Burnaby Mountain Park

This guide to Burnaby Mountain Park in Vancouver tells how a set of carved wooden totems atop the mountain came not from a Northwest Coast artist but from Nuburi Toko, an Ainu carver from Hokkaido, Japan, whose people's traditions Japan spent decades trying to suppress. You'll hear how a 1985 visit to Burnaby's sister city reminded him of a sacred volcanic range back home, and how he and his son spent a year carving animal gods here in the late 1980s. Look toward the inlet as you listen, the same view that convinced him this summit deserved gods of its own.