The Golden Spruce

by John Vaillant

  OUT IN HAIDA GWAII, the rain keeps most fires at bay and coastal timber is far less susceptible to the bug infestations that are devastating the interior. It is humans and the things they carry with them that remain the greatest threat to the islands. A terrible irony is that, philosophically, Hadwin was in sync with much of the local population: in December of 2000 an interracial group of islanders staged a protest—essentially, a no-confidence vote—against the Ministry of Forests’ handling of logging in the islands. There hadn’t been a demonstration of that kind in a decade, and this one was the biggest ever: 20 percent of the islands’ adult population participated. Since then there have been some striking changes, not just in the way logging is practised but in the status of the islands themselves.

  Neither the Haida nor any other tribes on the west coast of Canada signed comprehensive treaties with the British or Canadian governments when their lands were first colonized.*14 A number of tribes are currently negotiating land claim settlements with the Canadian government, and they are headachingly complex agreements which may ultimately resemble one-time payments of cash, land, and/or percentages of local resource revenues. In 2003, the provincial government made the Haida an offer of 20 percent of the islands and their revenues, but the Haida rejected the proposal out of hand. The tribe has made it clear that it will settle for nothing less than Haida Gwaii in its entirety, including fishing and mineral rights to the surrounding waters. This isn’t new; after formally withdrawing from Ottawa’s comprehensive land claims process in 1989, the Haida threatened to issue their own passports. “We have absolutely no intention of ever selling Haida title to Haida Gwaii,” said former council president Miles Richardson to a journalist at the time. “We are not, as a nation, going to go cap in hand to any people.”

  As far as this goes, little has changed in two hundred years. The only difference is that ever since the Haida (along with most other North American tribes) lost control of their historic lands, food sources, and personal destiny, they have been subsidized by the federal government. While subsistence hunting and fishing still play a major role in the lives of the Haida, unemployment—in the European sense of the word—hovers around 80 percent (about the same as in the Gaza Strip). In spite of this, few tribes have the media savvy and charismatic appeal that the Haida do.*15 As grim as some of their demographic statistics are, the Haida are a potent political and social force. This is an amazing accomplishment, particularly when one considers that the Haida are resurrecting themselves much the way botanists have attempted to resurrect the golden spruce. On a regular basis they perform large, inclusive ceremonies whose grandeur, complexity and sheer spiritual voltage is simply stunning. The healing and bonding power of these events is deeply felt—even by off-island visitors.

  In 2002, the Haida won a landmark case which required Weyerhaeuser to consult with the tribal council before logging particular areas.†16One result of this is that the annual allowable cut for the islands has been reduced by roughly half, but rather than alienating local Anglo loggers, the Haida have been forming alliances with them. The Anglo residents of Haida Gwaii have spent generations on the front lines of the timber and fishing industries, and they have few illusions about the stated good intentions of powerful entities from off-island. Unlike many loggers, who fly into remote forests and then move on when the trees are gone, most of the residents of these distant, close-knit islands are in it for the long haul; they have nowhere else to go. In 2004, the Anglo residents of New Masset and Port Clements threw in their lot with the Haida, signing an accord that says, essentially, that they trust the stewardship of the local Haida more than that of Weyerhaeuser and the provincial government. Like the logging consultation clause, this is unprecedented in the history of North America. One of the signatories is Dale Lore, the current mayor of Port Clements; a logging road builder by trade, he, like many others, had a revelation in the woods. “I started out as a redneck logger,” he told a journalist shortly after signing the protocol affirming the Haida’s title to the islands in March 2004. “You know how to beat that picture of a clear-cut in your head? You talk about jobs, that it’ll grow back….” But the same questions that tormented Hadwin kept intruding: “What are we getting out of it, what are we doing for the future?” he wondered. “I can beat the picture; I can’t beat the epilogue.” There is some strong local opposition to Haida title, particularly in Queen Charlotte City, the government hub of the islands. “It’s not easy,” sympathizes Lore; “the unknown is scary.” But then he concludes with what sounds like a page from Hadwin’s book: “This is happening because the status quo is obviously fatal to us. People do not change willingly.”*17

  THE FATE OF HAIDA GWAII represents the fate of the Northwest Coast in microcosm, and one of the most extraordinary things about these islands—and much of the North American mainland, for that matter—is how forgiving it is in the face of abuse. Unlike the desertified tracts of the Middle East, this continent—so far—possesses a tremendous capacity for regeneration. In New England, the cradle of the North American logging industry, remarkable changes have occurred as many farmers’ fields, which were abandoned after World War II, have reverted back to a forested state for the first time in centuries. In much of the region, the local fauna had long since been reduced to a suburban menagerie of squirrels, chipmunks, groundhogs, and raccoons; thirty years ago, even deer and fox were a novelty. Over the past few decades, however, all that has changed; with the resurgence of the forests coupled with a parallel decrease in hunting, long-banished species have cautiously returned. Coyote, beaver, and wild turkey are commonplace now; the bald eagle is back, too, along with a well-documented explosion in the deer population (which poses a threat to native plant species). If this trend is allowed to continue, it is only a matter of time before the black bear, bobcat, mountain lion, and wolf reclaim their rightful places in New England’s long-altered ecosystem. The rivers of the Northeast are another matter: the Atlantic salmon population, in its wild form, has fallen by nearly 75 percent in the past twenty years. Today, the species exists primarily as a farm-raised caricature of itself whose flesh must be dyed pink in order to make it look “real.”

  Five thousand six hundred kilometres away, at the far end of the logging continuum, Haida Gwaii faces a much more complex recovery scenario. While the Anglo population has decreased by more than 10 percent in the past decade due to lost fishery and forestry jobs, the native population is resurging. Meanwhile, plans to reintroduce the sea otter are stymied continually by fishermen and abalone hunters who resent the potential competition, despite the fact that it is humans who have devastated the islands’ once-abundant abalone. Further complicating matters is a recent proposal to lift a thirty-year-old moratorium on oil exploration around the islands. Ashore there is another major quandary: shortly after the last Dawson’s caribou was killed in 1908, Sitka black-tail deer were introduced to the islands; with no natural predators, their population has grown exponentially and they now number in the tens of thousands. No one anticipated that two of their favourite foods would be staples of the understorey: red cedar seedlings and salal. Compared to a century ago, many of these islands now have a parklike feel: there is no brush; you can see dozens of metres ahead of you. It’s beautiful, but the dearth of young cedar is alarming. Cedar has housed, clothed, and defined the Haida for millennia; now carvers are wondering where the next generation of poles is going to be found. The Sitka spruce is doing somewhat better; in the Yakoun Valley, clear-cuts replanted in the 1960s have already grown into forests of thirty-metre trees. However, some islands and mountainsides still look as if they have been skinned alive due to the severe erosion that followed the clear-cuts. It remains to be seen whether this new generation of planned forests will ever achieve the elegant and massive complexity of their wild forebears, or if the people who ultimately control them will have the patience and desire to find out.

  EPILOGUE

  Revival

  How like something dreamed it is
.

  How long will it stand there now?

  —W. S. Merwin,” Un-chopping a Tree”

  PORT CLEMENTS HAS SUFFERED much; not only did the town lose its mascot (the golden spruce is the centrepiece for the town logo), but in November of the same year, its albino raven died in a blinding flash when it was electrocuted on a transformer in front of the Golden Spruce Motel. True albino ravens—as opposed to grey or mottled—are all but unheard of. To get an idea of just how rare these birds are, consider this: Alaska and British Columbia, together cover nearly two and a half million square kilometres and contain the continent’s largest populations of ravens, and yet never in the history of bird observation and collection has a true albino ever been reported in Alaska. The Port Clements specimen is the only one ever to have been observed in British Columbia (it has since been stuffed and is now on display in the town’s logging museum). The raven is the most powerful creature in the Haida pantheon; it was Raven who ushered the first humans into the world. According to one famous Haida story, he started out white, only turning black when he flew out of a bighouse smoke hole, having stolen back the light for a world that had been darkened by a powerful chief. In a strange example of mythical consistency, the white raven’s mode of death caused a blackout in Port Clements. Why two unique and luminescent creatures would occur simultaneously against fantastic odds, only to die in such bizarre ways on the same remote island within a few kilometres and months of each other, is anybody’s guess. Science and the mathematics of chance fall short here, so myth, faith, or simple wonder must fill the void.

  For most people in the islands, the golden spruce is a fond, sad memory; people who have lost someone dear to them often speak of a light going out in their lives, and so it was with the golden spruce, its loss felt all the more keenly because it had grown in a place where light is such a precious commodity. “It rains a lot here,” explained one longtime resident, “and it’s cloudy; the golden spruce always looked as if it had the sun on it.”

  Beneath the scar tissue of forgiveness and philosophical resignation, though, there lies a lingering bitterness that is as pointed as ever. During a meeting with some Tsiij git’anee elders in which they were speculating about the current whereabouts of Hadwin, it became clear that all of them think he is still alive. When one of them suggested that he might come back to the islands, the eldest of them all, a sweet, crocheting octogenarian named Dorothy Bell who is known as “the mother of everybody,” shook her head. “If he does,” she muttered in a baleful tone, “I hope they hang him by his damn neck.” This was five years after the tree had been cut down.

  During a similar discussion about Hadwin between a group of tugboat operators, one of them, who had unknowingly crossed Hadwin’s path in Prince Rupert Harbour, said, “I’d have run him over in my tug if I’d known it was him.” Nobody was laughing. The same sentiment was expressed by Dale Lore when a heavy-equipment mechanic named Don Bigg abducted a young Haida woman in December of 2000. After being apprehended and charged in the Masset courthouse, Bigg was put in handcuffs and flown to Prince Rupert in a seaplane along with several other passengers, including the judge who had just heard his case. Halfway across Hecate Strait, however, he decided to exit the aircraft with a 110-pound police escort clinging to his leg. In the end, Bigg went out alone, falling 1,500 metres into heavy seas. His body was never found, but within a week a short, dark joke was circulating: “Hope the bastard landed on Grant.”

  Relatively speaking, most people here feel about Hadwin the way people in the States feel about Timothy McVeigh: he’s an outsider who came into their place and killed something precious. If they catch him, he will pay. As far as many Haida are concerned, Hadwin is one more white guy who came out to their islands in order to take something away, only to leave behind yet another imported illness: this time, a new strain of terrorism. Hadwin has paid dearly, though; whether he is alive or dead, he has, for all practical purposes, become what the Haida call a gagiid. The word gagiid (ga-GEET) translates, literally, to “one carried away,” and it refers to a human being who has been driven mad by the experience of capsizing and nearly drowning during the wintertime. Dance masks depicting this creature are notable for their wild, piercing eyes, and for their blue or green skin, indicating prolonged exposure to cold water. The cheeks are sometimes shown studded with sea urchin spines—a graphic demonstration of the lengths to which the gagiid will go to keep from starving to death as he caroms between worlds in a state of violent and solitary limbo. However, with the right equipment, and the proper observance of ritual, the gagiid can be captured and restored to his human state, much as Europeans might treat a traumatized or mentally ill person with love, therapy, or medication.*18

  Ian Lordon, the journalist who covered the golden spruce story for the Queen Charlotte Islands Observer, and whose reporting did the most to reveal its nuance and complexity, understood that history was being made on two levels. “We’re witnessing a new Haida story,” Lordon explained: “The Death of the Golden Spruce. In a way, we’re fortunate to witness an occurrence that was worthy of setting this process into motion.”

  FOLLOWING THE TREE’S DEATH, a number of ideas were conceived for honouring its memory. Among those suggested were: carving the tree into a totem that would stand vigil over the Yakoun; dividing the trunk into smaller sections which would be distributed among prominent Haida artists for their own interpretations, and milling the wood for guitars. Sitka spruce is one of the best woods in the world for acoustic guitar tops, and a plan was hatched to supply a group of Haida luthiers who were already manufacturing high-end acoustic guitars with wood for a special “Golden Spruce Edition.” Some of the reasons none of these ideas got off the ground were the logistics of moving such a big tree out of a roadless fragment of virgin forest; the fact that spruce is much harder to carve than cedar; and human nature in the form of inertia, internecine disagreement, and simple respect for the dead.

  In the meantime, the golden spruce has taken on a life of its own—in fact, many lives; it has, in its turn, become a nurse log. Today, the trunk is covered in a thick fur of young seedlings, each one with every intention of beating the odds. But the tree’s regenerative powers are also manifesting themselves in some far more surprising ways. In a remarkable feat of adaptation, this tree has harnessed the same species that killed it and made it a vehicle for its own success. Unbeknownst to anyone at MacMillan Bloedel, at UBC, or in Haida Gwaii, the golden spruce has become the most widely dispersed Sitka spruce on earth. And all because of one man.

  One afternoon in the spring of 1980, a high-school science teacher named Bob Fincham pulled into his driveway in Lehighton, Pennsylvania, where he found a large box sitting by his garage door. Its Canadian return address was unfamiliar to him, but Fincham, an avid conifer collector, is an optimist, and he opened the package with high hopes. Inside were several plants in plastic gallon pots, and among them was a Sitka spruce. Fincham knows a lot about conifers, and he specializes in cultivariants—aesthetically pleasing mutations bred for garden use—but he had never seen one like this. Nor had he heard of the person who sent it to him: a fellow conifer enthusiast and supermarket butcher from Victoria named Gordon Bentham. Bentham, it turned out, was an optimist, too; he had heard of Fincham and his impressive conifer collection, and he was hoping that by sending him one of the golden spruce grafts he had recently acquired, he might get something similarly exotic in return. This unexpected gift was the beginning of a vibrant friendship that lasted until Bentham died in 1991.

  Fincham’s golden spruce came from the same generation of grafts as those Roy Taylor had acquired (also from Bentham) for the UBC collection, and like them, this one is stunted, plagiotropic, and has never produced cones; other than that, it is perfectly healthy. It even survived a cross-country move to Washington State, where it lives now on the Finchams’ new conifer plantation, which includes 1,400 conifer cultivars from around the world. A number of them are golden (there are golden cultivars of
many conifer species), but according to Fincham, none of them is as brilliant as the one he calls ‘Bentham’s Sunlight.’ “People see it from a distance,” explained his wife, Dianne, “and they want to walk toward it.”