Bill Reid

Son of an American father and Haida mother, Reid worked as a CBC radio announcer before learning European jewelry making. Visiting Haida Gwaii, he apprenticed under maternal grandfather Charles Gladstone, rediscovering the sublime sculptural traditions of legendary ancestor Charles Edenshaw.

Reid created monumental sculptures in yellow cedar, bronze, and argillite that stunned the world, notably The Raven and the First Men (1980) at the UBC Museum of Anthropology and The Spirit of Haida Gwaii (The Black Canoe) at the Canadian Embassy in Washington. His ashes were paddled in a cedar war canoe to Haida Gwaii.