought a cornucopia of sea life to the surface for guests to see during one of our many outings on tenders.
It’s an “invertebrates extravaganza,” said Reynolds. We looked on in amazement as Beaudoin continued adding to the sea life collection, that included a leather starfish, a huge red rock crab, turban snail, purple sea urchin and a Nudibranch, which I previously didn’t know existed. We learned from Beaudoin these shallow waters in an intertidal zone get a constant stream of nutrients delivered by strong tidal currents, which help make it so biologically diverse.
Besides learning about Haida Gwaii’s natural environment, one of the best parts of the trip was immersing ourselves in Haida culture. And with Tollas travelling with us through Gwaii Haanas, we had a unique opportunity to learn about the Haidas from the 75-year-old elder, who became a friend to us all.
A trip highlight was going with Tollas, who lives in Skidegate, to visit her ancestors’ village of Skedans, one of the five watchman sites in Gwaii Haanas. There we met with watchman Mary Russ and walked on abalone shell-marked trails past mortuary and memorial poles, some barely standing and others on the ground.
Pointing to a frontal pole, on the ground near the sandy beach, Russ explained how thieves would cut poles into sections and barge them out. This particular pole was found by tourists abandoned among the driftwood and brought back to where it stood in front of the house where it belonged.
“People used to come in and take all the frontal poles and artifacts out of our village, for their personal collection or the museum, without permission,” she said.
“Was it the right thing to cut up the poles and try to preserve them? In our culture, everything goes back to the earth and that is exactly what this pole is doing,” she said.
As the number of visitors to Haida Gwaii increased in the 1980s, there was growing concern about protecting sacred sites like Skedans. As a result, the Haida Gwaii Watchmen Program was started and was initially run by Haida volunteers.
Today, between May and September, two to four watchmen are hired to live at each site to keep guard. Anyone travelling in Gwaii Haanas needs a permit to be there and a maximum of 12 people can visit an ancient village site at the same time.
SGang Gwaay watchman Paul Rosang, who lives on the island with his wife Aretha, said so far 224 people had visited this season, when I was there in early June. But he expects that number will increase to about 3,000 during the summer.
Rosang said he first came to SGang Gwaay with his grandfather when he was nine years old and remembers pitching a tent inside a longhouse and spending the night inside.
Today, the only evidence of the longhouse are depressions in the earth and the remains of beams, and retaining boards at the side, all covered in moss.
“When I was a kid, the longhouse up on the hill was actually still standing. And there were five or six more poles up on the hillside that were fully carved that have hit the ground and totally disappeared now, in the 40 years I’ve been around.”
“In 20 years, I doubt these poles we see now will be here,” he adds. “Once these poles hit the ground it only takes one to two years before they disappear.”
Knowing this, I realized how fortunate I was to have made it through the storm and to walk among the poles on this sacred site. The once prosperous village was the last Haida village to be occupied full-time before the smallpox epidemic in the 1800s. The Kunghit Haida, who lived here, are also gone. They were among an estimated 20,000 Haida who did not survive first contact with Europeans, that left only 600 people, according to a 1915 census. Today, it’s estimated there are 5,000 Haida on Haida Gwaii.
Kim Pemberton was hosted by Maple Leaf Adventures, which did not review or approve this story. Follow her on Instagram at kimstravelogue.
