Almost 100 years ago, Chief Joe Capilano told this story to Pauline Johnson, the daughter of a Mohawk chief and British mother. Johnson, Canada’s first native author published in English, was highly celebrated in the late 19th and early 20th centuries for her dramatic poetry performances. She met Chief Capilano in London, England, in 1906 and became the first English-speaking person that he shared Coast Salish stories with. She transcribed his stories and, in 1911, published Legends of Vancouver, a collection that included this myth.

The Lost Island is the first picture book treatment (to my knowledge) of one of the Vancouver legends. It preserves Johnson’s original English and Chinook text and her technique of leading conversationally into the legends to credit their true source. The lost island legend tells of a mighty medicine man who experienced dreams and visions foretelling the arrival of “Pale-faces” on the Pacific coast. Before he died, the medicine man prayed for the preservation of his strength, courage, and fearlessness to help his people “endure the white man’s rule.” According to the legend, the lost island, like the Arthurian Isle of Avalon, is hidden in the mists, safeguarding the medicine man’s strength and courage until the time is right for his people to find and draw upon them.

In his first picture book, Bulgarian illustrator Atanas successfully captures the story’s setting, with its snow-capped mountains, forest glades, snowfields, and Pacific waters. His water colours evoke the power and mystery of storm clouds, sunsets, mists, and moonlight. The native art elements are identifiably West Coast, but unfortunately some of the illustrator’s animals, rigid enough to suggest museum models, don’t ring as true.

I wish notes had been included to explain the text’s Chinook words and the regalia portrayed. I also wonder at the artistic license taken in depicting a male, rather than Johnson, as the recipient of Chief Capilano’s tale. Nevertheless, it’s a delight to have the legend, as told by Pauline Johnson, brought back into our literary foreground with the bonus of illustrations.