![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/ff195992-a459-4b47-ab40-cb92e153e638.jpg\")
Tsleil-Waututh Nation artist Ocean Hyland strolls along Whey-ah-Wichen\/Cates Park in Deep Cove wearing her Canucks First Nations Celebration logo. | Submitted by Ocean Hyland<\/p>\nOcean Hyland remembers her first hockey game well.<\/p>\n
Hyland was seven years old when her uncle brought her and her sister to Rogers Arena to see the Vancouver Canucks play.<\/p>\n
He bought them one jersey and they took turns wearing it. She remembers a blimp floating around the arena, and staff firing T-shirts into the crowd.<\/p>\n
\u201cI remember we so badly wanted to catch a T-shirt,\u201d said Hyland. \u201cWe were eating cotton candy and I remember it was so much fun. It was something that we got to go and do with our uncle and watch the game.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hockey was part of family life for Hyland, she said. Her dad would often have NHL games playing on the TV, sometimes in the background while the family was having dinner, or sometimes with everyone gathered around watching the action unfold.<\/p>\n
So when the s\u0259lilw\u0259ta\u026c (Tsleil-Waututh Nation) artist got the opportunity to design the Vancouver Canucks\u2019 new First Nations Celebration logo, she was thrilled.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was quite exciting and it still is,\u201d she said. \u201cThere\u2019s just so much pride in being able to showcase our excellence and \u2026 to be able to not only make a design, but honour where I come from and share some of the language.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hyland was looking forward to seeing fans wear her design during the First Nations Celebration Game on Thursday, March 12 when the Canucks hosted the Nashville Predators. The night honoured Indigenous communities across B.C. and highlighted their connections to the land and hockey.<\/p>\n
Tsleil-Waututh Nation artist Ocean Hyland strolls along Whey-ah-Wichen\/Cates Park in Deep Cove wearing her Canucks First Nations Celebration logo. | Submitted by Ocean Hyland<\/p>\n
The design deeply honours the Tsleil-Waututh Nation\u2019s coastal connections, with Hyland incorporating waves of Burrard Inlet and animals like the orca, wolf, eagle and raven.<\/p>\n
\u201cI felt that full circle kind of [connection to] the water, land and sky. These animals are connected to our culture and our way of understanding the world,\u201d she said. \u201cSo I wanted to honour those parts of being Tsleil-Waututh.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to a Instagram post from the Vancouver Canucks, the orca is known to be a kin to the Tsleil-Waututh people, the wolf resembles an important animal in their culture, while the eagle completes the cultural stewardship of land, sea and air.<\/p>\n
With the name Tsleil-Waututh meaning \u201cpeople of the inlet,\u201d Hyland wanted to make sure the inlet\u2019s waves were in the design to symbolize their language, h\u0259n\u0313q\u0313\u0259min\u0313\u0259m\u0313. She also wanted to honour S\u1e35wx\u0331w\u00fa7mesh Sn\u00edchim (Squamish language), in recognition of their neighbours on the North Shore and beyond.<\/p>\n
The Tsleil-Waututh artist also had the chance to create a patch design, transforming Johnny Canuck into an Indigenous fisherman wearing a cedar hat holding a fishing spear.<\/p>\n
Hyland said the Canucks team loved the patch and ended up using both the designs she created.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/c43118d716fb744bc4616565208553e176a6c43d5be43a5d6f3edbbd0f2eec32.jpg\")
Hyland transformed Johnny Canuck into an Indigenous fisherman wearing a cedar hat holding a fishing spear. | Tsleil-Waututh Nation website<\/p>\n
The logo and patch also tie to her nostalgic feelings for hockey, using the red and blue to pay tribute to the Vancouver Canucks West Coast Express jersey colours from the early 2000s, she said.<\/p>\n
The artist hopes her designs will help hockey fans appreciate Coast Salish art and have a deeper connection to their territory, she said.<\/p>\n
\u201c[I hope] people connect to the space they\u2019re at and have an appreciation for the land, water and skies,\u201d Hyland said. \u201cThe history, the stories of place, and have that just be a nudge forward to have that deeper connection to our territory and understanding of how to be on it, how to connect to it and how to respect it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Merchandise bearing Hyland\u2019s designs can be purchased on the VanBase website.<\/p>\n
Abby Luciano is the Indigenous and civic affairs reporter for the North Shore News. This reporting beat is made possible by the Local Journalism Initiative.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ocean Hyland remembers her first hockey game well. Hyland was seven years old when her uncle brought her…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":538747,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194298],"tags":[49,48,55],"class_list":["post-538746","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-vancouver","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-vancouver"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/538746","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=538746"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/538746\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/538747"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=538746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=538746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=538746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}