Article impugned reputation of former MLA
Iwas shocked and disgusted by the tone of John Price’s article in the Islander section implying that my uncle, Gordon Gibson Sr., might have acted in anything but an honourable way by getting a couple of West Coast totem poles over to Hawaii and erecting a monument honouring the memory of George Vancouver (“Where have all the treasures gone?” March 26).
Gordon Gibson Sr. was a great British Columbian — a man of undisputed honesty and integrity. He was the only MLA to be ejected from the B.C. legislature for saying that money talked in the issuance of forest licences — a charge that eventually led to the first minister of the Crown in the British Empire going to jail. He also served on the Council for the Northwest Territories.
His father and mother (my grandparents) homesteaded at Ahousaht on Flores Island, north of Tofino, in the early years of the last century. Gordon and his three brothers (Clarke, Jack and Earson) grew up there with the local natives and were highly respected for their honesty and fairness in all dealings with both indigenous and non-indigenous people as they built their logging and fishing industries on the West Coast. Gibson Marine Park on Flores Island is just one of their legacies.
One of the two totem poles mentioned in the article was given to Gordon by his brother Jack (a former Independent MP for ComoxAlberni, 1945-53), who had bought it years before at a Truck Loggers’ Convention charity auction, so it was certainly either donated by or bought from the artist.
The other totem might have been given to Gordon as a gift, or he might have commissioned it from a local carver, or else he simply bought it at a price that would have been mutually agreed upon by all parties — he certainly didn’t steal either of them.
Natives on the West Coast (and no doubt elsewhere) have been making and selling their handiworks for generations — a walk down Government Street or along the causeway certainly confirms that. And almost everyone who has travelled the West Coast over the past 70 years has bought native-themed arts and crafts made by local First Nations, and paid the going price for them at the time. The trade in these artifacts has been and continues to be a significant part of the local economy for these artisans.
I have a carved cedar talking stick (basically a small totem pole), which I bought at the Trading Post in Duncan years ago for a pretty tidy sum. Does Price think this is now a “cultural treasure” that should be returned to the Cowichan band?
The reference to Pierre Elliott Trudeau on the memorial is also easily explained, by the way. Trudeau Sr. was a friend of Gordon Sr. and sent him a message of congratulations on building the monument to George Vancouver, which Uncle Gordon inscribed onto the monument. Trudeau was indeed preparing to meet John Lennon and Yoko Ono in Ottawa — a meeting arranged by Uncle Gordon’s son, my cousin Gordon Gibson Jr., who was at that time an aide to the prime minister, and later was also a B.C. MLA who led the old B.C. Liberal Party in the late 1970s.
Price’s history students should be required to read Uncle Gordon’s biography Bull of the Woods to get an accurate account of life on the West Coast nearly a hundred years ago, and the interactions of the people who lived and worked there.
Price has done a great disservice to the memory of my uncle and our family, and should apologize for the unfounded and biased implications in his sanctimonious and self-serving article.