My sister recently mentioned that she was enjoying reading a book called ‘The Golden Spruce” which I vaguely remember reading prior to a kayak trip my friend Ron and I did in Haida Gwaii back in 2007. The book was originally published in 2003 and re-published in 2025.
On the kayak trip we stopped in some of the villages which are now mostly covered with moss. During the summer though, 3 local Haida stay in the old villages as watchmen (villages use to have 3 totem poles with heads on the top – representing 3 watchmen to watch over the village). Most of the villages had two entrances/exits. They had a main entrance and a hidden exit they used to get away if they were raided.
After the smallpox epidemic of 1862, all but Skidegate and Masset were wiped out. One of the villages we went to used to have a population of 500 but after the epidemic only 5 remained so the survivors moved to Skidegate. That was pretty typical.
Bill Reid, the famous sculptor, is buried in that village under his Haida name. We saw his grave (see photo in the link below).
Originally the trip was supposed to be four of us: Ron, Claire, Julie and myself but Claire had a bicycle accident 2 weeks before the trip and was unable to kayak. Ron and I went by ourselves.
Ron had a book on where to camp that was no longer in print – for good reason. Whomever wrote that book must have used a motor boat and quickly assessed camping spots based on where the tide was at the time (they clearly didn’t camp there overnight). Some places they recommended were a hundred feet or more from shore at low tide with slippery/slimy rocks throughout the tide area. We found we couldn’t stop at a lot of places. Also we would normally stop every few hours for a pee and snack but there was often no place to stop. Luckily Ron had recommended we each bring a pee bottle so we peed while in our kayaks and grabbed some seaweed to hold onto to sit and have a break when we needed one. We had intended on only paddling 4-5 hours and then setting up camp but because most of those camping spots weren’t there, we ended up paddling 7-8 hours a day. Our final destination was Hotspring Island. We set up camp at another island nearby and went over to Hotspring Island and sat in one of the hot spring pools. Later we were sitting around back at our campsite; Ron had his washing on a line and an all female kayak group arrived. The guide wanted to use our two-way radio because hers was on the blink and they had had to leave one of the group who was injured and no longer able to kayak on another island nearby. She needed someone to come in with a zodiac and pick the injured person up. We heard her on the two-way radio telling the people at the other end “I had to borrow this two-way radio from a couple camping nearby”. Couple? Did you say couple? Something about two old guys and a line with washing on it I guess.
I should mention that we had to wash ourselves in the ocean and there was a lot of red tide that year so it was sometimes hard to find a place that didn’t have orange algae around. There were also a lot of mosquitoes and black flies which was another reason we weren’t anxious to quit early and hang around the campsite swatting flies.
Anyway – what was supposed to be a 15 day trip was over in 12 days because we had paddled much longer each day than we had intended. We arrived back in Skidegate 3 days early for the ferry we had booked and just arrived as a ferry was leaving. They let us on. The ferry travelled overnight and we tried to sleep on the floor of the ferry, arriving into Prince Rupert just in time to catch the next ferry to Port Hardy. We got into Port Hardy at about 11:00 pm at night and the intention was to camp. However, it was raining. Even though we hadn’t really had more than an hours sleep in the previous 36 hours, we decided to drive through the night – stopping along the way to have an hours sleep in the car. We arrived back in Nanaimo at 5 am in the morning. I knocked on the door of our condo. Julie looked out the door and saw this salt-encrusted person that she barely recognized – who had showed up 3 days early. It took a few minutes for her to realize it was me but luckily she eventually opened the door and let me in.
Here are the photos: PHOTOS OF HAIDA GWAII.
WR Foster 