Northwest Travel Magazine May/June 2007 |
By Alison Appelbe
Wood carver Joe Martin and his tourism-minded daughters draw on their aboriginal heritage to support one another and build a business.
Martin has carved a 33-foot canoe for Tsimka, age 22. Tsimka will use this canoe, along with a similar boat carved for her sister Gisele, 29, to take visitors to the Tofino region of Vancouver Island on traditional dugout canoe trips.
The Martins are members of the Tla-o-qui-aht Indian band, part of the Nuu-cha-nulth language group of coastal British Columbia and northwestern Washington State. Martin, 53, is one of few native craftsmen who still make ocean-worthy canoes from a single redcedar, employing the steamed-wood method. “Canoe making was almost a lost skill—so we’re very happy that it’s stayed in our family,” says Gisele.
Six years ago, Gisele Martin founded Tla-ook Cultural Adventures, a tourism business that takes visitors around the region’s Clayoquot Sound UNESCO Biosphere Reserve and introduces them to native culture.
On a canoe outing with Tsimka and Gisele, bald eagles and kingfishers swoop overhead. A couple of California sea lions poke their noses above the water. The world is silent |
but for the sisters singing what they say is a happy Nuu-cha-nulth song.
Meanwhile, Martin puts the final touches on Tsimka’s canoe, which rests on logs outside his workshop on Chesterman Beach, south of Tofino. Gripping a knife vertically in his fist, Martin makes incisions in the upturned bow. His strokes add simple decoration to the bow extension. He’ll paint the hull a burnt-pitch black, and give the hand-adzed interior a veneer that similarly replicates the red-ochre powder his ancestors used on their whaling and sealing canoes.
In a process learned from his father, Martin shaped the canoe by heating rocks in an elaborate fire consisting of alternate layers of small logs and rocks. When the rocks were red hot, he transferred them to the roughly carved canoe, which was filled with water. The heat from the rocks boiled the water that expanded the canoe. “It opens like a peapod—and then you let it relax,” says Martin. Originally 41 inches across, Tsimka’s canoe expanded to 52 inches before “relaxing” to its current width of 47 inches.
After adding seats, Martin and his helpers will carry the canoe to the beach, run it into the waves, and paddle it north to Tofino, where Martin will present it to Tsimka.
Tla-ook Cultural Adventures, mid-March through September, www.tlaook.com Tourism BC, www.HELLOBC.com |
