Hey everyone! Welcome back to another My Dog Ate my Blog post in quarantine! This blog post will actually not be an overview of a project, I will be focusing on a novel study we have been doing for the past week and a half on the book, The Golden Spruce by John Vaillant.
It is an amazing book about the extraordinary natural world of Haida Gwaii, or the Queen Charlotte Islands if you prefer. A story of madness and greed, preservation and annihilation, a story that tells a very important and interesting time in BC’s history. I don’t want to spoil anymore of the book so that’s all you get! You may have caught that this story takes place in BC, where I live which is why I chose Creative Connector as my role this week. There are so many parts of this book that I can relate to and connect to, but I chose two to showcase today!
GOLD BRIDGE, BRALORNE AND GUN LAKE
Ok, if you have read this book before, you know that it does talk more about this area of BC in the first 3 chapters of the book, but this is a really important connection to me. One of the significant characters in this book is Grant Hadwin, and in the 60’s and 70’s his family owned a cabin here:
But guess what? So does my family! All of the places that are mentioned, pioneer mine, bralorne pub, big gun lake, the hydro dam, all of it! I have been to all of these places.
This is a ghost town called Bradian before it was a ghost town!
My Stepmom’s Dad, who grew up in Bralorne actually knew Grant, worked for him, and stayed at his cabin! He mentioned things about Grant that are literally quoted in the book like:
“Even in winter he could be found cruising the tree line in jeans, a wool under-shirt, and slip-on romeos while his colleagues would be hustling to keep up with him in a heavy parka and calks.”
It is all true. This connection is really important to me because Gun lake and the now “ghost towns” surrounding it are a huge part of how I grew up and knowing they are an important part of someone else’s history is really cool. I will definitely be looking into this more!
KANAKA PROJECT
The second and final connection I will make is to a project I did last year about power and colonization. It actually touches on what I want to talk about in this section in the book:
“But Cook, bound again for Hawai’i, wouldn’t live to see his discovery come to fruition.”
A couple hundred years ago when explorers like James Douglas and James Cook were around, we find a story about the peoples of Hawaii and how they were oppressed by people trying to colonize and take advantage their home and people. It didn’t turn out very well for the Englishmen as the Kanakas were ready to fight and protect what was rightfully theirs. Check out my blog post here:
But what I wanted to connect this knowledge to was the story John Vaillant tells about the Haida people and a chief named Koyah, and the struggles they had with Captain Kendrick and his men. “…“thanks in part to him that the Queen Charlotte Islands have the bloodiest history of any place on the coast.”
It was called The Battle of the Bold Northwest Men, after there was a miscommunication between the two groups of people. The Haida people attacked several oncoming ships after the first incident. After reading this section, I immediately connected it to the project I did on the Kanakas as learning about power and what seems to be white privilege and oppression is extremely important and interesting.
Anyways, that’s it for my novel study response today! I really enjoyed reading this section of the book and looking for connections I had to my own life as well as others. Thanks for join me today and I will see you guys next time on My Dog Ate My Blog!
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