For the first time ever, the work of an artist is featured on a Canadian currency note. The new twenty-dollar bill with anti-counterfeiting features, still has the Queen on one side, and the other illustrates the art of Bill Reid, the late Canadian artist who revitalized the West Coast Haida culture of his mother.

Most prominent of the four works represented are the monumental sculpture The Spirit of Haida Gwaii, one of which is at the Canadian Embassy in Washington, and The raven and the first man, the Haida story of human creation, located at the The Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia. (I wrote about MOA recently.) The other two are Xhuwaji – Haida Grizzly Bear and Mythic messengers.

“Also on that side, in the country’s two official languages, is a poignant question from the late Canadian writer Gabrielle Roy : ‘Could we ever know each other in the slightest without the arts?'”

**From the article “Haida icon’s art on flip side of Queen” by Glenn Bohn, in yesterday’s
Vancouver Sun (Aug.26.04). Also the Globe and Mail (Aug.25.04)

(**Registration may be required for both newspapers, sorry, but try BugMeNot, recommended by mirabilis)