Tony Hunt
Tony Hunt Sr. was born in the Kwakwaka’wakw community of Alert Bay, British Columbia, in 1942. He was hereditary chief of the KwaGulth people at Fort Rupert and belonged to a family of renowned artists and professional woodcarvers, including his maternal grandfather, Mungo Martin; his father, Henry; his two younger brothers, George and Stanley; and his son, Tony Jr.
Hunt served as assistant carver to his father from 1962 to 1972. Together they restored many deteriorating totem poles through the Royal British Columbia Museum’s Indigenous art restoration program. Hunt created one hundred original, full-scale totem poles, each carved out of a single cedar log. He designed the massive KwaGulth ceremonial Big House at Fort Rupert, and created countless paintings, prints and cedar board carvings in the traditional KwaGulth style. Raven Transforming into Man, a four-tonne stone sculpture commissioned for the Canadian Museum of Civilization (now the Canadian Museum of History), is one of his major works. Hunt died in Campbell River in 2017.