Skidegate

There’s this show I started watching when I first moved to Canada called “Still Standing”. A comedian/actor, Jonny Harris travels all around Canada visiting small, struggling towns to see how the have revitalized. Today we visited one of those towns, Skidegate.

To get to Skidegate from our Bnb without a car required some finagling. The ferry is about 20km. Sheryl had arranged to join the van heading out on a tour to drop us off at the ferry terminal after our 6:45am breakfast. The 20-minute ferry was just beautiful. Lots of pigeon guillemots, oyster catchers, and the ubiquitous bald eagles. And lazy seals too.

After landing at 8:20, we were way too early to visit the main attraction in Skidegate, the Haida Heritage Center and museum. It opened at 10am. We made our way on foot to town. We found a lovely hiking trail through the woods. I find the trail system in Canada is pretty nicely done: graveled paths, lots of bridges and boardwalks in good order (Peace, Order, and Good Government - Canada’s equivalent to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness). It fits.

Too tired to walk all the way back to the museum, we did what everyone advised, we hitched. The first car that came by, picked us up. Through our short ride together we found out he was a hereditary chief of the Tanu Nation. His son carved totem poles and was going to take his place (in a good long time) as chief. He was very proud of his people and land/sea. We bid him a fond farewell.

The museum was amazing. The Haida Heritage Center was built to house Haida ceremonial items and other property much of which was taken/stolen right from the long houses. Knowing these items were Haida and stolen, the museums would not return them until they had a certified place to put them. Adds insult to injury. While we were there a class of all First Nations women were getting a tour of the pieces by one of the museum curators. Just fascinating. He had opened a drawer containing a thick goat wool shawl. It was one of the oldest pieces in the gallery. The interesting part about it was that goats don’t live here. This highly prized item was made of goat hair traded from the mainland. Seeing as how the ferry from Prince Rupert to here is seven hours, that’s a long way to go for some goat fur.

The had bent boxes, totem poles, giant one-tree canoes and lots of cedar and other tree products like baskets and clothes. I learned a bunch.

We walked back to the ferry and just missed it by 8 minutes. With a two hour wait, we decided to hitch a ride to the other town nearby, Daajing Giids. We got a ride immediately from this Ojibway woman who told us about how she tried to connect with her Ojibway people, and she felt rejected. So when she came here, she said the Haida people took her in and made her one of their own. She was also very proud of her Haida people and this place she called home.

Daajing Giid wasn’t much either. The did have soft-serve vanilla ice cream though. A giant cup of it was shared. The gift shop was nice and that was kinda it.

We hitched back to the ferry and this ride was with a white women who told use that everyone in Haida Gwaii immediately got a family doctor and wait times for tests and appointments were minimal if at all. A huge difference in other parts of Canada and BC where one in five don’t have a family doctor and it’s tough to get in for tests. She was a retired big company CEO and decided to settle in here to run a couple AirBnBs out of her nice home.

After dinner we headed three doors down to get out dry bags and orientation for our kayak trip. Can’t wait!Read more