KEY POINTS:
In pride of place in our home these days is my latest souvenir: a wooden totem pole, featuring a bald eagle sitting on top of a beaver, carved by Joe Becker of the Musqueam First Nation in Canada.
Well, I didn't really have any option, did I? For a start, my name and follicularly-challenged head automatically made the bald eagle my totem. And I've always felt an affinity with those hard-working beavers.
In fact the First Nation people I met in Canada were very impressed I was called Eagles. Dr Linnea Battel, director of the Xa:ytem cultural centre, even said I was "very fortunate" in my name because the eagle was "a very powerful figure and the messenger of the spirits".
What's more, during two weeks in British Columbia, with a brief foray into Alberta, we saw bald eagles everywhere - almost as if they had come to check out their Kiwi cousin.
The biggest gathering we came across was on a huge stockpile of wood chips just outside the quaint old settlement of Telegraph Cove on Vancouver Island.
I have no idea what the attraction was, but hundreds of eagles rested on the mounds and soared majestically into the air.
We also saw large numbers lining the banks of many of the rivers we passed, it being salmon spawning season, when eagles form part of what one of our guides called "the salmon clean-up crew"; disposing of the bodies of the thousands of fish which die soon after breeding.
In the Squamish area they've counted 5000 birds - a quarter of British Columbia's bald eagle population - beside the rivers when the salmon run is at its height in December and January.
We even found eagles, unexpectedly, in the middle of the cities and towns, even Vancouver, usually perched at the top of the tallest trees, lamp standards or totem poles. They are truly magnificent birds.
Beavers weren't quite so common, but we did see lots of their dams and lodges as we travelled through the great river valleys of the Canadian Rockies, and my wife thinks she saw one swimming (well, there was something in the water with a V-shaped wake behind it). Claud, an attendant on the famous Rocky Mountaineer train, explained as we passed one particularly extensive system of beaver dams that they are so industrious they change the landscape.
"With their dams they actually create wetlands where they are able to live."
And boy, can they build. The biggest beaver dam ever recorded was 650m long, 4m high and 7m thick at the base. That's the sort of attitude we can all do with.
But my other reason for choosing a totem pole as a souvenir is that they - and First Nation culture in general - are an important part of what makes Canada special.
You find totem poles in all sorts of places. There's one in the tourist town of Jasper, which serves as the local meeting place.
"People just say, 'See you at the totem pole'," explained our shuttle bus driver.
We saw some magnificent poles in the Nimpkish Reservation at Alert Bay on tiny Cormorant Island. Outside the fascinating U'Mista Cultural Centre is one that is 53m high, said to be the tallest in the world, carved in two pieces and with 13 figures representing tribes of the Kwakwaka'wakw nation. A particularly ornate pole guards the entrance of the tribal administrative centre. And there is a whole cluster at the Namgis Burial Ground in the centre of the village.
Many towns and cities have totem poles in key locations, and the City of Duncan on Vancouver Island has so many - dotted through the parks, sitting in supermarket carparks and outside public buildings - that it is called the City of Totems.
Even the bustling city of Vancouver has totem poles dotted through its suburbs, some even at malls and markets, probably the best-known in Stanley Park.
But the best place to see totem poles is the city's marvellous Museum of Anthropology, which is housed in a beautiful building overlooking the harbour at the end of Point Grey.
Unfortunately, when we visited the museum, which is part of the University of British Columbia, most of it was closed for a $70 million upgrade, but it was still impressive. There are two totem poles guarding the entrance, which is appropriate, because traditionally they were carved to welcome visitors to a community.
In the magnificent Great Hall, with its 15m-high glass walls, there are many more totem poles - as well as house posts, carved figures and funeral chests - most representing animals such as the raven, the bear, the wolf, the frog and, of course, the beaver and the eagle. Just outside - but looking like part of the hall because of the glass walls - is a Haida First Nation village with a longhouse, a mortuary house and some mortuary poles, which once may have held remains, plus several memorial poles commemorating former chiefs.
Most of the poles on display are relatively modern, though the designs are generally traditional and the carving is superb.
But, impressed though I was with the museum, I didn't buy my own totem pole there. The examples the museum shop had on sale were C$3000-4000 ($4271-$5695) which, good though they were, was a bit rich for my blood.
I had begun to fear there was no middle ground between the cheap mass-produced totem poles in most gift shops and the museum's gold-plated version, when my wife spotted the Sharing the Spirit shop in the Sinclair Centre in downtown Vancouver, where we had gone for a cheap breakfast.
This is a great shop, with excellent carvings by native artists at reasonable prices, and it was there I bought my own totem.
With it the shop gave me a leaflet explaining that: "The eagle is the spirit symbol of power, prestige and peace. Eagles are honoured defenders of truth. Insightful and visionary, they always follow their hearts." Sounds about right.
