The salmon of wisdom The raven of war

Legends from the Celtic northwest

Kitimat Museum and Archives
Annual General Meeting &
An Illustrated Talk by Robin Rowland, beginning at 7 p.m., May 28, 2013

For most people today, the image of Wales, Ireland and England conjures up Downton Abbey, with its rolling hills and green fields dotted with white sheep.

Two thousand years ago and going back thousands of years, the northwest coast of the British Isles was known for thick, often impenetrable forests, rivers teeming with salmon and oceans with raging storms.

Sound familiar?

The climate and ecosystem of northwestern Europe two thousand years ago was very similar to northwest BC today.
From those forests came the ancient legends still loved today, including the stories of King Arthur and Robin Hood.

There is much more to the legends of the Celtic northwest than Arthur and Robin.

To the ancient Celts, the salmon granted wisdom.
Across ancient Britain, Wales and Ireland, the raven was the symbol of war. With the dark image of the raven, it is the crow that is seen as the trickster. In ancient Welsh, the word Artos means bear and the bear has always been associated with King Arthur.

We are all somewhat familiar with the role the salmon, the raven and crow, or the bear played in the culture of BC’s First Nations. Find out the legends and tales the from the rich culture of the ancient Celts, stories told of many of the creatures we all see here in the northwest.

Robin Rowland is a Kitimat visual journalist and author. He lived in Kitimat as a boy from 1957 to 1965 and returned in 2010 after taking early retirement from CBC News.

Robin is known for writing the first book on how to do research on the Internet, published in 1995. His other books are “King of the Mob, Undercover Cases of the RCMP’s Most Secret Operative” and “A River Kwai Story, The Sonkrai Tribunal.”

He currently works as a freelancer for GlobalBC, the Canadian Press, Reuters and CBC News. Locally, he is editor and publisher of the website Northwest Coast Energy
News.

Salmon of Wisdom talk  (pdf)