I first met Sheila in Toronto. I had just returned to Canada after living in Europe when my children were young. A friend of Sheila’s told me I had to meet her good friend. She insisted I call Sheila. Shortly afterwards we met at a lesbian social. It was September 1981. Sheila and I became fast friends.
I was born in Montreal, so Toronto was a new city for me, and after living in Brussels for eight years, I found re-entry difficult. Not least, I had come out as a lesbian five years before returning to Canada. I didn’t know Toronto or what lesbians did there, which made the transition harder. Sheila helped me adapt. We often went to Toronto’s art gallery where she was a member. We loved to sit and have long chats over lunch.
The biggest adventure we had together was going to Haida Gwaii in 2016 for about 10 days. By then I was 80 years old. Both of us had wanted to travel to that group of islands in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of British Columbia. We had dreamed about going for years.
The first day we arrived on Haida Gwaii, after settling into our bed and breakfast, we walked to the town of Old Masset, where the original First Nation’s reserve is located. On the way we met Jim Hart, the sculptor, and his two assistants. They were working on a new totem pole in an empty lot beside his house. On the other side of his house, there’s an old cemetery with many graves that had been there a few hundred years. Later we had lunch at the biggest (and only) restaurant in town. The owner was a woman who was studying to be an elder. She was being taught by several Haida elders, mostly women, so the conversation was fascinating.
There were still a few huge, ancient totem poles in the old town. Many had been taken from Haida Gwaii by Bill Reid, the famous sculptor, with the help of other Haida men and donated to the University of British Columbia Museum of Anthropology because he feared that in time the poles would fall to the ground and return to the earth. Some of these poles have been returned to the island. There are now several new totem poles in the art museum in the main town.
Very close to the big island is another island that has no roads and can be only accessed by plane or boat with local guides. What impressed me the most were the many Indigenous-operated businesses there. The island was self-supporting. Although the Canadian government wanted to take possession over the islands, the Haida insisted on running things themselves. We were there in August which was warm and wonderful, but I believe the winters have a lot of stormy weather. Both Sheila and I have done a lot of travelling, yet this was one of the most impressive experiences of our lives.