I Heard The Owl Call My Name

A retired canon who once held Mark’s position, Caleb is down-to-earth and gives Mark lots of practical advice. Caleb introduces Mark to Jim Wallace and also helps find host families for the four boys of the tribe who want to study in Vancouver. He is resigned to the ultimate collapse of the tribe, but Mark reminds him that he has been like the Cedar-man, a sustaining force for the village. Caleb tells Mark that it is true of him then it is also true for Mark. Both men realize they cannot save the village and see the connections and acts of care in their parish as their own rewards.

The Bishop is the first to learn of Mark’s impending death but decides to conceal it from him for fear that Mark will try too hard to spend his remaining time well. He has few in-scene appearances and is present mostly in Mark’s remembered conversations and correspondences. He is familiar with the difficulties facing the Indian villages and believes that both Mark and the Indians can help one another. He is a distant, guiding figure for Mark throughout the story and wants to help Mark be prepared to face his own death.

The village matriarch, in charge of organizing the community feasts. She is occupied with her social standing in the village and enjoys the attention of the Bishop and Mark, but is also somewhat antagonistic towards “the white man, the

intruder” (31). She expresses this by serving white men mashed turnips whenever possible since they seldom enjoy them. Mrs. Hudson is also Keetah’s grandmother.

The “grandmother of the tribe” (31), Marta is elderly, with white hair and a finely-wrinkled face. She is the daughter of a chief, as well as the wife and mother of chiefs, and is kind to visitors. She sometimes cooks for Mark and hosts him when the new vicarage is being built. She is the first in the village to recognize that Mark is terminally ill.

Mrs. Hudson’s granddaughter, she begins recording the myths and stories of the village. Keetah is torn between the old ways of the village and the opportunities of the outside world. This conflict is embodied in her two potential husbands: Jim, the traditionalist committed to keeping the village alive, and Gordon, who wants to leave the village. She is betrothed to Gordon and leaves the village with him, but returns carrying his child, a fact she conceals from him. 

Keetah’s sister is wooed by a white man who asks her to marry him. When she brings him to the village on a visit, he deliberately gets Gordon’s uncle drunk so that he sells him a valuable family heirloom at a low price. He later abandons Keetah’s sister, who falls into drugs and prostitution and dies, likely from a deliberate overdose.

T.P., a prolific orator, is one of the village elders as well as Jim’s grandfather. He immediately recognizes that Mark is respectful of the tribe’s customs, and he later holds a potlatch for Jim to pass him the rites and ceremonies of the family, to which Mark is warmly included.

Peter the carver is another of the village’s elders who is spiritually in tune with dead. He recognizes something within Mark and wonders: “How long will he be here before he knows that I live among the dead?” (32). Peter also explains to Mark how the youth return to the village conflicted, having adopted the customs of “the white man.” When Mark helps the tribe bury the bodies, Peter relays to Mark the myth of the hamatsa, the cannibal spirit. After Mark dies, Peter dresses and waits for Mark’s soul to return. 

As T.P.’s grandson. Jim returns to Kingcome after a year of living and working in a mill town. He is Mark’s first guide to the village and though the same or nearly the same age as Mark at 27, is committed to its traditions. Jim accompanies Mark on his patrols of neighboring villages, and throughout the novel is certain that he, not Gordon, will marry Keetah. He is proven right by the end of the book, but before he dies Mark asks him to soften some of his patriarchal attitudes that Keetah dislikes, and to help her become accustomed to the outside world in preparation for the day when they will both have to leave the village to survive.

When the novel begins, Gordon is away at the government school for Indians. He later decides that he wants to live with a white family and attend a school in Vancouver, to which he resolves to attend university and leave the village forever. In contrast to Jim, Gordon represents a forward-looking generation that is disinterested in preserving the village, leading ultimately to its slow destruction.

Calamity Bill is a 65-year-old logger who lives in a float house, and he is known for wearing two pairs of long underwear and never changing the inner one. One day Mark and Jim become worried when they notice no smoke coming from his chimney while they are out on patrol. They discover Bill, who is injured and dying inside. Before he dies, Bill asks Mark to scatter his ashes in the spring, at a spot he has marked on a map. Mark agrees, and this is one of the last acts performs before he himself dies.