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magazine / ja08
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July/August 2008 issue |
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Thunderbirds & thunderstorms (page 2)
A hundred metres offshore, an allwomen team is paddling hard toward the finish
line. The time to beat is 5 minutes 44 seconds, but with the wind licking the
tops off the waves, they can’t beat seven minutes. They’re wide-eyed
and crackling with exhaustion as they beach Loo Taas and disembark,
while the next anxious crew accepts its paddles and life jackets. That would
be us, the last of 11 teams.
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Scenic run
July 26 marks the third annual Totem to Totem Marathon. Beginning at the totem
poles at the Haida Heritage Centre at Kay Llnagaay, participants will run a
42.2-kilometre course along the paved, scenic road to St. Mary’s Spring
and back.
“It’s running not in smog, like in New York,” says marathon
co-founder David Seymour, “but in wild open nature.”
The marathon was conceived as a way to attract tourism to the island, to
promote healthy lifestyles and to raise money for children’s sports programs.
Although only five people participated in 2006 and 17 in 2007, organizers
are preparing to host more than 50 athletes this year.
www.totemtototem.com |
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We climb aboard by way of the high and dramatic stern, an experience not unlike
entering a temple. This is arguably the most beautiful vessel ever devised
by a sea-going people. It is sculpture, it’s engineering, it’s
applied art extraordinaire, it’s a single carved tree, for goodness’ sake.
But I have little time to savour it, because in the five minutes it takes
to jockey to the starting buoys, Andy Wilson positions us for optimum balance,
with the two brawniest characters on the back seats. “Stay in sync with
the paddle in front of you!” he yells. Rhythm and power, that’s
the name of the game. A hard sprint for a kilometre parallel to the shore,
then back again. Sheer guts. No thinking allowed.
We’re downwind on the first leg, aiming for the target buoy,
a depressingly tiny orange dot in the distance. I keep my head down and focus
on my timing, becoming mesmerized by the paddle biting neatly into the grey
water, again and again and again. It’s easy to imagine being a Haida
warrior, with all the wealth and status that it suggests.
“To find a log and move it down to the beach, then to finish
carving it, was a huge event,” says former Skidegate Band Councillor
Richard Russ, whom I met on my recruiting mission. “The person who owned
it had to pay the carver and pay people to help transport such a huge thing.
It was a luxury that the average Joe could not afford. You had to have a certain
amount of wealth already to commission a canoe. But once you had one, the world
was your oyster.”
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