Curator & Collector

Image of Roy Henry Vickers’ artwork The Westcoasters taken from the reproductions page of the artist.

While in UBC’s Museum of Anthropology the other day, I realized that First Nations artist Roy Henry Vickers represents canoes in different shapes. This thought came to me when I took this photograph of a Nuu-chah-nulth canoe* there:

The “hook” on the prow of the canoe resembles that on the canoe pictured in Vickers’ The Westcoasters.

Across from the room from the Nuu-chah-nulth canoe is Haida artist Bill Reid’s traditional canoe, which has no such hook (this image was used in a recent post):

This “hookless” canoe-type appears in several Vickers artworks, including Chief’s Dream, my favorite Vickers artwork (although I must say that I prefer the hooked canoes, generally speaking):

Image of Roy Henry Vickers’ artwork Chief’s Dream taken from his book, “Solstice: The Art of Roy Henry Vickers.”

I find it interesting that Vickers would put the hook into The Westcoasters, for according to the accompanying sign in the MOA, the top of the hook in the Nuu-chah-nulth canoes functioned as a harpoon-rest, while Vickers in his story on this artwork was clear that The Westcoasters functioned as a tribute to the First Nations of the west coast of Vancouver Island (Nuu-chah-nulth, and not Haida territory).

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*The prow was damaged in the 1960s, according to the sign in the MOA; it was restored by carver and artist Joe Martin.