Iconic Stanley Park totem pole moved to museum for restoration work

A totem pole that was installed in Stanley Park nearly 40 years ago has been loaded onto a flat bed truck and moved to a museum for much-needed restoration work.

On hand for the delicate operation at Brockton Point on Wednesday morning was Lou-Ann Neel, the granddaughter of the original carver Ellen Neel, an Alert Bay artist who created the pole inside her carving shack in Stanley Park in the mid 1950s.

“She was definitely someone who stepped out and used the skills that she learned from her grandfather Charlie James and put that to work for herself and created her own art business,” said Neel of her grandmother.

Ellen Neel was trailblazer. She was one of the first female Indigenous totem pole carvers, and the Stanley Park pole was commissioned by Woodward's for its new department store in Edmonton in 1955. When that store closed in the mid '80s, the pole was donated to UBC’s Museum of Anthropology. It was loaned it to the Vancouver Park Board and installed in Stanley Park, where it’s remained ever since, delighting tourists and locals alike at Brockton Point.

“It’s been there for decades," said Neel. "It’s been well kept by the conservators from the Museum of Anthropology; they did regular check-ups on the pole. That’s actually how we discovered it was starting to rot a little bit in certain places that would have really compromised the pole."

So, the family made the difficult decision to have the pole moved from Stanley Park and taken back to the museum for the restoration work, which will include freezing the entire piece to kill off the critters that have taken up residence inside.

“Some detailed restoration work is going to be undertaken so we can stabilize it and restore it back to its its original beauty," said park board arts and culture planner Julia Hulbert. "And then it’s going to be put up again in the (museum's) Great Hall."

Neel believes her grandmother would be happy to see the pole restored, and eventually returned to public display at the museum. And she hopes visitors can learn more about the carving.

“Each of the figures that are one the pole – on any of my grandmother's poles – all come from my family’s crest,” Neel said.

She said watching the pole being taken away from Stanley Park, where it was first created nearly 80 years ago, was bittersweet.

“It did feel kind of sad. It was like losing somebody, but, you know, the moment the workers took the wings off the thunderbird it didn’t feel that way anymore,” said Neel, who, like her grandmother, is a prominent Indigenous artist.

“I think seeing them take such care in removing the wings and moving them down to ground level and wrapping them so carefully, then it turned from sadness to excitement.”