Photos

In the mid-1970s, I was in charge of the first-ever eagle nest inventory on South Moresby, where we discovered one of the world’s highest nesting densities. The massive Sitka spruce tree I’m resting beside was the average size a tree needed to be to support the two- to three-thousand-kilogram nests. Jeffrey Gibbs photo

The old Haida village of Ninstints on S’Gang Gwaay Llanagaay (Red Cod Island) is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, but when I first paddled there in 1973 it was still wild—like coming upon ancient Tikal or Angkor Wat before the archaeologists arrived to cut back the jungles. Richard Krieger photo

Burnaby Narrows, separating Moresby and Burnaby islands, presents one of the richest and most colourful intertidal zones in the Canadian Pacific. Had South Moresby not been saved from clear-cut logging this would have been the site of a log dump and sorting grounds. James Thompson photo, Outer Shores Expeditions

Langara Light Station marks the northwesternmost extension of the Canadian coast. It was from here I made my abortive attempt to cross Dixon Entrance to Alaska in 1973 and it was here the Trudeau family’s helicopter flew to report that the prime minister was missing and last seen with a character named Huckleberry. Langara Fishing Adventures photo

A rainbow shines bright over Lepas Bay (T’aalan Stl’ang) where Haida Gwaii youths have gone for nearly four decades to discover the world within themselves, the cultural worlds between them and the natural world around them through the Rediscovery program.

Pillar Bay takes its name from a conglomerate rock column that stands proud above the rocky tidal zone and is said to have a shaman’s bones resting atop it. George Fischer photo, The West Coast Fishing Club

T’aalan Stl’ang (Lepas Bay) was my wilderness home from 1973 to 1985. I’d spend the spring, summer and early autumn each year in my small cabin then return to Masset for the winter months. In all of my travels there has never been a place that so fully captured my spirit. Langara Fishing Adventures photo

This is the view of Lepas Bay and Lookout Point that the 1976 Trudeau delegation would have seen from their helicopter as they departed from my cabin nestled in the bight behind the inner island. Langara Fishing Adventures photo

The design of the Navajo-style octagonal roof I put on my cabin at Lepas Bay allowed me to lift manageable-sized logs in place while being completely on my own for three months. A clear plastic roof cover allowed for a very bright interior, and I used bamboo washed in from Asia and split into strips to protect plastic windows from blowing in during Pacific gales. Richard Krieger photo

I never imagined when I built this little Hobbit House on Lepas Bay that it would one day entertain the prime minister of Canada; house the US ambassador, his wife and the US consul general for two nights; or serve as staff quarters for the Rediscovery program for decades.

Senior guide Alfie Jeffries of Coast Salish descent shows kids the triple mortuary pole at Kiusta, an ancient village site near the Rediscovery camp. The remains of the chief would have been placed in a bent cedar box and entombed in the chamber at the top of a fourth uncarved pole.

The backpacking expedition down the wild west coast of Graham Island is for many Rediscovery participants the toughest thing they have ever done in their lives. That’s me on the left, in the late ’70s, leading the way for one of several small groups of hikers. Following behind me are an unidentified participant, Ralph Stocker (second from right) and Wendell Williams (right). Richard Krieger photo

The spectacular Seven Sisters mountains rise nearly three thousand metres above the seventy-hectare property of the Soaring Spirits Camp, where staff are trained every summer in skills needed to operate healthy and safe Rediscovery camps.

RCMP officers deliver an injunction to Haida demonstrators during a peaceful protest over logging on South Moresby Island in November 1985. Four respected elders were the first to be arrested at the blockade site and the dramatic scene was broadcast on national television. Ann E. Yow-Dyson photo, Getty Images

Now on friendly terms, Mounties and Haida chiefs celebrate the signing of the South Moresby Agreement at Windy Bay in 1988. Following the 1993 Gwaii Haanas Agreement between the Canadian government and the Haida Nation, the entire archipelego and surrounding waters became protected and were renamed the Gwaii Haanas National Park Reserve and Haida Heritage Site.

It’s traditional for Haida commemorative poles to have three watchmen figures near the top to symbolically guard over the village, but pole carver Jaalen Edenshaw lent a comic twist to these watchmen figures. He put gumboots on their feet to commemorate the seventy-two Haida who stood in the mud of a logging road facing arrest to save Athlii Gwaii (Lyell Island) from clear-cut logging.

For the first time in over 150 years, a new pole is raised in the Gwaii Haanas wilderness in 2013 to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of a historic agreement signed between the Haida Nation and the Government of Canada.

Lootaas (Wave Eater) looked regal as it was paddled through the protected waters of the Inside Passage, making its way north through nine hundred kilometres of the British Columbia coast in 1987.

Guujaaw, beating his drum, leads a paddling song as Lootaas arrives at Hartley Bay on the northern BC coast. Bill Reid designed the vests the paddlers are wearing and each puller was responsible for painting their own Haida-styled hat worn for ceremonial arrivals at villages along the way.

Like a scene from an Edward Curtis film, the Lootaas paddlers are greeted in 1987 in front of Alert Bay’s famous big house, the largest feast house on the coast.

I was completely alone at Muir Glacier, nearing the end of my three-month paddling expedition in 1973, when a Glacier Bay National Monument patrol boat came by and the crew graciously offered to take this photo of me in my kayak with my camera.

My month-long trip to Antarctica aboard the National Geographic Endeavour was a dream come true. For me, a lifelong lover of wilderness, this was the world’s greatest.

While kayaking in Mexico’s Sea of Cortez in the 1980s, my good friend Peter Norris took this photo of me with our dinner catch.

In one of the most extraordinary feats of self-determination I have ever witnessed, the Moken rebuilt homes for over two hundred people within weeks of having two of their villages completely destroyed by the 2004 South Asian tsunami.

After living with a Balinese family for several weeks in the 1970s, I was dressed in a sarong and invited to take part in a village full moon ceremony.

During my trans-Africa journey we had the good fortune to come across a band of Mbuti Pygmies crossing the road in the Ituri Forest of the Congo River basin. They invited our group to spend the night in their camp and we jumped at the opportunity. Here, an oversized Mbuti hut is being erected for oversized guests.

While crossing the Grand Erg Oriental of the Sahara Desert during my six-month trans-Africa journey, I was drawn to the tops of the world’s highest dunes each morning and evening to watch the sunrise and see the sunset.

This was the “Trans-African Highway” in the early ’80s—a quagmire of potholes, mud and river crossings we had to make in our Bedford truck. My five companions and I spent endless hours laying out metal tracks stored on the side of the truck as we crossed the shifting sands of the Sahara.

My travels to over 130 countries and all continents have been a great blessing. Here I’m wrapped against the chill atop Mount Sinai at sunrise having spent a sleepless night riding a camel. To keep my mind active so I wouldn’t doze off and plunge over a ledge to my death, I imagined ten new commandments for the twenty-first century that address the way we’ve been disrespecting the earth.