South Slope flowers, Part 2

By the railroad track west of White Rock, there is a small apple tree, sprouted, probably from someone's apple core tossed into the moist soil at the base of the cliff. The apples are quite tasty, if small and somewhat scarred. I brought home a bag last year, and made myself a batch of good applesauce.

I looked for the new flowers last week, but didn't see them. It may be a bit early yet. But its relative, the bitter cherry, was in full bloom nearby.

Prunus emarginata

The fruit trees from the Rose family, apples, crabapples, plums, cherries, and pears, can be very confusing. The flowers are similar; 5 petalled beauties, white or pink, in showy clusters, blooming around the same time, on trees that vary with location and treatment, and that hybridize easily.  Only the Japanese cherries, like the rest but with double and triple flowers, mostly pink and often weeping, are easy to recognize at first glance.

The bitter cherry produces flowers that grow in small open clusters along the branch, which may be red, greyish, or a reddish purple. The leaves are round-tipped and hairy.

Around 5 to 10 flowers per cluster.

The choke cherry that we sometimes see here groups its flowers in long clusters of more than 10 blooms, at the end of the branch. Its cherries will be similar; small, red to black, and too bitter to eat as is, although the bitter cherry is worse, and sometimes called inedible. Some people, though, make jams and jellies with them, using large quantities of sugar.

I have tasted them, directly off the tree. I like strong flavours, but these were too much for me; I had to spit them out.

More flowers. Just because they're pretty.

Zooming in. I saturated the yellows a bit to show the hairs along the stems.

The bark of the bitter cherry is rot-resistant and could be peeled off the trunk in long strips, which BC First Nations people used in tool construction, for wrapping joints. They were also woven as decoration into cedar baskets. Used "au naturel", it was reddish, but it was also darkened to almost black by burying it in swampy ground for up to a year. Here's a sample basket, made by a Salish native in Washington state.

"Since the beginning of time"

Just a few turns of the highway north of Powell River, the First Nations village of Sliammon lies strung along the shoreline. The Sliammon (Kla ah men) are a Coast Salish nation whose territory when the white man arrived included sites from Saltery Bay north to Sarah Point, at the gateway to Desolation Sound, with a population of some 20,000 people.

They have inhabited this area for at least two thousand years*, and their middens and village sites are found up and down the coast. (*Their website says

The Kla ah men people have inhabited this region since the beginning of time.

which I think may be a slight exaggeration.)

Sliammon townsite, from its wide beach. The Catholic church in front was rebuilt after it burned down in 1918. The homes are much more recent.

Their history since the coming of the white men has been, like that of so many other aboriginal peoples, a mournful recital of losses, from the first epidemics of European diseases, to the expulsion from many of their home sites, to the persistent and systematic attempts to eradicate their culture and language, leaving them at present with a population of about eight hundred. Only in the last few decades has there been a resurgence of hope and activity; they are now permitted to keep their children at home, to have local schools, to celebrate their cultural heritage, and to direct their own lives as adult Canadians.

In 2009, the "Sliammon First Nation raised a 30 foot totem pole to honor their family and friends that have passed on before us." (Sliammon Treaty Society) As far as I can tell, that would be this one:

It faces out to sea, from just above the high tide line.

The Coast Salish peoples were not major totem pole builders, and I'm not familiar with their symbolism. From bottom to top, I see an unidentified head, two killer whales, a winged turtle with suns carved into the wings, and a majestic, tragic face.

Detail: crying turtle with outstretched wings.

Is he carrying a turtle, or a fish?

Grief and endurance personified.

Canoes at Semiahmoo

Figurehead, traditional Coast Salish canoe

T'wis?a. Does that mean "the loon"?

Notched prow of a sea-going canoe.

Seen at the wind-up of the annual Salish Sea Journey, hosted by the Semiahmoo Nation. More on the design and construction of these canoes, at Ocean Explorer.

Grief Point

Street sign, Powell River:

The Sunshine Coast maps hint at a thousand stories, many long forgotten. Mermaid Cove, Thunder Bay, Frolander Bay, Brew Bay, Black Point, Desolation Sound, Bargain Harbour, Smuggler's Cove, Dinner Rock, Mount Spooner, Pope Landing, Hole in the Wall ... Grief Point, at the south end of Powell River, was the fall and winter settlement of the Sliammon people before the Europeans arrived.

High-ranking families would keep houses at both locations. The Sliammon people traveled by water, searching out the best places to fish, hunt, pick berries or dig roots. Some of the locations were simply over-night campsites while others became seasonal villages with spacious houses constructed from the giant red cedars that were abundant along the shores. Evidence of these sites is easy to locate by the presence of shell middens (Layers of shells and earth accumulated along the shoreline from thousand of years of discarded seashells). (Discover Powell River)

Where the present name came from is anyone's guess.

This name appears on 1880's Admiralty Charts, but the origin is unknown. Perhaps a smallpox epidemic ... or a ship wreck are possibilities. (Powell River Museum)

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First Nations Reserve, Tsawwassen

The name, "Tsawwassen" is a Halkomelem word which means “looking towards the sea.” It fits; the Tsawwassen band occupies a strip along the southeast Delta shoreline, straddling the highway to the ferry landing. About 500 people live there, almost half of them non-native, many in a large, modern condominium at the foot of English Bluff, overlooking the quiet waters of the Strait of Georgia.

We followed the coastline down, crossing the reserve north to south. In the older part, we stopped at the church and its graveyard.

Church on the shore. With boat.

1879 1979
Centennial Heritage Site
Tsawwassen Indian Reserve

Established in 1878 for Delta's first settlers this 600 acre reserve was home to a thriving group of families who lived in community longhouses. They harpooned and trapped Fraser river salmon, small animals, and picked local berries for food.
The church of the Holy Ghost was built in 1904.

Side view of the church.


Small totem in the graveyard.


An even smaller "totem pole"; actually, a carved 4x4 stud. I'd never seen one like this before.


Both totems, for size comparison.


"William George, Aged 80, Died March, 1925." An iron cross, now tumbled on the grass.


On the balcony of a house. The longer you look at this, the more faces you see. Salmon, orca, owl? and human?

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