Bill Reid's artistic vision was different again from that of the Group of Seven or Paul-Émile Borduas. A natural comparison between Reid and Emily Carr could be made since both artists were inspired by the Native cultures of the North Pacific Coast, but in terms of style, versatility, and purpose, there are as many differences as similarities between their work. At the time of his death in 1998, Reid had become an internationally-recognized artist whose work earned him wide praise. He is likely the best-known of all the artists who contributed to what is sometimes referred to as a renaissance in Native Canadian art. Reid himself has been described as a "modest and unassuming man" who did not particularly like being in the public eye. His work, however, has become an important public symbol of the artistic legacy of First Nations and their continued cultural vitality in contemporary Canada.

Interestingly, art was Bill Reid's second career. For much of his adult life Reid worked in radio. Reid was born in Victoria, British Columbia, in 1920. His father was an American who ran hotels in two northern British Columbia towns. His mother, Sophie, a Haida woman, was a dress-maker and designer in Victoria. When he was young, Reid knew little of his mother's Native heritage. Although the young Reid had some interest in carving, literature, music, and poetry, his development as an artist was a prolonged process which stretched over several decades. In fact, he did not begin to devote his full attention to art until 1958.

Reid's development as an artist was as much a personal journey into his Haida heritage as it was a journey into the world of the creative arts. "When Bill Reid began his exploration into Northwest Coast art," the art critic Roger Downey has written, "he did so as a 'white man' investigating a set of formal design problems. Over the years, perhaps inevitably, his success in unlocking the principles of coast Indian art has progressively unlocked the Indian in Bill Reid himself." Put another way, art was more than a career for Reid.

Reid's interest in Haida art was first triggered at the age of twenty-three when he visited Skidegate, his mother's home town, and met his grandfather, Charles Gladstone. Gladstone was a carver and engraver who had learned his art from his uncle, a man named Charles Edenshaw, who was, perhaps, the best-known nineteenth-century Haida carver. At the time he met Gladstone, Reid was already working in radio and he soon moved to Toronto to take up a job with the CBC. The move did not cause Reid's interests in Native art to lapse. In Toronto he decided to devote more time to the study of traditional First Nations art. He visited the Royal Ontario Museum to study totem poles (which had been purchased from northern BC Native peoples) and enrolled in silver work courses at Ryerson Polytechnic. Reid also served an apprenticeship, all the while continuing his work in radio.

In 1951 Reid returned to BC to work for the CBC in Vancouver. Here he used anthropological sources to continue his studies of traditional First Nations arts, set up his own jewelry shop, and began to work on totem pole replication and restoration projects. He first worked on a replication project in Thunder Bird park where he met Mungo Martin, a highly-skilled Kwakwaka'wakw carver who was overseeing the project. Martin helped Reid to develop his skills as a carver. He next worked on a project sponsored by the University of British Columbia Department of Anthropology restoring a Haida house and totem pole. In 1958, the year he began working on this project, Reid decided to leave radio to devote his full attention to art. It was at this point that his rise to public prominence really began.

Perhaps Reid's best know work is Spirit of Haida Gwaii, a work inspired by Haida oral traditions. Originally, cast in bronze, Spirit of Haida Gwaii features a number of important Haida characters and symbols, including Raven and Eagle, representative of the two moieties (or social groups) into which the Haida were divided, Mouse Woman, a key and guide in Haida tradition, and the Haida chief, Kilstlaai, a shaman, among others. A human figure is also depicted at the ore beneath Raven's wing. This is a remarkably complex work of art which interweaves figures from Haida tradition with characters Reid has taken from more modern poems. A large number of different figures and creatures, material and mythological, are packed onto the boat.

Spirit of Haida Gwaii is deeply symbolic. It portrays life as a voyage which human beings do not take alone: they are accompanied by animals and mythological creatures. Exactly where this voyages is leading, however, is an open question, because the boat is both moving and standing still at anchor. As Reid himself has explained:

There is certainly no lack of activity in our little boat, but is there any purpose? Is the tall figure who may or may not be the Spirit of Haida Gwaii leading us, for we are all in the same boat, to a sheltered beach beyond the rim of the world as he seems to be or is he lost in a dream of his own dreaming? The boat moves on, forever anchored in the same place.

Bill Reid died of Parkinson's disease in 1998. Although best known as a carver, he worked in a diverse array of media, including jewelry, silk screening, and cast bronze. He wrote poetry and prose, and contributed to the future development of Native art in Canada by teaching younger artists how to develop their skills. Reid was not the only First Nations artist who has gained prominence in Canada in the last generation. He is one of a series of carvers, painters, poets, story-tellers, and musicians who have demonstrated the significance of Native Canadian arts to a new generation of Canadians. The richness and diversity of contemporary Native Canadian art, illustrated by works like Spirit of Haida Gwaii, make it a key component of the arts in Canada today. It is, quite simply, not possible to talk about the artistic life of Canada without considering these works.