I began selling lots of art after working for the newspaper. I was somehow just becoming an artist. It was a complete surprise. I remember as a kid, how my Dad loved art and would always talk about Norval Morrisseau as being his favourite artist. When I started doing graphics for the newspaper, Norval’s art always came to mind, I too loved his art and would have loved to create art in his style, but there was one big problem, I was colour-blind in a big way. For the first couple of years of creating my style, I only did black-and-white art. I was painting as many as 15 pieces a month and selling them for as much as 250 dollars apiece.
An owner of a local First Nations gallery took me on and even acted as my agent. She got me a contract with a clothing business that would take art and embroider it onto limited edition pieces of clothing, they were from Alberta. My single-colour imaging worked quite well for them. A year after signing with them, they phoned me up and asked if they could use my designs to create some special leather jackets to be presented to the Calgary Stampede Queen and Princesses. I thought this was pretty cool and said to go ahead, this was not for money, just a very great honour. She also lined me up with a company in Victoria that produced a line of t-shirts with my images.
Another company in Victoria contacted me about doing a series of art prints, but they felt all black and white would not work and requested that I send them some colour images. So there I was, sitting in front of a canvas, looking at various containers of paint in colours that I could not see well. Then I thought, what the hell, I can see the names of the paint so I knew what colours they were and my wife said she would help. So I just went for it. The print company was quite impressed and expressed how the yellow sky and green oceans worked together. They printed 10 images, I stayed with them for several years until I was contacted by a person in Germany who had seen my art for sale there and was interested in buying an original. He sent me a couple of photo samples of the art he had seen to let me know what he was interested in. These were images that the print company had stolen from me. It took me a year to stop these sales, and it would have taken more money than I had to sue them. I marked it up as a lesson learned and used a couple of different silk screeners to produce my own prints after that, I was in full control of marketing my art and as such, all profits were mine. The downside was a lot more time on the road, away from my family.
At this time, I began to create drums, and then I took up carving paddles. The creativity was flowing out of me and sometimes I would get into a painting or drum and work right through the night. I was literally on fire. It was all very exciting. I built a 4-foot pow-wow drum and got it entered into the BC Festival Of The Arts, I made it through the preliminary bouts and wound up in the BC Finals.
By the time my drum reached there, there were 7 of us First Nations artists who were working together not just in art but had created a dance troupe and were performing at various venues about the island. All 7 of us made it into the finals of the BC Festival Of The Arts. One of us won first place and the rest of us took home other various awards. This was the year of the Common Wealth Games in Victoria and the top 10 winners in the arts festival also were invited to be part of the body of the Common Wealth Art Show and our dance troupe was asked to perform during the ceremonies.
Things in the art world had been progressing along quite well, I was getting my art silk screened by several private pro printers. My pieces of art were being picked up and sold in galleries across the province. My drums and paddles were sold before they were finished. England and the rest of Europe were beginning to notice my art and I was selling art overseas regularly.
Our dance troupe, the Box Of Treasures was in demand with almost weekly performances. The man in charge of the troupe, Simon was a great one at promoting the troupe and pretty much was the driving force behind us. Simon was also a well-versed mask carver who created a number of the masks our troupe used. Simon would go on after this to create the animated series, Raven’s Tales, I just love these videos and own them all. Simon is now a master carver whose works are phenomenal.
Simon called us all together one day to tell us he had booked us for 2 performances at the theatres in Campbell River and Courtenay. We were going to be the opening act for Susan Aglukark. This was an amazing chance to perform. We were all very thrilled.
Susan is a Canadian Inuit singer whose blend of folk music and traditional music of her people combined with modern songwriting has made her a major recording star in Canada. She began to perform as an Inuit singer and very quickly became a well-known name in the north. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation noticed her and included her in a compilation of northern singers. Then in 1992, she released her first, independent album, called The Arctic Rose. By the next year, she had signed a contract with a major record company. Her most successful single is “O Siem”, this song reached No. 1 on the Canadian country and adult contemporary charts in 1995. Overall, she has released seven studio albums and has won three Juno Awards. She is an awesome young lady.
Here it was June 1993 and we would open for her on two occasions, what a thrill. I was lead drummer and narrator for our troupe, I had 2 young fellas from the cape who drummed with me. Our dancers were from Campbell River and Alert Bay. We started to do regular practices to get us all in top-performance mode.
We would perform several dances, but my favourite to perform was the half-moon/full-moon dance. This dance would start with a half-moon coming out to dance while I would tell a story about how the ooligans would spawn during the half-moon. As I would be telling the audience this story, a full moon would dance out onto the stage. Neither of these dancers spoke and instead had buzzing noise makers in their mouths that they both were loudly shrilling at me with. I would act like I understood their meaning and would try to get them to agree to one or the other. Finally, after failing to agree, I would ask them if a member of the audience could decide which was right. They would both agree.
Then I would pick someone close to the stage and they both would go down and help them up onto the stage. I would ask them to pick either full moon or half moon. After their choice was made and our dancers agreed, they would lead them back to their seats. I would finish the story as they finished dancing, then the one who was chosen as the winner would take a small gift out into the audience and present it to the member who came on stage.
We would do other dances like the Grouse Dance and the Wild Women Dance, and my son Robert Would Drum on some occasions with me.
After we left the stage, Susan and her band would perform, when she sang it was like listening to the harmony of the universe. On the second night, Susan asked me to join her on stage and drum with her, I jammed out and to this day, I wish I had had the guts that night to take her up on her offer.
In August 1993, my family and l travelled to Waglisla for a Qatuwas. The translation is a people gathering together. People arrived from as far away as Alaska and California for this gathering, people arrived by canoe in the thousands. Many more came by ferry or private boat. We went by ferry and as we arrived, we could see my wife’s uncle dancing on the wharf as we docked. We asked him if he was dancing for the folks on the ferry, but he said he was dancing to welcome his family. My wife’s uncle was Woyala, which means the highest, and he was the Head Hereditary Chief of the Heiltsuk Nation, but he was Uncle Toby to us.
The gathering was 7 days long and each night there was a feast presented by one of the nations gathered there, followed by traditional dances telling stories of days gone by. The nation doing the feast danced all night, sometimes the nights would go on until daylight with dancing still happening, it was incredible. On the 2nd day, my friend Roy Vickers asked me if I could set up a chance for him to meet Uncle Toby informally. I talked to Toby and he was excited so Roy came over the next day with his wife and son and we all spent the afternoon visiting. Roy is related to my wife and this was my first time meeting him in person, he was such a gentleman.
On the last night of the Qatuwas, at the end of the traditional dancing, a huge dance screen was set up and much music from the hit TV program was there, playing modern dance videos and music, this was for the youth in the village. It was quite surreal as most of these youths were still in their regalia, but now were dancing to pop music. Hundreds of teenagers, in regalia, dancing to the likes of Peter Gabriel and Tom Petty, l will never see something like this again. I had run out of film and could not record this.
The Heiltsuk First Nation lives in the village of Bella Bella (Waglisla), it is located about 160 km north of Port Hardy and about 120 km west of Bella Coola. The Heiltsuk traditionally occupied 21000 square km of land and sea on B.C.´s coastal Inside Passage. Bella Bella is the Government name for the community, Waglisla is the largest of the 23 reserves set aside in 1913 for the exclusive use of the Heiltsuk. The village located on Campbell Island is amalgamated from all Heiltsuk tribes who occupied numerous large winter and spring villages and associated sites spread throughout this traditional territory.
There are approximately 1500 residents in Waglisla. The primary industries for the Heiltsuk economy are forestry and seasonal fisheries including shellfish, groundfish, herring, salmon and other marine resources. For many decades, Heiltsuk people have had a thriving fishery to rely upon with employment in commercial fishing, fish processing, and a salmon hatchery. Due to dramatic changes in the fishery in the past several years, the entire fishing-based economy is now extremely fragile and threatens this traditional way of life.
Many artists in the community do quite nicely with the tourist trade and Eco-tourism is gaining popularity with the Great Bear Forest being the biggest draw. The chance to see a spirit bear is very exciting to these new-breed tourists. Whale watching and diving are two other burgeoning industries that are becoming common in the area.
Basketball is easily the most popular pastime in Bella Bella due to its all-year-round playing season following the construction of the new Community Hall. The men’s and women’s teams travel year-round to various tournaments along the coast.
Over the next year and a half, I partook in many art shows in both privately owned galleries and public Shows. One show in Victoria was pretty cool, we had a feast for the visitors, and then there was dancing by our family members. My wife had brought her jewelry along and she made enough to pay for the trip, lodging and food. She would laugh and say it was a good thing we took her along.
Then in September 93, I was invited to be part of a First Nations group display at the 94 Vancouver Christmas Show to be held in Canada Place, in early November. We split the costs for our display and each paid around 1000 dollars, this was a week-long show. There were 8 of us and 1300 exhibitors altogether.
A good friend was going to be my helper at the show as mom was ready to have our baby. We had trouble finding a room, we wound up in the hotel that has the revolving restaurant on its roof, not cheap but needed. It was 75.00 a day just to keep our van in the basement parking. We all arrived the day before to have time to construct our display which included a small longhouse. We worked until late in the evening to get it built. The first morning of the show was wild, there were tens of thousands of shoppers, and my prints and cards were doing well.
By the second day, most exhibitors had gotten into a routine and the show was drawing in a lot of people. Our dancers were performing 4 times a day and with each dance, the crowds were increasing. People were enjoying the show. To tell you the truth, I was having a blast.
It was always too late to find dinner each night unless you went into the east end. The nightlife there was pretty wild. Every third car was a cop car with lights flashing and sirens blasting into the crowds. On the first night, we found a mom and pop run Chinese restaurant that had great food. They were a nice old couple who we chatted with every night. When I would get back to our room, I would call my wife to see how she was doing, it was tough being here with Gina being so close to giving birth.
On the 5th night of the show, they announced the winners in Best of Show and Best Display. Although there were 1300 to choose the winners from, we won Gold for best display and Silver for best of show. We all got our entrance fees back as a result.
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