Bill Reid Foundation

MYTHIC MESSENGERS

Banknote image seen in background.

Original image upon which the banknote is based.

Mythic Messengers is a high relief bronze frieze, 8.5 m long, 1.2 m high, 45.7 cm deep; commissioned by Teleglobe Canada for its building in Burnaby, B.C. and unveiled November 7, 1984. The BCE Group donated it to the Bill Reid Foundation in 2001. It was cast at the Harman Sculpture Foundry, British Columbia.

Until the Foundation is able to create a permanent home for its Collection, it has lent the sculpture to the Vancouver International Airport Authority, which has installed Mythic Messengers on a specially-built architrave in the international terminal near Reid’s The Spirit of Haida Gwaii (The Jade Canoe).

Another casting of Mythic Messengers can be viewed at the Canadian Museum of Civilization in Gatineau, Québec.

Bill Reid said “this work was inspired by a device often used by Haida artists, an exchange of tongues, whereby power was communicated from one mythic creature to another. At a deeper level, the power of these old forms, born of a mythological past, reinterpreted through new materials and techniques, in a contemporary setting, can still speak to us across time, space, and enormous cultural differences.”

From left to right, the mythic creatures, clutching, hanging on with the mouth, squeezed in curious positions, are:

The Bear family, a human woman married to the Bear Prince, and their twin cubs

Nanatsinget, his wife, and her Killer Whale abductor

The Sea Wolf who kills and devours three whales a day

The Dogfish Woman and her mythic dogfish

The Eagle Prince

Photo by Reinhard Derreth.