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worship; each tells a story or history of a person's clan or family. The figures on the
pole represent family lineage, animals, or a mythical character.
Since agovernment banonpotlatch ceremonies —ofwhich the raising oftotem
poles is an integral part — was lifted in 1951, the art form has been revived. Over
the years, many totem poles have been relocated from their original sites. Both his-
torical and more modern poles can be viewed in Vancouver. Stanley Park has a
small collection of authentic totem poles. They were collected from along the coast
in the early 1900s and are mostly the work of the Kwagiulth, who lived on the
mainland opposite the northern tip of Vancouver Island. The poles currently stand
near Brockton Point. The world's best collection of totem poles is housed inside the
Museum of Anthropology, on the University of British Columbia campus at Point
Grey.
In Victoria, Thunderbird Park holds a small collection of totem poles close
to the main tourist area. To see totem poles that stand where they were originally
raised, plan on traveling up Vancouver Island to tiny Alert Bay, a Kwakiutl village
on Cormorant Island. Here poles rise from the local burial ground and from beside
a traditional “big house.” Three Gitskan-style poles can be viewed at the Plaza of
Nations in Vancouver, a 30-meter (100-foot) Kwagiulth-style pole towers over the
entrance to the Maritime Museum in Vancouver, and a replica of a pole from the
Haida village of Skedans greets visitors at the Douglas Border Crossing south of
downtown.
Ifyou'dlikeyourowntotempole,headto Hill's Native Art (165WaterSt.,Van-
couver, 604/685-4249) or search out the Coastal Peoples Fine Arts Gallery (1024
MainlandSt.,Yaletown,Vancouver,604/685-9298)andexpecttopayupto$15,000
for a 4-meter (13-foot) pole.
When gold was discovered on the upper reaches of the Fraser River in the late 1850s,
the British government, worried that the influx of Americans was a threat to its sover-
eignty, declared the whole western expanse of Canada a British colony, as it had for Van-
couver Island in 1849. The most important task for James Douglas, the colony's first
governor, was to establish a permanent settlement. Unimpressed by the location of Fort
Langley, Douglas selected a site farther downstream, named it New Westminster, and de-
clared it the new capital of the mainland colony.
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