First Nations

More totem poles?! But of course!
When you go to Paris, you see impressionist art and eat croissants!
When you go to Italy, you see paintings of La Madonna. When you go to Greece, you look at beautiful marble temples. In BC, you visit the totem poles.
Today we took a drive along the coast, out to University of British Colombia at the end of the peninsula of Vancouver. We Slugs think we have a beautiful campus- but UBC has a gorgeous Museum of Anthropology. It's a destination in town, and one of my favorite places that we have visited yet.
The drive along the coast took us by many beaches (which are strange to me... shallow and muddy bottomed, faced out toward the shipping channel to North Vancouver on the other side... but that's another story) which this morning were grey and chilly. We did stop at playground as Zoe yelled from the backseat, "Let's stop here"!!
Finally, out to UBC and the Museum, a gorgeous light filled building of graduated ceiling heights, leading out to the large backroom whose back wall was one large picture window looking out to trees and meadow, mountains in the background, and totem poles quietly keeping watch in the meadow behind. The exhibits were mostly large scale wood carvings produced by native people of the area in the 1800's. There were many totem poles, and portions there of in their original state, plucked from what were once native people's front yards. It was nice to see old totem poles, carved at a time before there was a market for "aboriginal art", when the audience was mainly the carvers' family and clan. Many have carvings depicting families- a dad, a mom, twins held high and another sibling, clutched lovingly below. Of course, I am explaining the way I saw it without taking the time to read the labels and posts thoroughly, or do research, the time that was available to me to take it all in- in between doling out elmo crackers and juice. The kids seemed to enjoy it, running around pointing out thunderbirds and craning their necks to the ceiling.