Loot Lake
Mixed media on canvas
34.5 x 49 in (framed)
- $2800 -
Loot Lake is a special swimming hole on the banks of the tiskwat River that our family often visits. When we first began swimming there many years ago, our youngest would dive beneath the surface with his goggles and return with all sorts of treasures—rusted metal remnants, fishing lures, silver cutlery, antique glass bottles, lengths of chain, and even a tiny antique screw-back cameo earring carved from shell.
While conducting fish surveys for the Tla’amin Nation below the dam, my husband once discovered a small bronze Art Deco–era statue of a woman. It was after these discoveries that our son began calling this stretch of the tiskwat River “Loot Lake.”
Following the establishment of Townsite in the early 1900s, residents often discarded their refuse off the high banks near the dam, in an area once known as Riverside. The houses of that small suburb have since been demolished or relocated throughout the region. At one time, a long sequence of old float homes also lined the dammed river, connected by sections of dock—but these, too, have vanished with time.
The river above and below the dam remains a place of energy and of mystery.
Before colonization, the tiskwat River supported one of the largest salmon runs in the world and was home to one of the Tla’amin people’s most abundant and thriving village sites. By the late eighteenth century, European settlers began encroaching on the Tla’amin village at tiskwat. The river was dammed in 1911 to generate power for the large pulp and paper mill built at its mouth, forever changing the landscape. The dam flooded the once fish abundant river and valley, displacing both the Tla’amin people and the salmon that sustained them.
34.5 x 49 in (framed)
- $2800 -
Loot Lake is a special swimming hole on the banks of the tiskwat River that our family often visits. When we first began swimming there many years ago, our youngest would dive beneath the surface with his goggles and return with all sorts of treasures—rusted metal remnants, fishing lures, silver cutlery, antique glass bottles, lengths of chain, and even a tiny antique screw-back cameo earring carved from shell.
While conducting fish surveys for the Tla’amin Nation below the dam, my husband once discovered a small bronze Art Deco–era statue of a woman. It was after these discoveries that our son began calling this stretch of the tiskwat River “Loot Lake.”
Following the establishment of Townsite in the early 1900s, residents often discarded their refuse off the high banks near the dam, in an area once known as Riverside. The houses of that small suburb have since been demolished or relocated throughout the region. At one time, a long sequence of old float homes also lined the dammed river, connected by sections of dock—but these, too, have vanished with time.
The river above and below the dam remains a place of energy and of mystery.
Before colonization, the tiskwat River supported one of the largest salmon runs in the world and was home to one of the Tla’amin people’s most abundant and thriving village sites. By the late eighteenth century, European settlers began encroaching on the Tla’amin village at tiskwat. The river was dammed in 1911 to generate power for the large pulp and paper mill built at its mouth, forever changing the landscape. The dam flooded the once fish abundant river and valley, displacing both the Tla’amin people and the salmon that sustained them.