The Spirit of Haida Gwaii

Patricia Morley is professor emerita of English and Canadian studies at
Concordia University, and the author of Kurlek, Margaret Laurence: The
Long Journey Home, and As Though Life Mattered: Leo Kennedy’s Story.

The Spirit of Haida Gwai is for anyone who has stood in Vancouver’s
International Airport marveling at Bill Reid’s monumental and complex
bronze sculpture.

The sculptor’s lyric and ironic foreword orients the viewer and
steers us through his complex creation of 13 mythic travelers drawn from
Haida legend and crowded into a canoe. The figures are symbols of humans
dreaming, scheming, and enduring. “There is certainly no lack of
activity in our little boat,” Reid writes, “but is there any
purpose? Is the tall figure who may or may not be the Spirit of Haida
Gwai leading us, for we are all in the same boat, to a sheltered beach
beyond the rim of the world as he seems to be, or is he lost in a dream
of his own dreamings?”

Robin Laurence’s excellent introduction provides further commentary
on the mythic figures and a short biography of the sculptor. Most of the
book consists of dramatic black-and-white photographs by Ulli Steltzer,
who came to know Reid and to photograph the work from its inception in
the sculptor’s studio on Granville Island.

Steltzer’s superb photos are the perfect complement to Reid’s
magnificent sculpture. This is a very special book.