March Myth of the Month: The Legend of Skalsh
The myth I’m bringing to you today is about a rock. Specifically, this one:
It’s most commonly known as Siwash Rock, though I’ll be referring to it as Skalsh (for reasons I’ll explain later). It’s a beloved local landmark here in Vancouver, BC, which I assume is mostly due to its location right off the busy Stanley Park seawall, surrounded by beautiful ocean, mountain, and city views. It’s in one of the most picturesque places in an already very picturesque city, and as such it gets photographed a lot:
People love this big rock!
And, to be fair, Skalsh is a very cool rock. It was formed some 32 million years ago when magma pushed up through a crack in the Earth’s crust and then cooled into basalt. Over time, wind and water wore away at the (relatively less dense) sandstone surrounding it until what we see today was all that remained.
There are also trees growing on top of Skalsh! The Douglas Fir trees seen nowadays were planted back in the 60s to replace an earlier (and much older) tree that had been growing out of it since at least the 1800s, as seen in this photo from either 1889 or 1890:
When that tree died following Typhoon Frieda in 1962, there was an honest-to-goodness obituary posted in the local paper—
—followed by a years-long effort to replace it by planting various tree saplings where the old one stood. Luckily, by the 1970s there were at least three new firs successfully growing atop Skalsh, and those firs are still going strong to this day.
But that’s not why I’ve chosen this particular rock to talk about today. Skalsh isn’t just a modern tourist landmark, after all--it’s been here millions of years, and has existed pretty much unchanged since long before Canada as a country even existed, let alone Vancouver. As such, the people who originally inhabited the peninsula that is now known as Stanley Park have legends and myths about this land that stretch back centuries. It’s one of those myths that I want to share.
The story of Skalsh was originally told to local Mohawk poet E. Pauline Johnson by Chief Joe Capilano of the Squamish nation, one of three First Nations who call this region home, and it first appeared in Johnson’s 1911 book Legends of Vancouver. There are several myths surrounding Skalsh, but this one is my personal favourite, and it’s the one most people are familiar with. I highly recommend you go read the full legend, but I’ll summarize it for you here as well:
Thousands of years ago, a young chief and father-to-be went swimming in the waters off Stanley Park to cleanse himself in preparation for his child’s arrival, for it was tribal law that all parents must be spotlessly clean when a child is born to ensure them a chance at a clean life. As he swam, he was confronted by a huge canoe carrying four equally huge men who commanded him to move out of their way. He refused, at which point the men, shocked at his disobedience, revealed themselves to be The Transformers, agents of the Creator with the power to transform him into anything, living or dead. Again they asked him to move aside, and again he refused, telling them that nothing was more important than “the cleanliness and purity of his coming child”, not even the Creator himself. While the Transformers were debating what to do about this transgression, they heard the first cries of a newborn child from the shore. Stirred, the man at the head of the canoe stood up and, rather than cursing the chief for his disobedience, decided to reward him for his commitment to his family, turning him to “living stone” so that he could stand as a “monument to clean fatherhood” for generations to come. That stone, of course, is Skalsh, who stands tall and proud to this day.
There are several reasons why I love this story. For one, it’s about a mortal disobeying the gods for the sake of his child and being rewarded for it (though I’m not sure I’d call being turned to stone on the day your child is born a “reward” necessarily). Too often people in myths do things to please a god, or because a god told them to, so it’s nice to hear about someone standing up to them and putting their family first, instead. I also love that it acknowledges the impact of a parent’s state or mindset on their child’s development and life, and casts the young chief’s devotion to his unborn child in a positive, relatively healthy light. It also isn’t a story about sacrifice, which parenthood myths so frequently are. Yes, he gets turned to stone, but it’s a transformation, not a death. In the full retelling of the myth linked above, his wife and newborn child are also turned to stone, effectively immortalizing all three of them, which is at least a kinder fate than leaving them to go on without him.
Mostly, though, I love this myth because it’s about a thing I’m very familiar with, but from the perspective of the original inhabitants of this area, whose voices and stories have so often been silenced and erased from our history. As a descendent of colonizers I think it’s important to be aware of the fact that this land I’ve been privileged to call home was claimed and reshaped and renamed against the will of those people, and learning their myths and legends (those that have been freely shared, at least), and honouring their wishes regarding how this land is seen and used, is one way to do that. It also provides greater meaning and context to the ordinary things and places I see everyday, which makes me appreciate them even more.
Which brings me, finally, to my reason for calling the rock in question Skalsh rather than its current name, Siwash Rock. Skalsh is an anglicization of the Squamish word Slhx̱í7lsh, meaning “standing man”, and was recently proposed as a new name for the rock by the current chief of the Squamish nation as it more closely resembles the names the local first peoples have been using to refer to it for centuries. Comparatively, siwash is a Chinook (not a local nation) jargon word derived from the French sauvage, meaning “native person”, and was chosen by white colonizers in the late 1800s. The plan is to officially change it soon, once everyone can decide on a pronunciation and spelling, but in the meantime I’d still rather call it Skalsh, in honour of that young chief who once stood up to the gods themselves so that his child could thrive, and was immortalized for it.
Claudia Kowalski Director of Public Relations, CrossingsCon
PS. Another of the legends described in Johnson’s book mentions Skalsh, and honestly it’s such a beautiful paragraph, and one that I feel would resonate so deeply with fans of the Young Wizards series, that I couldn’t not include it here, even though it’s not part of the original myth. Consider it an epilogue, I suppose:
The Indian belief is very beautiful concerning the results of good and evil in the human body. The Sagalie Tyee [God] has His own way of immortalizing each. People who are wilfully evil, who have no kindness in their hearts, who are bloodthirsty, cruel, vengeful, unsympathetic, the Sagalie Tyee turns to solid stone that will harbour no growth, even that of moss or lichen, for these stones contain no moisture, just as their wicked hearts lacked the milk of human kindness. The one famed exception, wherein a good man was transformed into stone, was in the instance of Siwash Rock, but as the Indian tells you of it he smiles with gratification as he calls your attention to the tiny tree cresting that imperial monument. He says the tree was always there to show the nations that the good in this man's heart kept on growing even when his body had ceased to be. On the other hand, the Sagalie Tyee transforms the kindly people, the humane, sympathetic, charitable, loving people into trees, so that after death they may go on for ever benefiting all mankind; they may yield fruit, give shade and shelter, afford unending service to the living by their usefulness as building material and as firewood. Their saps and gums, their fibres, their leaves, their blossoms, enrich, nourish, and sustain the human form; no evil is produced by trees–all, all is goodness, is hearty, is helpfulness and growth. They give refuge to the birds, they give music to the winds, and from them are carved the bows and arrows, the canoes and paddles, bowls, spoons, and baskets. Their service to mankind is priceless; the Indian that tells you this tale will enumerate all these attributes and virtues of the trees. No wonder the Sagalie Tyee chose them to be the abode of souls good and great.