by Thelma Thwartbender (attorney at law and gourmand)

travelling with James Raffan on the National Treasure Tour

So one of the main points Jimmy's been wailing on about in this National Treasure Tour is how much a part of everyday life is the canoe in its various regional permutations.  Exhibit A, Your Honour, on Wednesday's flight from Edmonton to Vancouver was page 2 of the Globe and Mail which featured a b&w shot of Bill Reid famous Haida dugout, Lootaas, carrying the olympic torch.  Arriving in Vancouver, a similar shot, only this time in colour, had been promoted to the front page of the Vancouver Sun.  Here's our hardworking Vancouver host and National Treasure convenor, Sanford Osler, chilling outside CBC Vancouver while Jimmy is inside chatting up Stephen Quinn, host of On the Coast, about the three National Treasure presentations Sandford had teed up in the Greater Vancouver area.  Lootaas is not part of the CCM collection but its maker, artist Bill Reid, is very much a part of the story that goes with the 26' Haida canoe in our Origins Exhibit.

Another slightly offbeat collection connection to our Silver Canoe came in the most unexpected circumstance.  Things were all set to go at the Vancouver Maritime Museum and Jimmy headed to the Kitsilano strip for a quick meal with our hosts before the show.  By the time they rolled back to the VMM parking lot it was dark.  Sanford headed in to to the venue to make last minute preparations and Jimmy was just gathering his things together from the car when a diminutive senior sidled up to him in the parking lot and said in a hushed tone:  "Pssssst, are you James.  I've got something in the back of my car that you'd like to see."  I think I saw him recoil a little from fright, thinking that he was more or less all alone and anonymous in a parking lot, in the dark, on a week night, on the other side of the country.  But he nodded, and off they went to the other side of the parking lot where she opened the back of the car. 

 What she had in the back of her car was a lawn whirligig ... but instead of Daffy Duck's little yellow legs being propelled by a prop on the front of of home-made ornament, the main object of the thing was a canoe, and not just any canoe.  In the middle of the canoe was Sir George Simpson and his piper, Colin Fraser, in living acrylic colour, carved into good Rona pine boards.  And the simple mechanism made voyageurs ahead and behind Sir George paddle their little wooden hearts out. But that wasn't all.  This amazing piece of lawn art had been made by the woman's late husband, James.  And, as it happened, the reason why James had made this particular canoe with these particular passengers was that he had married one of Sir George's GGGGGreat Granddaughers (with Margaret Taylor).  In a Vancouver parking lot, Jimmy had met Mary Lou Stathers, a direct descendant of the infamous Hbc Governor who ruled Rupertsland from 1820-1860!

So instead of opening the presentation at the Vancouver Maritime Museum with his usual patter, Jimmy wandered up to the podium with this most splendid lawn ornament, one hand holding the pole that would be driven into the ground and the other spinning the propeller that made the wee laddies stroke, stroke, stroke their way into infamy.  Here's a little closer look at this magnificant piece of folk art.

Throughout the tour, we've been running into all kind of people who have connections to the CCM collection in one way or another but at a lunchtime presentation the next day, at the Bill Reid Gallery in downtown Vancouver, Jimmy was delighted to meet Ronald Russ from Masset on Haida Gwaii, a relative of Victor Adams, the man who built the CCM's Haida canoe back in the 1960s.  Ronald and his wife, Sandra Dan, had stories about the building or our Haida canoe as well as some interesting tales about the Bluebird (our 60' Salish racing dugout) as well.  They'd come to the gallery to confer with Bill Reid's wife, Martine, who also attended the National Treasure Presentation.  (l-r  In the Bill Reid Gallery, our man Jimmy—looking a little rumpled and bleary eyed two weeks into the tour—with Dr. Martine Reid, Ronald Russ and Sandra Dan from Masset, Haida Gwaii)   In popping on a pin and a logo cap from the CCM, Ronald and Sandra invited Jimmy back to Haida Gwaii, when he can make it, to learn more about the building of the Haida canoe and to strengthen the museum's connections back to this corner of Canoe Country.