Vancouver In May

For several years now Mona and I have been talking about going to Vancouver BC for a few days. The main reason for going this is to see the Museum of Anthropology there. This is a must-see for anyone who's interested in northwest coast First Nation art. The place is amazing.

 This picture gives you and idea of how Grand some of their art was. The boxes are Bentwood and are simply storage boxes. The totems we're usually outside of longhouses and used to depict one's Clan. Sometimes too they were used as grave markers. I especially like the thing that looks like several wagons hook together. Actually they're serving bowls large enough for a kid to ride inside. Can you imagine being at a potlatch and having your dinner rolled out in these bowls!

 Their long house roofs had large horizontal logs that's supported the roof structure. Instead of just having other logs at the ends supporting the roof logs they carved them into totems so you had one or two of these on each of the end walls inside the longhouse.

This is a huge modern sculpture located in the middle of one of the pavilions. It depicts the birth of the human race according to some of the First Nation cultures. In this case the Raven opens the clam shell from which the humans w're birthed. The humans of course didn't want to come out and we're scared and tried stay in the clam shell.

Totems abound around Vancouver,and Seattle too for that matter. Interestingly though, totems were not part of the Native culture in these two cities but occurred in cultures considerably further north. These totems are in Stanley Park which we rode around on rented bicycles after visiting the museum. The weather was awesome. A perfect day for riding bicycles.

 This is a picture of one of the figures on one of the totems we rode past while in Stanley Park. It was a wow moment for me.

 Right at the beginning of Stanley Park there is this huge Marina. The first sailboat from the right is a Catalina 36, similar to the one that Gail and I used to own back in the day.

 Needless to say we had a great time.