Prince George and Vanderhoof

“The secret of change is to focus all of your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new.” ~ Socrates
After our long detour to Valemount, British Columbia, we packed up the next morning and headed for Prince George, where we had an appointment to have our 4-Runner serviced.
We heard that towns near Jasper had set up accommodations for the 25,000 refugees, and we drove part of the evacuation route with fires still burning on the mountains.
Along the way, we passed a sign that enticed us with the words, “Gateway to the Ancient Forest.” Also known as the Chun T’oh Whudujut Park, the Ancient Forest is located in the traditional territory of the Lheidli T’enneh people and protects a section of the world’s only inland temperate rainforest with its thousand-year-old western red cedars. Unfortunately, BC Parks had closed most of the area because of the fires.
Two hours later, we arrived in Prince George, located where the Fraser and Nechako Rivers join. For centuries, it, too, was inhabited by the Lheidli T’enneh, known as “The People from the Confluence of the River,” but in 1807, Simon Fraser built a fur trading post there for the North West Company and named it Fort George.
In 1913, the Lheidli T’enneh sold 1,377 acres of land for 125,000 dollars and moved to a new village, an act accompanied by much controversy and trauma.
In 1915, Fort George civic leaders voted to rename the community Prince George, probably in honor of Prince George Edward Alexander Edmund who was Britain’s King George VI’s youngest brother.
As we drove the busy streets of the modern city, we didn’t see much evidence of its history. Ted found the Toyota Dealer easily, and the two young women at the service desk commiserated with us because we hadn’t been able to experience the wonders of Jasper.
In fact, one whipped out her phone to show me pictures of the resort town and pristine park where she and her husband had spent their twentieth anniversary just the week before.
After checking our vehicle in, we chilled in the waiting area and chatted with other customers, delighted by their friendliness. The service men finished our 4-Runner around 2:00, so before heading for Vanderhoof, we stopped to eat at Spicy Greens, an Indian Restaurant.
Thousands of people from India have immigrated to Canada and run many of the businesses, primarily because Canada’s immigration laws encourage highly skilled Indian people to start a new life in their provinces which helps alleviate the labor shortage caused by the pandemic.
Some immigrants wore the traditional attire of turbans and long jackets for the men and head scarfs and saris for the women; others wore t-shirts and shorts. All spoke English, but some with an accent difficult to unravel.
After we checked into Vanderhoof’s Cottage Light Motel, also run by a beautiful woman from India, we took our newly serviced vehicle out for a drive through the forests, hoping to spot bears, moose, or waterfowl.
We saw only an osprey sitting on a nest, but we did find the Saik’uz First Nation community, population 400, located on the east side of Nulki Lake.
The word Saik’uz means “on the sand.” Interestingly, the Saik’uz people speak Athabaskan, the same language family as the Navajos and Apaches, and had erected totem poles at the entrance of their community.
I was fascinated by the poles’ artwork: The stylized animals and birds, the human figures and faces, and the supernatural beings, so later I did a little research and found that some poles told the history of families, communities, or nations, but others served much different purposes.
The earliest response to a house or portal pole came from John Bartlett in 1790 who wrote, “We went ashore where one of their winter houses stood. The entrance was cut out of a large tree and carved all the way up and down.
The door was made like a man’s head and the passage [into] the house was between his teeth and was built before they knew the use of iron” (“Canada’s Complicated History with First Nation Totem Poles,” March 08, 2018).
There are seven basic types of poles: Portal poles like the one John Bartlett wrote about, memorial poles, grave markers, house posts which support the roof, welcoming poles with outstretched arms, mortuary poles which contain the ashes of a deceased person, and ridicule poles where the image of a shamed person is carved upside down.
The poles are created from the giant red cedars, and before the European explorers arrived, artists carved the images using shells, beaver teeth, or rocks.
Because of a total misunderstanding of their purposes, the Canadian government outlawed the poles and potlatch ceremonies – gift-giving feasts – from 1884-1951.
Many of the totem poles were either destroyed or “appropriated” and sent to museums around the world. However, in 1951, Canada revoked the law.
The government made amends, still ongoing today, and museums returned many of the poles to their home communities. The art and culture began to thrive once again.
Rich Ridgeway says, “The best journeys in life are those that answer questions you never thought to ask,” and so I’ve recently pondered the strength and resilience of the Canadian people:
Those who lost their businesses and homes in the wildfires and will soon start rebuilding their lives; those immigrants from India, creating a new life on a new continent; and those First Nation peoples like the Lheidli T’enneh and Saik’uz who not only survived, but now thrive in the land that has nourished their communities for centuries.