B: Steel war dagger. (photograph © Canadian Museum of Civilization, catalogue no. VII-B-944)
Dance mask. (photograph © Canadian Museum of Civilization, catalogue no. VII-B-109)
Skid Road, ox team. (photograph used with permission of The Vancouver Public Library, VPL 3598)
“Railroad show.” (photograph by Darius Kinsey, Courtesy Critchfield Logging Company)
Haida fallers. (13017 Merill and Ring at Pysht Darius Kinsey Collection, photograph used with permission of the Whatcom Museum of History & Art, Belligham, WA)
High rigger topping. (Leonard Frank Collection, Vancouver, B.C.)
Faller watching for widowmakers. (photograph courtesy of Al Harvey)
A: Feller buncher. (Craig Evans, courtesy of the Forest Engineering Research Institute of Canada [FERIC])
B: Clearcut. (photograph courtesy of Al Harvey)
Grant Hadwin. (photograph by Rudy Kelly)
Grant Hadwin embarking by kayak. (photo courtesy of The Prince Rupert Daily News)
A: Hyder, Alaska. (author photograph)
B: Leo Gagnon and his son. (author photograph)
Mortuary poles. (photograph courtesy of Al Harvey )
Memorial pole for Ernie Collison (Skilay). (author photograph)
praise for THE GOLDEN SPRUCE
WINNER OF THE GOVERNOR GENERAL’S LITERARY AWARD FOR NON-FICTION
“A beautifully rendered account of cultural clash and environmental obsession.”
—Maclean’s
“Absolutely spellbinding…[Vaillant’s] descriptions of the Queen Charlotte Islands, with their misty, murky light and hushed, cathedral-like forests, are haunting, and he does full justice to the noble, towering trees…. The chapters on logging, painstakingly researched, make highdrama out of the grueling, highly dangerous job of bringing down some of the biggest trees on earth.”
—The New York Times
“Fascinating…Both a gripping wilderness thriller and a sharply focused summary of forest politics…Essential reading.”
—Georgia Straight
“The Golden Spruce might be claimed as Canada’s first great new adventure book…. [O]ur homegrown answer to the blockbuster danger book: it’s a true Canuck tale, man versus nature, but not too flashy, and hard to define in traditional terms.”
—CBC Arts Online
“A haunting tale of a good man driven mad by environmental devastation…. Vividly wrought.”
—Los Angeles Times
“A gracefully written, ambitiously researched and enthralling story of ecological majesty and human greed. It should enter that pantheon of memorable books that capture [the Pacific West Coast’s] character…. The writing is so vivid [and] the story is so heartbreaking that it will make you question anew where our civilization is going.”
—The Seattle Times
“Vaillant writes eloquently of West Coast rainforests, quirky characters drawn to a dangerous but lucrative life in logging.”
—Canadian Geographic
“A sense of the rank, dark underbelly of the [Queen Charlotte] islands permeates the book…[An] engrossing narrative.”’
—Times Colonist (Victoria)
“Brilliant…The Golden Spruce is a profound elegy for Northwest resources and livelihoods disappearing at a terrifying rate.”
—Seattle Post-Intelligencer
“Written in breezy, journalistic style…a compelling read. Vaillant covers a vast territory of difficult material.”
—Calgary Herald
“Balanced and gracefully written…Vaillant’s multi-layered book is a rich investigation of all the factors that went into Hadwin’s act of arboreal vandalism.”
—Edmonton Journal
“In a scrupulously researched narrative worthy of comparison to Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild, Vaillant uses a tragic episode to tell a larger story of the heartbreakingly complex relationship between man and nature.”
—Entertainment Weekly (Editor’s Choice)
“[A] great story…[Vaillant] cuts subtle, thoughtful paths through the region’s history.”
—Quill & Quire
“[A] powerful and vexing man-versus-nature tale set in an extraordinary place…This tragic tale goes right to the heart of the conflicts among loggers, native rights activists and environmentalists, and induces us to more deeply consider the consequences of our habits of destruction.”
—Booklist (starred review)
“In a vigorous, evocative style, Vaillant portrays the Pacific Northwest as a region of conflict and violence…. It is also, in his telling, a land of virtually infinite natural resources overmatched by an even greater human rapaciousness…. A haunting portrait of man’s vexed relationship with nature.”
—Publishers Weekly
VINTAGE CANADA EDITION, 2006
Copyright © 2005 John Vaillant
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.
Published in Canada by Vintage Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover in Canada by Alfred A. Knopf Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto, in 2005. Distributed by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
Vintage Canada and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House of Canada Limited.
www.randomhouse.ca
Peter Trower, “The Ridge Trees,” from Haunted Hills and Hanging Valleys: Selected Poems 1969-2004, © Harbour Publishing. Used with permission. Lines 1-3 of “Canto I,” from Inferno: A New Verse Translation by Dante Alighieri, translated by Michael Palma. Copyright © 2002 by Michael Palma. Used by permission of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. “Ceremony,” from Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko, copyright © 1977 by Leslie Silko. Used by permission of Viking Penguin, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Lines from Faust, Part I, by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, translated by Martin Greenberg, Yale University Press. Copyright © 1992 by Martin Greenberg. Used by permission of Yale University Press. Excerpt from “Un-chopping a Tree,” by W. S. Merwin, reprinted with the permission of the Wylie Agency, Inc.
Back Matter:Photo Credits constitute a continuation of the copyright page.
LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION
Vaillant, John (John H.)
The golden spruce: a true story of myth, madness, and greed / John Vaillant.
Includes bibliographical references.
eISBN: 978-0-307-37132-4
1. Historic trees—British Columbia—Yakoun River Region. 2. Sitka spruce—British Columbia—Yakoun River Region. 3. Hadwin, Grant. 4. Forest policy—British Columbia. 5. Haida Indians. 6. Chlorosis (Plants) 7. Malicious mischief—British Columbia—Yakoun River Region. 8. Port Clements (B.C.)—History. 1. Title.
HV6405.C32B75 2006 364.16´4´0971112 C2005-905100-0
v1.0
FOOTNOTES
*1 Jeans cut off just below the knee to prevent snagging.
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*2A gymnasium exercise in which one climbs a vertically mounted board by inserting handheld pegs into successively higher holes.
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*3 An oily, finger-sized fish and highly valued trade item that can be eaten, rendered for its oil, or stood on end and lit like a candle.
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†4 While attributed to the Haida, this canoe was probably made by the Heiltsuk people who live on the central mainland coast of British Columbia.
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*5 The Plains Indian practice of demonstrating one’s courage and fighting prowess by getting close enough to the enemy to touch him with one’s hand or a coup stick. It was also used as a means of humiliation: “See? I could kill you if I chose, but you’re not worth the trouble.”
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*6 54°40’ was the latitude at which Captain Pérez and his men grew too sick to carry on and turned around. It still stands today as the southern boundary of Alaska.
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*7 By comparison, the eruption of Mount St. Helens destroyed about four hundred square kilometres of forest.
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*8 Like the spotted owl, this rare, semi-aquatic seabird prefers to nest in old-growth forests.
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*9 Twenty years later, during World War II, the British-built DH-38 Mosquito, made almost entirely of Sitka spruce, Douglas fir, birch, ash, and Ecuadorian balsa, was the fastest, most versatile airplane in the Allies’ arsenal. Variously armed with reconnaissance equipment, cannon, or machine guns, it could also carry an 1,800-kilogram “blockbuster” bomb. Not only did it suffer the lowest loss rate of any Allied warplane, it was also the easiest and cheapest to repair. The lightweight fighter-bomber was so fast that the Americans issued standing orders for their swiftest plane, the P-38 Lightning, never to be flown alongside it. Despite being powered by propellers, the Mosquito had a top speed of more than six hundred kilometres per hour (unloaded), making interception all but impossible by any other aircraft.Its headline-friendly name notwithstanding, Howard Hughes’s famous Spruce Goose, the largest airplane ever built, included only a small amount of Sitka spruce.
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*10 The Inuit won the right to vote in 1950. “Status Indians” (those formally registered with the federal government) followed in 1960, while Metis people had always been considered citizens and so were eligible to vote in both provincial and federal elections as long as they met basic criteria, such as the possession of property, etc.
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*11 Implied here is a scientific definition of “living,” as opposed to that traditionally used by most Native peoples, which held that everything was alive and interconnected. Increasingly, the world of science is subscribing to this view as well.
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*12 Bamboo, an exceptionally fast-growing species of giant grass, is becoming an increasingly popular source of flooring material, and Woodstalk, a construction grade fibreboard made from wheat straw, is useful for shelving, cabinetry and flooring underlay. Meanwhile, straw bale and rammed earth construction offer renewable, inexpensive alternatives to traditional timber and plywood houses. Kenaf, a fibrous and fast-growing plant that does well in North America, is becoming increasingly popular for paper-making.
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*13 According to the New York Times Company, about 25 percent of their paper is derived from recycled material.
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*14 Some tribes did sign a handful of limited, local treaties granting rights to specific coal mines and other resources.
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*15 In 2003, Starbucks, the international, multi-billion-dollar coffee conglomerate, was forced to abandon a copyright infringment suit against Haida Bucks Café, a tiny restaurant in Masset, after facing an unanticipated wave of negative publicity and boycotts from around the world.
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†16 The decision was upheld by the Supreme Court in 2004, but the duty to consult was shifted to the province.
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*17 In 2005, Brookfield Asset Management (formerly Brascan), an international assets management corporation based in Toronto, took over Weyerhaeuser’s coastal logging operations, including those in Haida Gwaii. Many felt that the sale violated the 2004 Supreme Court ruling requiring the province to consult with the Haida before such transfers, and this prompted a month-long blockade of logging operations by Islands Spirit Rising, a coalition of Haida and white islanders, many of whom are loggers.
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*18 The grandfather of the artist Robert Davidson described the gagiid as “a person whose spirit was too strong to die.” Says Davidson of the Haida people, “In this way, we are all gagiids.”
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Table of Contents
COVER
TITLE PAGE
CONTENTS
DEDICATION
MAP
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
EPIGRAPH
Prologue Driftwood
1 A Threshold Between Worlds
2 The Beginning of the End
3 A Boardwalk to Mars
4 The People
5 Wildest of the Wild
6 The Tooth of the Human Race
7 The Fatal Flaw
8 The Fall
Photo Insert
9 Myth
10 Hecate Strait
11 The Search
12 The Secret
13 Coyote
14 Over the Horizon
Epilogue Revival
WOOD MEASUREMENT
BIBLIOGRAPHY
ENDNOTES
PHOTO CREDITS
PRAISE FOR THE GOLDEN SPRUCE
COPYRIGHT
John Vaillant, The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness, and Greed
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