Composition: 92.5% silver, 7.5% copper
Mintage: 9,904

A blend of heritage and art - the totem pole

Tome poles of the Northwest Coast communicated many layers of information about the chiefs and their families who commissioned them. Crests of the families were based on animals, fish, birds and plants that they encountered in the ancestral myths. Each generation raised new poles that recombined the images of ancestors and supernatural beings as a record of the ties between families and their links to property and resources.

Along the Pacific Northwest coast the immense western erd cedar trees provided carvers with logs that could be carved into canoes, house beams or totem poles up to 20 m (65ft) in length. Before contact with Europeans, wood was carved with tools with stone or shell blades, but with the arrival of the fur traders in the late eighteenth century the carving of these monumental art forms soared to new heights.

TOTEM POLE - 2005 CANADIAN COINS is categorised COINS AND PAPER MONEY / 08- ROYAL CANADIAN MINT / 15- ART & CULTURE and sold by l'Imaginaire, a store and specialised website.