Vaillant, J. (2006). The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness and Greed. Penguin Canada.
A fascinating story of our human relationship with the natural world. The Golden Spruce was literally golden due to an inability to hold chlorophyll, a condition that should have killed the tree, but instead it grew for 300 years along the banks of theYakoun river in Haida Gwaii. The tree is old enough to have stood while Europeans made first contact with the many Native nations along the coast, through the times of massive overexploitation of the sea otter but not quite through the excesses of the logging industry.
Such a unique tree was also golden in its role in the myth and history of Haida who called it, K’iid K’iyaas, Elder Spruce Tree. Golden too, in his way, is the man who cut the tree down in protest. Grant Hadwin was a robust, smart and industrious forest engineer, blessed for his hard work with financial success, family and the ability to work in the forests he loved. Hadwin’s work however was destroying what he loved and perhaps that is what laid the seeds of madness or, if you like, of epiphany; estranged from his wife and following a stint alone in the woods, Hadwin felt he had a spiritual experience and been given a mission – to wake the world to the depredations of logging.
On the night of 20 January 1997, Hadwin swam the frigid waters of the Yakoun river with a chainsaw kept dry in a plastic bag. With a skill honed over many years, he expertly cut into the 50 metre tall, over 2 metre wide trunk of the Golden Spruce, so undermining its foundation that a stiff wind a few days later brought the massive tree crashing down. In doing so Hadwin made an enemy of everyone in the vicinity, the Haida who revered the tree, MacMillan Bloedel/Weyerhaeuser who had let the tree live in a small “set aside” that
masked surrounding clear cuts, people reliant on tourism and environmentalists all over the world.
Before he disappeared Hadwin told a reporter for the Queen Charlotte Islands Observer: “We tend to focus on trees like the golden spruce while the rest of the forest is being slaughtered…. Everybody’s supposed to focus on that and forget all the damage behind it. When someone attacks one of those freaks you’d think it was a holocaust, but the real holocaust is somewhere else. Right now, people are focusing all their anger on me when they should focus it on the destruction going on around them.”
Hadwin was charged with the crime and, fearing for his life if he took a public ferry or plane, set out in a kayak to his court date; he has not been seen since. Also not seen since is a means of resolving the moral and cognitive dissonance of living in modernity and destroying what we love. This is a moving and informative read from a talented Canadian author who respectfully touches on First Nations history and ethnography, contact hostilities, the rise of Britain as a world power through her navies and a frightening overview of how quickly the logging industry has altered our landscapes.