Alert Bay

July 13 & 14, 2013

Alert Bay harbor looking toward Vancouver Island

Largest Totem Pole

Our friends Colene and Bill planned to arrive via Kenmore float plane at Port McNeil and take the ferry to Port Hardy. Our trip up Johnstone Strait to meet them coincided with sunny conditions, a favorable current and light wind. We counted our blessing, docked at Alert Bay's public dock and made a shopping foray. Bill and Colene arrived a bit tired from their 5 a.m. awakening but rose to the occasion of an after dinner walk to the old burying ground at the end of the waterfront. We wandered through the totems in various states of repair guessing which animals were represented. The Kwakwakawakw philosophy forbids maintenance due to the belief that all matter will eventually fall apart and revert to earth and that human creativity will always be producing new things to replace the old. Somehow I felt the message in my own bones and wrinkling skin. No matter how hard we try to stay young as we were with fresh paint and new joints, the forces of time ferry us along to the end. It's a good message.

On Sunday we all wanted to revisit the U’Mista center at Port Hardy where we had seen the treasures confiscated from the Indians by the Indian Agent back in the 1920’s and repatriated 50 years later. 

Saint Michael's Indian School

We hitched a cab ride with a local woman who told us more about the center and St Micheal’s, the Indian boarding school next door. It has a lot of bad feelings locked up. Native kids were sent there, almost jailed, to keep them from talking their language and learning their culture. Priests have been sent by the Catholics to expurgate the local bad spirits twice, but no one is sure that the cleansing worked.

 

Halibut mask used for ceremonial dance in excellent U'Mista video.

At U’Mista we admired the works of Doug Cranmer, a well known artist whose wooden panels grace the entrance, then walked back via the tribal big house and the tallest totem pole in the world.

Back at the marina Charlie paused to take a couple of photos with his iPhone, then turning, bumped the rail, phone in hand. Splash. The phone took a plunge! He ran down onto the muddy low tide beach where the phone had landed in about 2 feet of water. Soon, rinsed and patted dry it was ensconced in a jar of rice.

Colene and racing canoe 

Leaving Alert Bay we crossed Queen Charlotte Strait and sailed with favorable current to the back side of Seabreeze Island. It was gorgeous weather, good for sleeping off the torment of being phoneless in Charlie’s case.
 We eased our way into a narrow cove where the strong wind was still blowing. Colene and I did a little rowing around the kelp and rocks, pulled up a couple of young lingcod too small to keep, and retreated for a Tasty Bites dinner.