To find out more about this year’s photo challenge here on Travel Words, please read this post.
This month we will be looking for Green. Green signals new life in spring, fresh green leaves, the shoots of new bulbs emerging from the soil. It is a cool and soothing colour, bringing us moisture and shade. But green doesn’t have to be all about nature.
Bill Reid’s “The Spirit of Haida Gwaii” (Jade Boat)
A 1996 bronze casting can be seen in YVR International. It is intended to represent the aboriginal heritage of the Haida Gwaii region in the Queen Charlotte Islands.
The 13 passengers in the canoe combine human and animal features. Reid’s factious “myth creatures” are drawn from the Haida world.
Eagle bites Grizzly Bear’s paw, Bear faces his human wife and cradles a club and Mouse Woman shelters beneath Raven’s wing.
Other passengers are Bad Bear and Good Bear, Beaver, Dogfish Woman, Eagle, Frog and Wolf whose claws are embedded in Beaver’s back and teeth in Raven’s wing and the human Shaman as the focal point.
Reid said “at least …. the man in the middle seems to have some vision of what’s to come”
TRAVEL WORDS 
That mythic canoe is extraordinary, as are the Haida people generally. The man in the middle’s vision is not looking too promising though is it.
Quite. Life is a little uncertain for now.