From bush tools to wooden boats, Hakai Institute videographer Grant Callegari appreciates the old and handmade. He’s part of a new film project about Indigenous canoe building that's forging fresh connections to culture, craft, and community.
A new dugout cedar canoe named Na̱max̱sa̱la was carved by three generations of Indigenous carvers—Długweyaxalis (Karver Everson), ƛ̓aqwasgəm (Junior Henderson), and See-wees (Max Chickite)—shown here steaming the canoe at Kelsey Bay in Sayward, British Columbia. All photos by Grant Callegari
During a trip to Tofino, British Columbia, in summer 2024, Grant Callegari had a literal déjà vu.
He was in the forest in front of a cedar canoe with Tuu-tah-qwees-nup-sheetl (Joe Martin), a master canoe carver from Tla-o-qui-aht First Nation, while Martin was offering tips to fellow Indigenous carvers ƛ̓aqwasgəm (Junior Henderson) and Długweyaxalis (Karver Everson). Henderson and Everson were in the midst of crafting a different cedar canoe in the tradition of their ancestors, a project Callegari was filming for the Hakai Institute.
But 20 years earlier, Callegari was the one acting as Martin’s apprentice. That experience kicked off a full-circle journey of connection and cultural understanding, forged through the ancient art of canoe building.
Back then, Callegari was in his early 20s, working at the Scottish Crannog Centre near Loch Tay in central Scotland. This open-air museum explores how people lived in stilted lake dwellings known as crannogs during the Iron Age, more than 2,500 years ago, and showcases traditional activities and technologies. One aspect of Callegari’s job was to make replicas—physical blueprints—of structures and tools from that era, such as handwoven hurdle fences and foot-powered lathes capable of turning wood into bowls.
For a former Boy Scout who loved working with his hands and spending time outdoors, it was a dream job.
“Breathing in the scent of wood smoke and farm animals, hearing the loch lapping at the stilts—it was like time travel grounded in archaeology and human connection,” Callegari recalls.
From left: The Scottish Crannog Centre is an open-air museum featuring Iron Age architecture, like this replica lake dwelling known as a crannog. The facility also showcases traditional crafts, such as hurdle fences made from the branches of hazel trees.
One day, a few years into the job, the center’s archaeologists relayed a remarkable discovery from the 1990s: a 3,000-year-old dugout canoe so beautifully preserved by the lake’s peat sediments that the tool marks were still visible.
“It was made of a solid piece of oak, over nine meters long, straight-grained, not many knots,” Callegari remembers. “Oak trees like that just don’t exist anymore. It offered a rare glimpse into how massive the trees must have been in ancient Britain.”
For Callegari, learning about the canoe deepened his appreciation for the ingenuity of early peoples and sparked a desire to understand how they built such vessels by hand from the behemoths of the forest. Fortunately, Callegari was placed on a team tasked with building a working replica.
Once he got into the research, all paths led to British Columbia—starting with his source tree. Unable to find local oak of the length and girth that was used 3,000 years ago, Callegari’s colleagues searched for alternative wood. In the United Kingdom, locating a tree of any species large enough to carve a nine-meter canoe was not easy. Luckily, some giant Sitka spruce were growing at Scone Palace about an hour from the Crannog Centre. The trees were slated for removal and donation to the museum.
Unlike oak, Sitka spruce is not native to Scotland; these trees came from seedlings collected in British Columbia by the Scottish botanist David Douglas (namesake of the Douglas fir), who planted them back home in Scotland. The massive Sitka spruce the Scottish Crannog Centre settled on would turn out to be a particularly fitting bridge between the Pacific Northwest and Callegari’s homeland—foreshadowing the cultural journey he was about to embark on.
A former Boy Scout with a deep interest in traditional and Indigenous crafts, Grant Callegari has spent much of his life in the forest making implements by hand. “It’s like page one of being human,” he says of traditional tool-making.
Spruce, cedar, and a master carver
Learning about the spruce and its birthplace led Callegari to Indigenous woodworking from the trees of the Pacific Northwest. That’s when he remembered master canoe carver Joe Martin, whom he had heard about during a vacation to Tofino years earlier.
It just so happened that Callegari was planning a trip to Canada when his canoe project surfaced. He mailed Martin a letter, asking if he could visit him in Tofino to get a few pointers. To his surprise, Martin responded, and within a few months, Callegari was working on a red cedar canoe alongside him.
Western red cedar, known as the “tree of life” to coastal First Nations, is the preferred tree for canoe carving—and just about everything else—in the Pacific Northwest. “The cedar tree is important to all Indigenous peoples along the coast here,” Martin says. “We get our canoes from it, we get our homes built out of it, and the totem poles. And then the bark is weaved into regalia and really strong rope.”
While soaking up the sea breeze and Martin’s wit, Callegari learned about his teacher’s culture and techniques, like how to use a hand adze and create scarf joints. Mostly, he sat in Martin’s oceanfront workshop feeling awed by the functional beauty of Pacific Northwest Indigenous constructions.
“Everything they make is totally useful and beautiful at the same time, and the canoe is the epitome of that,” Callegari says. “It has to be balanced, the right angle, the right weight—all of that to function well in a powerful, unpredictable ocean.”
He was especially moved by Martin’s deep knowledge, not just of canoe carving but of the cultural teachings woven into every step, from not cutting down cedar trees in the spring or summer when eagles and other birds are nesting to taking only what one needs to preserve materials for future generations: “Mother Nature provides for our need, but not our greed,” Martin likes to say.
“Joe carries that knowledge with such clarity and generosity. It was humbling just to listen and learn,” says Callegari.
From the forest to the beach, master canoe carver Tuu-tah-qwees-nup-sheetl (Joe Martin) can be found working on traditional cedar canoes, imparting techniques and wisdom to anyone curious enough to stop by.
Equipped with fresh tips and insights from Martin, Callegari returned home to collaborate on the replica project—a much more rudimentary dugout canoe in the style of his own ancestors.
All in the same boat
Callegari never guessed that 20 years later, he’d be living in British Columbia, making a film about another special canoe project.
In 2024, Na̲nwak̲olas Council, a collective of six Kwakwaka’wakw First Nations on northern Vancouver Island, invited Callegari to document a new cedar canoe being built as a collaboration between three generations of carvers—ƛ̓aqwasgəm (Junior Henderson), Długweyaxalis (Karver Everson), and See-wees (Max Chickite)—from three different First Nations (Wei Wai Kum, K’ómoks, and We Wai Kai, respectively). It was the first canoe in a century to be constructed in the traditional way in these nations’ territories, carved in the H’kusam forest where the red cedar blew down—right near Callegari's doorstep in Sayward, British Columbia.
Although he had some experience with traditional carving, Callegari walked into the project feeling like an outsider, aware of his British heritage and colonialism’s devastating legacy on Indigenous communities. Despite generations of efforts to suppress Indigenous cultures across Canada, the artwork and carving traditions of the northwest coast have endured. For many nations, these traditions are the pillars of an ongoing cultural revival.
One of many rewards of the film project for Callegari was connecting carvers ƛ̓aqwasgəm (Junior Henderson) and Długweyaxalis (Karver Everson) with Martin in Tofino—first in the forest and then on the beach for canoe steaming.
During one of the first interviews Callegari conducted for the film, Henderson assured Callegari that he wanted him there to document, since they were building a “blueprint for the future.” With Henderson’s blessing, Callegari was able to relax into gratitude.
“I’m from distant lands,” he says, “and so being able to immerse in a culture like this and to see the culture gaining strength is really inspiring.”
To craft the new canoe, the three carvers built a small cabin in the H’kusam forest, where Henderson and Everson lived for a full month of carving—except for the final night when they slept in the canoe itself.
The most inspirational part, says Callegari, was attending the xwax’wana (canoe) blessing ceremony when around 100 people descended on the site where the artists had been living and carving. Donning woven cedar headpieces and button blankets of different colors and crests, attendees joined together from many neighboring First Nations to witness the canoe being sprinkled with eagle down and receiving its name: Na̱max̱sa̱la, meaning “everyone on the boat together.”
From left: Everson, Henderson, and See-wees (Max Chickite) celebrate the completion and naming of Na̱max̱sa̱la at a canoe blessing ceremony held in June 2024.
“Three generations, three carvers from different nations, coming together for the better purpose of our people—showing that by working together, we can create magic,” Henderson said through tears on that poignant summer day.
Then 18 people, chosen by the carvers, helped carry the nine-meter canoe to a trailer using ropes slung around their shoulders.
Na̱max̱sa̱la was then driven the rest of the way to Kelsey Bay in Sayward where the canoe was steamed. Heh-mah-khoo-doh-gah (Jessica Chickite)—daughter of Max Chickite—came up with a whale-and-moon design, which she and the carvers painted on the canoe the following week to honor the place where the cedar grew.
From left: Max Chickite and his daughter Heh-mah-khoo-doh-gah (Jessica Chickite) paint the whale-and-moon design that Jessica created on to Na̱max̱sa̱la. Jessica Chickite and Everson then add a fresh coat of paint.
Returning home
Through talking with Henderson and Everson about their experience on the land, Callegari was reminded of the different sense of time one possesses in the forest—shaped by daylight, weather, and the rhythm of mind, body, and hands. Crafting a canoe also takes extra time and care; working too fast could cause irreversible mistakes.
Henderson spoke about his ability to slow down in the forest, “to relax a little bit while I’m up here, not worrying about being here or there,” he said, while woodpeckers hammered their natural percussion in the background.
“It sure feels nice to feel what [our ancestors] must have felt back then,” he added. “I hope that the next generation gets to feel this a little sooner than over 100 years.”
Members of the Na̲nwak̲olas Council First Nations have paddled the canoe through Johnstone Strait to Tsa-Kwa-Luten Lodge, a We Wai Kai First Nation healing center on Quadra Island, where the boat will be based.
For Callegari, the project has rekindled his own deep love of traditional crafts. “It’s like page one of being human,” he says.
The more you learn about the natural world, the plants and other resources and how to use them to live and thrive in a place, the less you see that place as ‘wild.’ It simply becomes home.
Henderson, Everson, and Chickite worked on Na̱max̱sa̱la in the H’kusam forest near Sayward, British Columbia, for a month.Callegari visited for the film and for fun, one time with his two children in tow.
Back at home near Sayward, Callegari is working to finish the film project, which Na̲nwak̲olas Council will launch later this year.
Katherine Palmer Gordon, Na̲nwak̲olas’s communications lead, says the council and the carvers have appreciated Callegari’s passion and dedication to the project. “It’s really gratifying to work with someone so committed to Indigenous rights and reciprocity, and sensitive to the history and culture,” Gordon says. “We all offer a huge gilakas’la [thank you] to Grant.”
Once the project is complete, Callegari says he’d like to build something with his young son and daughter: a small dugout canoe made of cedar—perhaps a replica of Na̱max̱sa̱la, using “the same techniques, the same cuts, the same steaming process,” Callegari says, “just scaled down.”
It would be a chance to slow down and plant seeds for his kids, to honor the past while creating a blueprint for the future.
