I take pictures of totem poles and the process of carving them. If you search this blog you will see many posts about the creation of poles. So it really peaked my curiosity when the last time we were in Buenos Aires we caught a fleeting glimpse of a totem pole, just barely visible through the trees in a park, while riding in a cab from our hotel to MS Amsterdam. We had left the ship for a trip to Iguassu Falls and we arrived in Buenos Aires the night before the ship arrived. I didn’t have time to stop to check out the pole but vowed that the next time in Buenos Aires I would take a closer look.
The original totem pole in Plaza Canada was raised in 1964 as a gift from Canada to Argentina to honor the bonds between indigenous people of the Americas. It was 66 feet tall and carved by Kwakiutl father and son master carvers Henry and Tony Hunt from Fort Rupert, British Columbia.
In 2011 the pole was taken down for restoration, but the conservators decided that it was too far deteriorated to repair so Argentina requested another pole from Canada. Stanley Hunt, Henry Hunt’s son, is the master carver who created this new pole. The new pole is 42 feet tall and was raised in 2012. It was carved from a 1,500 year old red cedar. It is not a replica of the original pole but a new one representing the family lineage of the carver. It features a doble headed serpent, honoring the carver’s grandfather, a bear holding a halibut (the crest of the Hunt family), a chief holding a copper shield (honoring his father), a killer whale the creator raven.
