rowing up on Vancouver
Island, British
Columbia, I found it
easy to mock visitors
from abroad. “This
place,” they’d whisper. “I
can go swimming in the
morning, skiing in the
afternoon, then kayak
home for dinner.” The
views, the landscape,
the wildlife—that was
the refrain. Even in the
cities, the scenerydominates. On any clear afternoon, look up from the
streets of downtown Vancouver and you’ll see the
snowcapped North Shore mountains glowing pink, an
ostentatious show of natural beauty so commonplace that
most residents barely take notice.
There were times when visitors’ compliments
sounded like admiration for a two-dimensional
backdrop. But B.C. is a complex place, especially when it
comes to its aboriginal communities. With a population
of just more than 4.5 million, the province is home to
around 230,000 aboriginal people from 203 different
First Nations, who among them speak 34 languages and
60 dialects. Today, these groups live a life of ostensible
equality, but centuries of oppression began a cycle of
social devastation that hasn’t yet been fully resolved. In
many aboriginal communities, poverty, homelessness
and substance abuse still loom large.
Indeed, residents of B.C. live in a province of uneasy
contrasts. My village on the island was a haven of
middle-class comfort, bordered by the poverty of a First
Nations reserve. As a child, I walked down the stony
beach and saw wealth and privilege give way to sudden
hardship. This, I was told once, was my first experience
of apartheid.
As an adult I spent more than 15 years living outside
Canada, and from time to time I would catch a glimpse of
the ancient cedars and airborne orcas used to advertise
my home province. I wondered which B.C. the visitors
were coming to see. Was it possible to engage with the
region’s complexities and to approach its original
residents in a way that went beyond the superficial?
If I was asking that question of others, I realized, I
first needed to answer it myself. So I planned a trip that
took me from mid-Vancouver Island, the land of
Snuneymuxw and Snaw-Naw-As First Nations, north to
Port Hardy, then on to the remote, fog-shrouded islands