Diana Nazarian / Staff Reporter

Coming from the Raven-Wolf clan of Haida nation, Iljuwas Bill Reid (1920-1998), is recognized as one of the most remarkable Northwest Coast artists in the late twentieth century. Being the inventive man that he is, Reid created thousands of pieces, including jewelry, large-scale sculptures, and dozens of original texts regarding his cultural background, each with a splash of gratitude towards the art of his ancestors.

Bill Reid was born on January 12th, 1920, in Victoria, British Columbia. His father, William Reid (1884-1943), was born in the Detroit area to a family with German-Scottish roots, and His mother, Sophie Gladstone (1895-1985), was born in Haida Gwaii and had grown under the ruthless actions of Indian Act, with the enforcement to take Indigenous children away from their homelands and community members.

Bill Reid with his parents 1920, photographer unknown

Similar to any other Indigenous child, Sophie was not an exception to the hardship that blurred her heritage. She was forcibly sent to a Methodist-run residential school where English was the only language spoken. She was taught lessons that led her to become a stereotypical member of Canadian society, not from the ethnicity of Haida. The effect the Indian Act had on Sophie was irreparable and devastating. Bill was well aware of what his mother had to go through, which is why he later discusses, “My mother had learned the major lesson taught to the native peoples of our hemisphere during the first half of this century, that it was somehow sinful and debased to be, in white terms, an Indian and she certainly saw no reason to pass any pride in that part of their heritage on to her children”

This explains why Bill aimed to reconnect with his Indigenous culture through his career, poetry, and the people he encountered during this journey. When Bill made the effort to visit his indigenous ancestral homeland Skidegate, he got the chance to reconnect with his relatives.

Bill Reid (left) in Victoria with friend Bruce Mickleburgh (right), c.1940, photographer unknown.

Being able to embrace your Indigenous identity at the age of twenty is not something most people would simply be able to do. While Bill had not grown up in an Indigenous environment, his visit to Skidegate and the meeting he had with his grandfather, Charles Gladstone, a traditional silversmith, contributed to him getting acknowledged about his Haida roots more extensively. He later commented that “in turning to his ancestors, in reclaiming his heritage for himself, he was . . . looking for an identity which he had not found in modern western society.”

The critical assessment of his identity was what he had to undergo throughout his career. Bill Reid becoming Iljuwas (Princely One), Kihlguulins (One Who Speaks Well), and Yalth-Sgwansang (Solitary Raven) was not effortless it took him blood, sweat, and tears to be accepted while having lived at the intersection of both societies, with his artistic pieces indicating his cultural entanglement.

“His vision has young people taking pride in the true accomplishments of their forbears and emulating them in new ways so that native people can claim their place in the wider world while remaining distinctively Haida.”

Karen Duffek, Bill Reid: Beyond the Essential Form, Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1986, p.26

It was during the time he was serving in the Canadian military, in his mid-twenties, when he married his first wife, Mabel van Boyen. The couple moved to Toronto four years later, and that was Reid’s beginning as a news announcer with CBC. Meanwhile, he was being taught goldsmithing at the Ryerson Institute of Technology.

Bill Reid at the CBC, 1950, photographer unknown

He became inspired by the American modernist jewelry movement that exposed him to some outstanding art magazines that later made him become a jeweler making one-of-a-kind pieces of jewelry just as his biographer Doris Shadbolt explains, “He envisioned a future as a contemporary jeweler like Margaret de Patta.”

A carved silver cuff bracelet depicting Haida Eagle
Wolf Pendant, 1976, photo by Kenji Nagai

Having created more than 1500 artworks during his prolific life and career, Bill Reid left no regrets behind as he illustrated his Haida roots in many large sculptures of his, in high-profile locations in British Columbia, his home province.

The Raven and the First Men, a well-known carving of his displayed in the University of British Columbia’s Museum of Anthropology, portrays the story of human creation told by a Haida legend.

The Spirit of Haida Gwaii – The Jade Canoe, often referred to as “The Heart of the Airport” located in the International Terminal of the Vancouver Airport is another acclaimed work by Bill, inspired by argillite carvings of miniature canoes in the 19th century. The sculpture draws from legends and oral histories of Haida.

It is noteworthy to remember the courage lying behind Bill’s actions, from his visit to the Indigenous reserves where he originated to recreating all the history buried under hundreds of years of work and effort.

Unraveling the mystery behind Bill’s identity could not have been an easy step to take. This makes him one of the most celebrated Indigenous artists in Canada. It was all the ups and downs, all the people he met through his journey, and all the challenges he accepted to become the much-respected contemporary artist that he is.

With his mother mandated at a very young age because of her Indigeneity, Reid managed to bring back as much as he could to erase the dust left from their actions on her mother’s life and many more lives of people from the same ethnic background.

Bill’s memorial was a well-deserved ceremony in which over sixty individuals spoke a stirring tribute to the exemplary man that he was. The University of British Columbia was far more than a building filled with visitors coming to see his art, it was a ceremony full of meaning, full of words said to show him gratitude, and full of the aesthetic principles of Haida.

Only a handful of poles
Now stand
Or more frequently lie,
In the damp, lush forests.
Like the fallen trees
They lie beside,
They have become
The life-blood of younger trees
Growing from their trunks.
In a scene subdued
By a magnificent moss-covering
And by silence,
They return to the forest
That gave them birth

From "Out of the Silence", by Bill Reid (1971)

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