Land of the Watchmen: The Queen Charlotte Islands

I still hadn't gotten that call, so I booked a room at Copper Beech House in Masset. A sprawling cedar house built by a Swedish carpenter in 1914, the B&B is surrounded by a garden of rhododendrons and poppies. The drive from Queen Charlotte City took about 90 minutes, and I arrived just in time for a buffet of halibut sashimi; smoked oolichans, oily fish eaten head and all; and rhubarb and salal berry pie.

Owner David Phillips, a self-taught cook, used to be an interior designer in Toronto. How he ended up in the Queen Charlottes is quite a story. "In 1971, I tried to circumnavigate the islands in a rowboat, in black dancing pumps," he said. "I got to the west coast, which is like the Emperor's Garden--these three-mile, deserted sandy beaches, with one rocky outcrop after another--and my boat started to sink. Fortunately, a fishing boat came along at the last minute and threw me a line." Phillips's only serious culinary competition is Roberta Olson. She's a Haida grandmother who runs a regular event called Dinner at Keenawii's (her Haida name) at her house in Skidegate. After serving her guests lavish seafood meals, Olson encourages them to toss salmon scraps to the bald eagles on the beach outside.

Sea lions frolic in the southern part of Gwaii Haanas National Park Reserve (João Canziani) [enlarge photo] APRIL 2006 ISSUE • Table of Contents • Barnard, Vermont • Queen Charlotte Islands • Secret Hotels of Cornwall • The Ultimate Guide to Free Travel • Road Trip: South Dakota • 40 Best Vacations

In Old Masset, I stopped for a cappuccino at Haida Rose, an Internet café, where I struck up a conversation with a gentleman wearing a fedora woven from cedar bark. In addition to being a spokesman for the Haida Nation, Gilbert Parnell is occasionally a tour guide, and he kindly agreed to show me around Skidegate (pop. 750), the islands' largest Haida community.

We began at the Haida Heritage Centre at Qay'llnagaay, a 53,000-square-foot complex opening next spring that will include a performance space, museum, restaurant, gift shop, and more. "People on Haida Gwaii are getting out of the traditional fishing and logging industries," Parnell said, with the polished tones of a radio announcer, "and each year we're seeing the Haida people becoming more involved in tourism. The Heritage Centre is a good example." Another example is Aay Oo Guiding Services, which offers an environmentally sound alternative to expensive lodges: Native guides take small groups out in four-passenger power boats to do a limited amount of sportfishing.

"We've got some things happening, cross-culturally, that I think the world has to look at," said Parnell. He drove me to a workshop where craftsmen carve cedar canoes and make jewelry from argillite, a soft, black slate that only the Haida are allowed to mine. Though Skidegate's native population is among the fastest-growing in all of Canada, only 30 people still speak Haida fluently. The Skidegate Haida Immersion Project was designed to preserve the language: Elders create teaching materials, including glossaries and workbooks, to be used in schools.

Our last stop was a popular stretch of beach just north of Roberta Olson's house. The tide was out, fully exposing Balance Rock, a six-foot-wide boulder poised on a pivot point not a whole lot bigger than a dinner plate. A campfire was burning nearby, and Parnell bowed his head as he crumbled a cigarette into the flames--an impromptu Haida offering to ensure comfort and security for his family.

Later that afternoon, South Moresby Air called to say they had a place for me on a plane leaving the next morning. I met up with Brad Koop, the pilot, and my fellow passengers, a nice couple from Alberta. Sharing the Cessna meant that I paid $561, versus $1,500 if I'd gone alone.

We flew south, over forests and abandoned logging camps, finally landing in Rose Harbour, the only private land in the national park. Patrick Lemaire, a tall, bearded French Canadian, met us at the dock. Lemaire first came to Moresby Island in the 1970s, before it was designated as a park, and he now runs the funky, solar-panel-heated Gwaii Haanas Guest House with his wife and two sons. Rooms start at just $96--a fraction of the cost of airfare to get down there--so Lemaire arranges discount flights for guests.

After helping us transfer to a Zodiac inflatable boat with a rubber duck mounted on the bow, Lemaire introduced us to a 24-year-old Haida Watchman named James Williams. Employed by the Canadian government to oversee tourists visiting Gwaii Haanas, the Watchmen function as both guides and custodians. They stay in cabins near the park's cultural sites to lead tourists around once they arrive and to make sure the sites remain well protected. It was a 20-minute, wave-tossed passage to reach our goal, Anthony Island. Along the way, we zipped past schools of leaping herring and sent two rare horned puffins furiously flapping into the distance.

At Ninstints, the ancient village on the beach, Williams took us to a sun-bleached red cedar pole with the image of a bear carved in it--"a mortuary pole," he explained. The notch in the top of the pole, one of 21 along the beach, was used to hold a box with the bones of a native who, in all likelihood, was killed by smallpox. The virus was a major influence in the decimation of the Haida population, which went from more than 10,000 before 1774 (the first year of contact with Europeans) to less than 1,000 in 1911. This particular village, once home to 300 people, was abandoned in the 1870s. All that remains of its 20 longhouses are sunken pits, fallen beams, and the totem poles. In Haida belief, totem poles are meant to be left alone until they return naturally to the earth, so the ones on Ninstints's beach are all being allowed to slump, with glacial dignity, to the ground.

Back in the Cessna, as we flew over Hecate Strait, Koop saw a column of vapor, and we banked sharply to get a better look at a family of humpback whales--two adults and a calf--feeding on schools of krill. The ocean was teeming with life. Sea lions, which looked like grains of brown rice from our perspective, sunned themselves on rocks, and seagulls flocked over orange bands of plankton. Pods of slender fin whales bellowed beneath the plane, their exhaled spray creating rainbows. We spotted a dozen, two dozen, and finally gave up counting.

And then the plane landed in the sheltered bay of Hotspring Island. Also accessible by boat, the island was a $63 add-on to the charter plane fee, and well worth it. After tying up the plane, we met a soft-spoken Watchman who pointed us to a site more therapeutic than cultural: shorefront hot springs, filled with sulfur-rich water. Stripping to my briefs, I made a dash for the frigid breakers, and when I was good and chilled, clambered into the pool. Leaning against the smooth rock wall, I tingled with the kind of glow you get after a day at a bathhouse. Giant ravens stood guard, 100-foot-tall spruce trees provided the decor, and best of all, there was not a single trace of what is today known as civilization.