20 Facts About Bill Reid

Bill Reid was a matrilineal descendant of K'aadaas Gaa K'iigawaay, who belong to Kayxal, the Raven matrilineages of the Haida Nation.

Bill Reid's names are Iljuuwas, Kihlguulins, and Yaahl SGwaansing.

When Bill Reid was in his early twenties, he visited his ancestral home of Skidegate for the first time since he was an infant.

Gladstone first taught Reid about Haida art, and through him, Bill inherited his tools from his great-great-uncle Charles Edenshaw, a renowned chief and artist who died the year Reid was born.

In 1944, Bill Reid married his first wife, Mabel van Boyen.

In 1948, the couple moved to Toronto, where Bill Reid further developed his keen interest in Haida art while working as a radio announcer for CBC Radio and studying jewelry making at the Ryerson Institute of Technology.

In 1951, Bill Reid returned to Vancouver, where he eventually established a studio on Granville Island.

Bill Reid became greatly interested in the works of his great-great uncle Edenshaw, working to understand the symbolism of his work, much of which had been lost along with many Haida traditions.

Bill Reid assisted in the partial reconstruction of a Haida village in the University of British Columbia Museum of Anthropology.

In 1986, Bill Reid's work was featured in an exhibit at the MOA, "Beyond the Essential Form" curated by William McClennan.

Bill Reid gradually explored larger sculptures in bronze, red cedar and Nootka Cypress, usually portraying figures, animals, and scenes from Haida mythology.

Bill Reid intended to express his ancestors' visual traditions into a contemporary form.

Bill Reid's 1965 painting Smallpox is exhibited at the Canadian Museum of History.

Bill Reid received many honours in his life, including honorary degrees from the University of British Columbia, the University of Toronto, the University of Victoria, the University of Western Ontario, York University, and Trent University.

Bill Reid received the National Aboriginal Achievement Award for Lifetime Achievement in 1994, and was made a member of the Order of British Columbia and an Officer of France's Order of Arts and Letters.

Bill Reid was made a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts.

Bill Reid was the subject of Alanis Obomsawin's 2022 documentary film Bill Reid Remembers.

Bill Reid participated in the Haida-led blockades of logging roads that helped save the rain forests of Gwaii Haanas.

Bill Reid stopped work on the sculpture in Washington during this period to protest the destruction of the forests of Haida Gwaii, then known as the Queen Charlotte Islands.

Bill Reid died on 13 March 1998, of Parkinson's disease, in Vancouver.