Members of the Squamish Nation say they are heartbroken that someone appears to have deliberately damaged a memorial totem pole for family members killed in a bridge washout more than four decades ago.
“I couldn’t believe somebody would do something like that, I was kind of afraid. It’s a lot of hate for somebody to chop a cultural creation,” Squamish Hereditary Chief Janice George told Global News.
“I just couldn’t understand why somebody would do something like that. What kind of satisfaction could somebody get out of it? That made me a little uneasy for sure.”
The pole, located at the Tunnel Point highway rest area north of Lions Bay, was carved to commemorate the victims of a mudslide on Oct. 28, 1981, that killed nine people.
Among the victims were George’s mother, father, sister and four-year-old son.
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George said family members had gathered together on Saturday to commemorate the anniversary of the tragedy, when her sister and artist Rick Harry phoned to say they’d stopped to visit the pole and discovered it was badly damaged.
The vandal appeared to have used an axe to chop out the eyes and noses from a variety of carved figures, and had completely chopped a face representing George’s son out of the pole.
“As a mother I find it very painful. It’s actually hard to talk about,” George said.
“Our kids, who didn’t get to meet their grandparents, were able to come here and make a connection,” she added.
“They contributed so much to the community — my father was on council for 20-something years, my mother ran the first daycare for the Squamish Nation, and they ran out of funding and my mother kept on working with the kids, even though she wasn’t getting paid.”
George said the incident has been reported to police.
The Squamish RCMP said Monday it was investigating the vandalism as a “hate-motivated incident.”
“The memorial carving was erected near Tunnel Point near Lions Bay by British Columbia Transportation and Highways and the Squamish Nation,” RCMP said.
“The damage to the memorial carving is significant, and nearby graffiti in the area indicates it was racially-motivated.”
In the meantime, the family is planning a fundraiser to cover the costs of repairing the pole.
It will have to be taken down and moved, George said, a process she described as “complicated.”
“We will be praying that someone doesn’t do this again. I can’t imagine why anybody would want to do this to something so beautiful, to something with such deep meaning for things that people have suffered for,” she said.
“Hopefully (the person who did this gets) some help, finds some peace, because we are not going anywhere, the Squamish people. We are always going to be here, we are always going to practice our culture.”
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