Back-Alley Totem Poles

I never tire of prowling Strathcona's streets and alleys. It's a section of Vancouver where quirkiness is almost a requirement for residency.

I have admired these "sculptures" for some time, but they didn't seem to be quite photogenic enough. On this visit, they were.

What the difference is, I don't know. Maybe the wall has been painted; was it plain white last time I saw it? I don't remember. Or maybe it is just a trick of the light. The full summer sun does tend to wash out colours and erase shadows.

So here they are, early morning, a few days before Christmas, between bouts of bad weather.

Laurie calls them totem poles. Could be. Let's see; our First Nations people put up totem poles at their doors to say:

"This is who we are; these carvings symbolically show what we stand for."
Additionally, Natives felt they had special rights to claim a link to the super-human beings they depicted on their poles. These special links included: being "descended from ...." or having recently "encountered ..." or having received "a gift from ...".
Some poles embody one-of-a-kind stories or unusual symbols. These stories or symbols are known in their entirety only to the pole's owner and the carver of the totem pole.

So there could be a bear figure atop a beaver, a frog, a wolf, a whale; all telling a story of events in the lives and ancestry of the inhabitants of the home or tribal land.

Northwest Pacific Coast Native stories involve the easy transformation of animals into humans or vice versa, or the transformation of supernatural beings into humans.They involve whole villages of Salmon or Whale people who live happily in underwater cities; powerful beings who live deep within whirlpools in the ocean, smelt copper, and periodically change into Frogs; wild creatures who steal children, try to eat them, are caught, burned and transformed into Mosquitos; giant Thunderbirds who swoop down from the sky and snatch up giant Whales to eat for dinner; Wolves who, at night, change into bony, yet attractive Ghost People, and Wolves who grow tired of hunting in packs on the land and change into hunting packs of Killer Whales.

I wonder what these two totems tell of? "Grandpa was a shape-shifter (transformer)"? A member of the "Resistance"? Electrified bowling balls? Or just a fascination with shapes and textures?

Another totem; this one not a pole, but a carving into a wooden door on a ramshackle boathouse in Delta, half-way between Mud Bay and Crescent Beach. How authentic its design is, I don't know. I took a course, once, too long ago, where we studied the different types of tribal designs in this area, and the figures involved. Alas, I have forgotten most of it. So I can't even identify the figures any more. I think that top creature with the red ears must be an owl. ... Or is it a hawk? Alack, alas! *

The bottom half seems to be a mirror image carved by a second person, not quite as confident as the original, coloured top section. It makes a most impressive door, however.

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* Sonny, in the comments, says it's probably a hawk.