Saa-Sit-Qua-Iis, the Canoe
by Douglas Wright, Tofino
There is an advantage in having a group of paddlers all paddling together
in the same craft. Actually, there are a few advantages. The first
one is that the group is always together. No one misses out on any
of the information shared by the guide and the group is more likely
to have an engaging conversation. If the weather gets a little rough,
as it often does during the summer in Clayoquot Sound, the efforts
of all the paddlers in the canoe are shared, no one has to stop and
wait in the chop and current for another to catch up for safety's
sake. The distances that can be covered in a set amount of time are
greater than one would expect.
Coming from a history of sea-kayak guiding, these are all things
that I realized as I got used to paddling with Gisele Martin aboard
her
thirty-four foot dugout canoe "Sa-sit-qua-iis", or "Hummingbird".
Gisele Martin and her sister Marie-France Martin are the owners of
the canoe, given to them by their father, which Gisele and her boyfriend
have used to launch their business Tlaook Cultural Adventures, out
of her home turf of
Tofino, BC.
Cultures all over the world carve wooden canoes. Of these, the Nuu-chah-nulth
canoe is considered one of the finest and most seaworthy. The often-challenging
waters of the West Coast of Vancouver Island have inspired and required a canoe
design that is capable of handling waves with grace and travelling substantial
distances for these people who lived from the sea. The high wolf-head prow
and raised stern block create a unique silhouette that is becoming
familiar again
in BC waters.
At approximately eight hundred pounds, this hand carved cedar canoe
full of average paddlers could easily outpace a forty-six pound Kevlar
kayak over a distance.
When a well-built dugout canoe gets up to speed, it's a magnificent thing
to watch. While I was out paddling with Gisele on one of her guided four-hour
trips in Sa-sit-qua-iis, she told about the time she and her father Joe were
sailing their canoe with some others, down the coast in a strong Southeasterly
wind. Her uncle Carl was heading to the same destination in the 70hp speedboat,
and he was trying to keep up. The sleek profile of the canoe allowed it to run
with the wind under sail, slicing through the waves that were causing trouble
for the powerboat.
As we paddle along the waters surrounding Meares Island, I ask Gisele
about some of the larger journeys that she's been on in dugout canoes. It turns out
there is quite a canoe culture that I wasn't fully aware of. Every year
the First Nations of British Columbia and the Northwest States travel great distances
on Tribal Canoe Journeys. Their destinations change annually and the most recent
meeting that Gisele attended was in Vancouver, hosted by the Squamish First Nation.
The crew she was with trailered the canoe to Nanaimo from Tofino and then set
out across Georgia Straight in the darkness just before dawn. Their journey was
an epic one of rain and fog, ferries and tugboats, friendly navigators and welcoming
owners of convenient waterfront landing spots. In the end they joined the gathering
in Ambleside Park, where the hosts and thousands of interested spectators welcomed
dozens and dozens of seagoing canoes. It seems that the dugout canoes that have
been used for thousands of years have created one of the strongest cultural pillars
of the modern West Coast First Nations.
The Georgia Straight crosser Sa-sit-qua-iis is named after a very
similar canoe that was owned by one of Gisele's great grandfathers from several generations
past. During its day it was the leader of the whaling fleet of her family. Many
different sizes of canoes were used in the in those days. Small canoes were used
by one or two people to go to food gathering areas, such as berry patches or
camas bulb gardens. Larger ones were used to go whale hunting thirty miles offshore,
or to carry war parties. The largest canoes were used to move entire households
from summer village sites to winter village sites and vice versa.
There are no plans to do any whaling with Saa-sit-qua-iis, though
it feels to me that the canoe that we are in is worthy of the hereditary
name belying its
speed and manuverability. For a boat of its size, it seems remarkably easy
to move through the water. I imagine it full of men who have trained
and fasted
for weeks to bring their focus onto the task their canoe was built for. Actually,
when Gisele efforts a stroke with her big steering paddle I can feel the boat
jump forward, and I wonder if she has some secret technique learned from her
elders.
As we paddle along I examine the adzed ochre-red interior of the
canoe, each artful chip taken out of the single log in near perfect
line with all the hundreds
of others that create a unique skin inside the canoe. The outside of the boat
is smooth and painted black. Gisele tells me that this black is paint, but
traditionally the canoe would have been scorched by fire, to tighten
the outer grain of the
wood against insects and the sun. I also notice that at times we paddle quite
close to the shore, and I am surprised that the bottom of the boat isn't
touching the sand beneath us, which is only four inches or so below the surface
of the calm waters of Lemmens Inlet. The flat bottom of the canoe seems to work
in conjunction with the inherent floatation of the wood that it's made
of, and we skim over waters as shallow as I could drift over in my kayak. The
dugout canoe is a very beautiful and interesting piece of modern history, and
as the yew-wood paddle flexes in my hand, I feel fortunate to be involved in
its motion through the ocean.