Northwestern Canada is a beautiful place with many distinct cultural contributions. Let's summarize via the totem pole. The totem pole represents the family heritage and story for people in the Haida and other First Nations people. (Shown here with bald eagle).
But the strong Haida people are working on a renaissance, by relearning their traditional arts and reinvigorating the traditional culture. The first modern totem pole was raised in Port Masset, Haida Gwaii in the 70s, and now you can see then all around town.
As I learnt more, I became a particular fan of the Shame Totem Pole (here, see Types). So basically, you can commemorate forever the ways people have affronted you. And you can keep adding sections! This is amazing; Barry's Shame Poll is in progress.
The native people also revere nature and animals, so this Balance Rock is a cool and also spiritual place.
There are many native, foraged, picked foods, but it's hard to experience them in such rural places. We bought this bag of sea asparagus from a family of Filipinos selling it at a stall. Salty, crunchy, and high fiber - a great snack! (Does not taste like asparagus).
In Whitehorse, Yukon, there are many traces of the goldrush culture. I didn't realize that the wild wild North looked like this.
We went to Carcross, short for Caribou crossing, where the small goldrushy houses/huts still exist, many inhabited. The one below was built by a man who loved the beer parlour and his dream was to put wood on his fire from his bed. His dream was NOT to stand up in his hut, which is sized for an 8-year-old, shown here.
Prince Rupert, where we saw the aforeblogged bears, is a port and fishing town. Of course, they revere the mighty beaver.
We think these are dungeness crab traps. They were everywhere.
Prince Rupert has (sort of) converted their old salmon cannery into a museum. There, Chinese, Japanese, Native and White workers did different jobs, lived separately in highly different standards, and canned salmon. Fascinating, yet the anthropological commentary skirted some of the more difficult issues here.
Of course everywhere had a fishing culture, and everywhere had beaches of many kinds. Here is our fave. BC beaches are mostly covered in logs! Some is from logging boats being clumsy, some is regular driftwood, some is really old and historical, apparently.
There will be no LIS Beachliness reviews, because the vast majority of Canada's beaches will have the same review as lake Erie. Beautiful, desolate, often cold, limited facilities.
Final cultural picture. We accidentally rented a purple car onto which ladies may pose. Here is my best work. No, the bumper scratches were not ours.
