Old Massett Gallery
This is the last of my posts from our trip to Haida Gwaii and Old Massett to attend a potlatch. As you can see from my series of photos, it was a great trip and we crammed a lot into just four days. As is so often the case on a trip somewhere, shopping intervenes. Given all the Haida art that we have seen, how could it be possible to not visit gift shops on the island? In Old Massett the best place we found to shop was Sarah’s Haida Art and Jewelry. I did not take photos inside, but it is packed with arts of many kinds from prints and woven hats and clothing to gold and argillite jewelry and much more. The exterior is also wonderful and worth of a post.
What did we purchase, you may be wondering. We bought a doll sized wooden hat block or hat mold which was carved by Gene Bell – it was sold as a pendant or key chain decoration but is a miniature of the larger ones used by the Haida to shape their cedar and spruce root hats. Since a few days after our return my partner was off to a First Nations hat making workshop it seemed lucky to find a small hat block. She took it along on that course and used it to make a hat for her dolls. It is the first twined hat she has made, but it came out pretty well. I expect that more will follow – you can see the hat block in use, and the resulting doll hat here. And this web page shows full sized molds in use to make Haida hats.
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Tow Hill Flat
This will be the last in my series about Tow Hill, Haida Gwaii. Yesterday I took you up the boardwalk to the top of the hill. Today we follow the flat boardwalk out to the blowhole beach at the foot of the hill. We actually did a loop, coming down to the beach from the top of the hill – that path splits part way along. We returned from the beach via today’s route.
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Tow Hill Climb
Another in an intermittent series about Tow Hill, Haida Gwaii that I started more than a week ago. This post follows the path, or boardwalk as it now is, up to the top of the hill. In the past when I have walked to the top I have been quite winded by the steep bits. But now there boardwalk has been placed to find a more gentle route, with a number of zigzags on the steepest areas and I was not winded at all by the time we reached the top. Considering how out of shape I am, it seems that they have found a very gentle grade indeed.
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Tow Hill Road
This is a continuation of a series about Tow Hill that I started a week or so ago. Tow Hill is mid-way along North Beach on the north-west shore of Haida Gwaii and one of the main tourist destinations on the islands.
Just west along the road from this photo there is a terrific bakery (New Moon of Naikoon Bakery) that also makes awesome coffee and very good tea. It is nestled in this same environment of sand dunes being taken over by spruce forests. However, I was too focused on drying out from our walk in the rain, and a cinnamon bun, and hot pot of tea to remember to take photos of the bakery.
Masset Cemetery
The Village of Masset has a wonderful cemetery set in the forested dunes on the far side of Delkatla Nature Sanctuary from Masset. It is a wonderfully natural setting, with the forest growing among the graves, and moss covering everything, and a perfectly local expression of grave ornamentation, for instance with many graves having a few, or many, agates or shells or cedar-bark flowers, glass fishing floats or other local adornments. It is interesting to see so many scallop shells – I wonder if they are placed in the knowledge of their ancient associations with Christianity (I have excavated a Roman coffin adorned with scallop shells cast into it’s lead lining) or if they are used in the same way as are the local stones, and other things from the sea and land.
Masset ZMT
Another set of tone mapped images this time from the Masset Airport (ZMT) while cooling my heels waiting for a late flight to depart. There are plans to replace the airport terminal – this is probably also a military installation, constructed originally as part of the Masset CFS, feature in a couple of earlier posts, including yesterday’s similar post production treatment of similar buildings.
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