The Spirit of K'iid K'iyaas

In April 2002 the "Forest Leadership Forum" was held in Atlanta, Georgia. This conference brought together more than 1,300 leaders from 45 countries to discuss important issues related to the goal of sustainable forest management, including the role of certification schemes in improving forest management. Participants included representatives from environmental groups, retailers, and the forest products industry. This forum was jointly sponsored by Metafore and the World Wildlife Fund.

During this conference a special ceremony took place on the evening of Friday April 26th to present an original commissioned painting entitled "The Spirit of K'iid K'iyaas" to the Haida First Nation. Generously donated by Canadian wildlife artist Donna Bisschop, this painting was offered as a gesture of Hope over the loss 5 years earlier of a tree considered sacred to the Haida people.

K'iid K'iyaas (also known as the Golden Spruce) was felled on January 22, 1997 by an unemployed logger named Thomas Grant Hadwin. Hadwin's actions served as little more than a deranged act of protest against the clear-cutting of forests in British Columbia.

The story of K'iid K'iyaas is explained in greater detail in my earlier post.

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The Inconvenient Truth of Cheap Furniture Prices

Have you ever wondered why cheap furniture is priced so inexpensively?

Do you ever question how a furniture store can sell at 70% off and still make money?


Most people would assume that the low prices are simply a function of low labour costs in places like China. The Inconvenient Truth is that the low cost of labour is only a small part of a much bigger story.

Recently I received an unsolicited email from a certain Ms. B****i, who represents a large furniture manufacturing concern in Indonesia. She emailed a digital catalogue of her company's products, and followed it up with a price list. Here's an example of what I can buy:


The table in this photo is made of solid teak, and measures 80" long x 40" wide x 30" high. My cost price for the complete table (excluding shipping via container) is $234.40 each.

Something is seriously wrong here.

Based on a 1" top thickness the material required for me to make a table like this would be approximately 45 board ft. of lumber. With legitimately sourced teak (either FSC certified or supported by CITES documention) ranging in price from $31 to $37 per bd. ft., depending on grade, my cost for the teak alone would be anywhere from $1395.00 to $1665.00 per table. I am uncompetitive by 600% before I've even left the lumberyard.

How is this possible? Two words: "Illegal Timber"

In the attached document from World Wildlife Fund it says that roughly 73% of the timber produced in Indonesia comes from illegal sources. Therefore, the odds are high that the teak used on these $234.40 tables is illegally sourced.

To add insult to injury the retail markups on these cheap imports are astronomical, with retail margins of 500% over cost being common. But even with a 500% markup the retail price of $1172.00 is still less than I can buy the material for.

Given that these off-shore imports are often poorly made and designed to fail, it goes without saying that they also fall apart and end up in landfill within a few years time - so the buying cycle can repeat itself.

Therefore, anyone wondering where the rainforests are disappearing to can start by searching their local landfill. (You'll also find a lot of jobs and an economic future there too).

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Proof That Trees do Have a Higher Intelligence

The Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) is an international not-for-profit organization that was founded in 1993 by environmental groups such as Greenpeace, The Sierra Club and World Wildlife Fund. Its mandate is to protect the world's forests through globally recognized principles of responsible forest stewardship.



Between 2000 and 2004 I served on the board of FSC Canada in a variety of roles, including Treasurer and Chair. In that time I was privileged to meet people with a divergent range of perspectives that were all connected, in one form or another, to trees and forests.

The people I met ranged from industry executives to environmentalists; government bureaucrats to members of NGOs (non-governmental organizations); social activists, trade unionists, hunters, trappers, biologists, loggers, scientists, and a variety of indigenous peoples who all relied on the forest to some degree for their culture, livelihood and spirituality.

Because FSC is regarded globally as the most comprehensive forum where all of these diverse voices can be heard, it makes sense that a tremendous amount of unique information relating to trees and forests can be found there.

During my tenure on this board I learned many fascinating things about the forest and the broader natural world, none the least of which was the fact that there seems to exist a form of higher intelligence within the natural world that defies any kind of scientific explanation.

Most of us already know that in the frigid coastal waters of the Pacific Northwest there is an annual event taking place that is known as the salmon run. Every year many hundreds of thousands of salt water salmon - having grown to maturity in the far reaches of the Pacific Ocean - instinctively take it upon themselves to migrate hundreds of miles to the very rivers from which they themselves originally came.

Having found the mouths of the rivers of their birth, these fish then begin a long battle upstream against raging currents of water that cascade down from the snowmelt of the surrounding mountains. While fighting this current these salmon must simultaneously dodge gauntlets of hungry bears who have come to depend on this annual protein-rich feast of fish in order to fatten up for the long winter hibernation that lies ahead.



Those salmon that succeed in overcoming the river and the bears earn themselves the right to lay and fertilise eggs on the pebble bottoms of the upstream riverbeds. Having completed their task these salmon then die and complete their cycle of life at almost the precise spot where they themselves we born several years earlier.

For many years foresters and biologists have studied this dynamic and developed theories on the possible connections between the salmon and the surrounding forest. Why, for example, were the trees closest to the river bigger and stronger than similar trees of similar age growing a mere hundred yards away?

What scientists discovered was that when a bear caught a salmon in the river, it would typically haul that salmon into the nearby line of trees. This would allow them to feast in a place that was concealed from their hungry competitors. In their haste to fatten up for the winter these bears would focus on eating the protein-rich eggs and brain matter of the fish - leaving the rest of the carcass to rot in the forest.

The simple theory that resulted was that these decaying fish became fertilizer for the nearby trees and plants. To scientifically prove and measure this theory, the scientists isolated a protein that was unique to the salmon species. This protein became identified as the N-15 protein marker.

The theory went on to speculate that by measuring the vegetation alongside salmon streams for the N-15 protein marker, it would be possible to verify not only that fish protein was feeding the trees, but also how much of that protein was making its way into the trees. And by taking core samples and measuring the amount of N-15 protein in each layer of tree rings, it would also be possible to compile a historical record of the size of salmon runs in previous years.

This type of study held considerable fascination for many people connected to the forest industry because of the unique and close interconnected relationship that exists between bears, rivers, trees and salmon in this rather complex dynamic.

The bears, for example, depend on the salmon directly as a source of food, and on the river indirectly to deliver the salmon, and the trees to provide cover. The salmon, in turn, rely on the river as a means of transport and as a place to spawn their young. The salmon also depend on large and healthy shoreline trees to provide the necessary shade to keep the river water cool, because warm water kills eggs. In addition bears help the salmon by culling weaker fish from the spawning run, thereby ensuring healthier and stronger future offspring.

The river relies on healthy trees and other ground vegetation to prevent silt from clogging its beds. The trees, in turn, were found to have a more complex and dynamic role within this larger equation.

It is obvious, for example, that the trees rely directly on the bears to deliver the fish from the river to the surrounding forests. Trees, however, are not carnivores and cannot digest meat. Therefore, scientists began to study the process that converts fish protein into tree fibre.

What they discovered was that there are tiny microbes living in the soil near the root base of trees, and these microbes break down the decaying fish carcasses into a manner that is digestible by trees. This reconstituted form of fish protein is then delivered by the microbes to nearby tree rootlets and these rootlets, it turn, make a barter transaction with the microbe of a droplet of tree sugar in exchange for the delivery of partially digested fish protein.

In this manner the tree receives the food it needs in order to thrive along the river's edge. By using the barter transaction the tree rewards the microbe with the sugar droplet the microbe needs for its own survival. The microbes, after all, can only live on tree sugars and not fish protein.

While this dynamic is fascinating in its own right, there is one key aspect of it that utterly boggles the mind. In studying the relationship between trees and microbes, the scientists decided to monitor the flow levels of sugars within tree root systems. This idea developed from the theory that the levels of tree sugar production within the tree would probably ebb and flow in direct proportion to the amount of partially digested salmon protein the tree would be bartering for with the soil microbes.

What scientists discovered was astounding. While the levels of tree sugars did, in fact, ebb and flow in direct proportion to the amount of salmon protein that was being transacted, the stunning discovery was that the levels of tree sugars started to rise while the salmon were still hundreds of miles out to sea. And the level of tree sugar production would also fluctuate in direct proportion to the size of the run.

What this means is that on some mysterious and completely unexplained level the trees seem to know in advance - almost telepathically - not only when the salmon are starting their spawning run, but also how many salmon are due to arrive. Clearly there is some form of higher communication, or consciousness, at work that enables a tree to intuitively sense the instinctive behaviours of another life form hundreds of miles away.

Diana Beresford-Kroeger alludes to this as well in her latest book "The Global Forest" when she points out the interconnection between the great forests of the global garden and the invisible forests of the oceans. In a separate chapter Diana also talks about silent sound, and how trees communicate by infrasound.

What all this makes clear is that we, as human beings, have generally very little understanding of the true interrelationships that exist between and within all forms of life on this planet.



To paraphrase the words of Black Elk: "What we do not understand, we fear. And what we fear, we destroy." Given the collapse that is currently taking place amongst stocks of wild Pacific salmon, and the rampant deforestation that is obliterating many Northwest forests and salmon streams, it is clear that we humans are consistent on this latter point. We end up destroying what we fail to understand.

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"The Green Chain" and a Whale's Tale

In October 2004 I was flying back from my final Board meeting with FSC Canada. By chance I happened to sit beside a film maker by the name of Mark Leiren-Young, and for most of the flight we ended up discussing a new film he was working on.



Mark's film was called "The Green Chain" and over the next 2 years I played a minor role as Technical Advisor on the project. For the most part I was Mark's source for information on forest sustainability and contacts at organizations such as FSC and World Wildlife Fund. Possibly my biggest contribution was suggesting that the story of K'iid K'iyaas (a.k.a. the sacred Golden Spruce of Haida Gwaii) be incorporated into the film.

Haida Gwaii (also known as the Queen Charlotte Islands) lies about 100 miles off the Northwest coast of British Columbia, Canada. Covered in lush temperate rainforest, these islands are sometimes referred to as the Galapagos of Canada because they provide habitat for a broad range of unique plant, animal, fish and bird species. For at least 10,000 years, Haida Gwaii has also been home to the Haida First Nation, a powerful and enduring tribe famous for their warrior culture, their myths, and their totemic art forms.

One enduring mystical story derived from Haida folklore is that of K'iid K'iyaas, which loosely translates as "Old Tree". Haida legend tells of a young man who was disrespectful of nature's ways. When his village was destroyed by a snowstorm, only a boy and his grandfather were able to flee. Despite warnings not to look back, the boy disobeyed and instantly his arms were turned into branches and his legs became roots, and he was transformed into the magnificent golden spruce that became sacred to the Haida people.



Although genetically a Sitka Spruce, this tree's survival for over 300 years defied all conventional scientific explanation. Lacking cartenoid, a sort of arboreal sunscreen that protects leaves from excessive sunlight, the Golden Spruce should have withered and died. Instead, it flourished on the bank of the Yakoun River, and its inability to photosynthesize sunlight gave its needles a magnificent golden hue. When asked why this tree behaved in this manner, many Haida would simply smile and say: "Magic".

All this came to an end in January 1997 when an unemployed forester named Thomas Grant Hadwin cut the tree down and sent a Unabomber-type manifesto to the Haida First Nation, environmentalists, and several newspapers. Hadwin was a vocal critic of logging industry practices in British Columbia. He was particularly angered by what he perceived to be MacMillan Bloedel's hypocrisy of clear-cutting hundreds of thousands of trees, while professing to be good corporate citizens by cordoning off a small segment of rainforest around the Golden Spruce.

His letter proclaimed that "I didn't enjoy butchering this magnificent old plant, but you apparently needed a wake-up call that even a university-trained professional should be able to understand." Hadwin was arrested and charged, but he mysteriously disappeared before ever coming to trial.

The Haida were understandably devastated because they considered themselves responsible for the tree's stewardship and protection.

In "The Green Chain" Mark did a brilliant job of integrating the story of K'iid K'iyaas into the monologue of John Clements, who was portrayed by actor August Schellenberg in the film.



If nothing else the telling of the story of the Golden Spruce in the film helps keep the memory of K'iid K'iyaas alive.



"The Green Chain" made its world premiere at the Montreal World Film Festival in August 2007. Unbeknownst to most people, at the very same moment the festival was preparing to open something unusual and magical was happening simultaneously on Haida Gwaii.

On the north shore there's a tiny village called Masset which sits near the mouth of the Yakoun River. The Haida know the Yakoun as the "River of Life", and it was along this river that the Golden Spruce was felled about 10 years earlier.

Just as the festival was getting under way a Humpback Whale calf become stranded on a beach near the village of Masset. Rescuers made all kinds of efforts to get this whale out into the open water - all to no avail.

Finally two Haida men named Donnie Edenshaw and Ernie Swanson decided to sing a song of change to the whale, to encourage him back out to sea to rejoin his waiting mother. This moment was caught on video, and ended up making national news.



Although the incident captured in this video is clearly inspirational as a message of Hope, I like to believe that it was also a way for K'iid K'iyaas to say thanks to Mark Leiren-Young and the late John Juliani for making the film.

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Whale Tail Desk - The Story Behind its Creation

In the Autumn of 2001 my daughter was working on a school project that had to do with whales. Her writings contained all the standard textbook information available on these creatures, i.e. "whales are the world's largest mammals; they live in the sea; they eat fish or plankton, and they are endangered."

After reading her project to me, she asked what I knew about whales. I told her that in the St. Lawrence River (which lies between Canada and the United States) when a dead whale washes ashore it's carcass is so contaminated with pollutants that it has to be handled and disposed of as toxic waste. Needless to say, her eyes went wide as saucers and her whale project evolved along a whole new tangent.

That conversation made me wonder about what it is that our schools are teaching our children. Or, rather, what it is that our schools are not teaching.

My daughter and I ended up talking a great deal about whales, and out of those discussions came a promise that the following summer we would take a trip out east to see some real whales, up close and in the wild.

Not long after this discussion I received an invitation from World Wildlife Fund to build a showcase exhibit for the inaugural "Forest Leadership Forum" to be held in Atlanta, Georgia in April, 2002. Given that the show was focussed on protecting the world's forests, I was challenged to come up with a cool idea for a piece of furniture made of FSC certified wood.

For several months I vascillated with the idea of whether or not to even participate in the show. The events of 9/11 were still very much fresh in my mind, and the thought of flying anywhere wasn't holding much appeal for me.

By early 2002 I was still undecided on what to do, but now I was facing a deadline. I was stuck with the furniture designer's equivalent to writer's block. Nothing clever was manifesting in the way of ideas, although I had concluded that my furniture piece should be a desk of some kind.

Then one night I'm watching television and there's a program on about saving whales, and I see the actor Pierce Brosnan speaking on behalf of the whales.



I was already familiar with Brosnan because at that time he was also a spokesperson for FSC.



The connection of Brosnan to both whales and FSC suddenly melded with my idea for a desk, and everything came together in a flash: FSC + Whale + Desk.

Grabbing a pencil and a thin piece of cardboard I scribbled out a quick rendering of a desk based on what a whale's tail would look as it breeched in preparation for a deep dive. Cutting this out with scissors I then Scotch taped the pieces together into a crude scale model. The result was an actual miniature prototype, and the whole process probably took no more 15 minutes to do.



This model was then scaled into working drawings, and the woodworking process began. The main face of the torso and tail started as an oversized T-shape slab of 1-1/4" veneer core ply that was cross laminated with Macassar Ebony veneer. Relief kerfs were cut into the underside for bending the curve. Plywood offcuts were used to make elongated L-shaped vertical gables, with the 1" ply floor set into dadoes.



An anthracite grommet was inset into the top, to allow wiring to pass through to the vertebrae wire management column running vertically inside the torso of the desk. For stability the desk was engineered to be secured to the floor with lag bolts.

After a thorough sanding the exposed surfaces were finished in a high gloss low-VOC polyester finish to enhance the grain and give a glossy "wet look" to emulate a whale rising from the water.

The finished Whale Tail Desk was displayed at the "Forest Leadership Forum" in late April, 2002 along with a custom made Andiroba Credenza crafted from the same wood and finish.



A few months later our family travelled east to New Brunswick and took a long ferry ride to a remote island called Grand Manan, which lies just off the coast of Maine. We arrived on the island on August 6th and had advance reservations to go on a whale watching tour the following morning.

As we travelled around the island I soon learned from the locals that whale watching was not an exact science. Even in optimal summertime conditions such tours are highly dependent on the weather, the seas and the fog. I was told that in the previous 2 weeks hardly any tours had managed to make it out to sea because of heavy fog. And even when boats did make it out, there was no certainty of even seeing a whale - let alone seeing one up close.

I now felt concern that expectations for the trip might not unfold as planned. We had a wedding to attend in a couple of days, and our only opportunity to see whales would be the following morning. My daughter in particular was excited at the prospect of seeing a whale, and I did not wish to see her disappointed.

That night I took a walk to a small rise of land overlooking the sea. I prayed for good weather and silently called out into the darkness - asking for a whale to make an appearance the following day.

We arose before dawn and made our way to the harbour where a small converted lobster boat took us into the Bay of Fundy, to an area where whales traditionally feed. Luckily for us, the weather, the fog and the seas were all working in our favour, and conditions were nearly perfect.

After a bitterly cold 2 hour ride, the boat's captain spotted a pod of 6 or 8 whales on the horizon. He slowly eased to within about 1/2 mile of where these whales were, and shut off his engine. Now we had to wait, with cameras ready, scanning the horizon in anticipation of the whales coming to the surface. We didn't know when, or where, these creatures might appear.

For the next 20 minutes we enjoyed sporadic sightings of whales in the distance. These massive creatures would suddenly and unexpectedly emerge from the depths, then crash back into the sea with huge plumes of water and spray. Everyone was crowded to the starboard side of the boat, methodically snapping off frame after frame of film.

Given the unpredictability of the whales appearing on the horizon, I was snapping through an incredible amount of film in the vain hope that one of these shots might yield an incredible photo. At one point I stepped back from the group to change film when the most amazing and magical thing happened. Unbeknownst to any of us a huge Humpback Whale had quietly surfaced behind the boat. This whale didn't make a noise, and not one of us even noticed he was there.

As I busied myself with changing my film an odd feeling suddenly came over me. Casting a slow sidelong glance over the stern I found myself looking - no more than 10 feet away - right into one of eyes of this massive creature. In one brief moment I felt the whale say to me, as if telepathically, "you asked for me to appear. Here I am." Needless to say, as soon as I announced the whale's presence behind our boat everyone stampeded to the back for a better look.

The feeling of being small and powerless was overwhelming. Humpbacks can grow to a size of 40 tons, and if he wanted to this whale could easily have flipped our boat like a cork in the water. But this was not how things unfolded.

It was as if this whale had been waiting for us to show up, and he was floating patiently in the water until he was sure he had our undivided attention.

He slowly raised the top of his bumpy head out of the water, as if to confirm with his own ancient eyes that we were all watching. He then exhaled a huge, bushy spout of misty air with a sound not unlike that of an elephant's trumpet. And let me tell you, after a lifetime of eating seafood that fellow could definitely have used a breath mint. Children were giggling at how bad his breath smelled.

But the best was yet to come, and the only way to describe it would be to say that this whale grabbed this moment to, literally, seize the proverbial stage and ham it up for our cameras.



It was a most amazing few minutes of time, during which this wild mammal - of its own accord - decided to approach our boat in a manner that gave us both the time and the angles necessary to take some absolutely phenomenal photographs. It would not be an exaggeration to say that this whale was probably posing for some of the shots.

On our long ride back to the harbour I considered what might have motivated such an untamed creature to behave in this manner. I know that whales are highly intelligent, so on some instinctual level this individual would probably know that the greatest threats to its survival (i.e. pollution, collisions with ships, entanglement in fishing nets, and slaughter by commercial industry) all come from humans.

In spite of this, this whale took incredible risk to reach out and connect with us.

Perhaps, deep down, it was because this whale also realises that as much power as Man has to destroy, Man also has the power to change - and to protect. And maybe through connecting with us, this whale is also trying to secure his own future survival by sharing with us that feeling of oneness with him.

It would be easy to dismiss this magical moment was an isolated incident, a coincidence, or a figment of my imagination. But I do not believe this to be the case.

When we arrived on Grand Manan the day before, there was a story circulating amongst the locals about a Humpback Whale and her calf which had become entangled in fishing nets earlier in the week. Such entanglement is a guarantee of certain death for a whale, especially calves. To the amazement of the locals these two wild mammals instinctively swam right up to a research vessel and waited patiently on the surface of the water while deckhands used knives to cut away the netting. Somehow these whales intuitively knew what they needed to do in order to survive.

Life finds a way, and we should never underestimate the magic at work in Nature.

The natural world is clearly speaking to us. But the question is: Are we listening?

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How I Became Green - Thanks to Captain Planet

In the 1980s there was a small but growing awareness of environmental issues in the world, thanks largely to groups such as Greenpeace with media campaigns that spoke of clearcutting in the Amazon rainforest. While I was basically aware of what was going on down there I didn't pay it much heed because, frankly, there seemed to be very little I could do about it.

At the time we were buying wood from a fellow named Andrew Poynter of A&M Wood Specialty. Andrew imported exotic woods for custom woodworkers such as myself, and although our volume of wood use was small we did know we were playing some kind of a role in the problem.

In tandem with fellow pioneers such as Scott Landis of the Woodworkers' Alliance for Rainforest Protection (W.A.R.P.) Andrew ended playing an instrumental role in educating woodworkers such as myself on what the problem was, in the hope of finding a solution.

The dialogues and grassroots efforts of groups such as Greenpeace, The Sierra Club, World Wildlife Fund and W.A.R.P. inevitably led to recognition of the need for standards development which, in turn, resulted in the creation of the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) in 1993.

But in the interim, and until FSC got off the ground, several rudimentary efforts were made to protect the Amazon. One of these initiatives was the "Guardian of the Amazon" program -sponsored by World Wildlife Fund. The gist of this effort was that with every purchase of wood made you would "adopt" an acre of tropical rainforest in order to protect it from clearcutting. In practical terms, support of this program was one of our first "green" initiatives as custom furniture makers. But our support at the time was a proverbial drop in the bucket at best, given the relative low volumes of wood we were actually purchasing.

The thing that really catalyzed my involvement with forest sustainability took place later in 1991, when my oldest son was about 4 years old. He was watching a television show called "Captain Planet", and in this one particular episode the team of environmental superheroes ended up fighting a bad guy who was destroying the rainforest with a giant machine - in order to make furniture.

Since my son knew I made furniture for a living he wondered if maybe I, too, was a bad guy.

Visibly upset, he asked me point blank if the furniture I was making was also destroying the rainforest.

That became without question a moment of truth for me, because in my desire to answer him as honestly as possible I came to realize that I really didn't know all that much about the wood I was using, or where it was coming really from.

This was the initial seed to be planted that later manifested for me as a passion for sustainability.

It wasn't until 1996 that the seed really took root with the felling of K'iid K'iyaas on Haida Gwaii.

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