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Shell Road Map — Alberta & British Columbia

1972 · Alberta and British Columbia, Canada

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Pages (2)

Front
Front
Back
Back

Background

The cover photograph is a Kwakwaka'wakw transformation mask caught mid-opening — outer bird panels spread apart to show the carved human face beneath — printed on a free Shell Canada road map covering Alberta and British Columbia, with city insets for Calgary, Edmonton, Vancouver, and Victoria.

Shell Canada distributed road maps free at its service stations from the 1930s into the late 1970s, part of a competition among oil companies to encourage driving and build brand loyalty. By the early 1970s these maps had become full-colour production pieces, with cover photographs chosen to evoke the destination. The cover here is almost entirely given over to a single large photograph — an unusual emphasis even by the standards of the era.

The image shows a Kwakwaka'wakw (historically called Kwakiutl) transformation mask, a ceremonial object from the coast of what is now British Columbia, used in potlatch ceremonies. A transformation mask has an outer face the dancer opens by pulling hidden cords, splitting the outer form to reveal a second face within; here the outer bird panels are spread fully apart, exposing the carved human face underneath. The bird is painted in the blue and rust tones typical of Kwakwaka'wakw regalia, and the beak and posture are consistent with a thunderbird — a supernatural figure central to many Northwest Coast traditions. The inner face uses formline (the system of swelling, tapering lines that defines Northwest Coast graphic art) around the eyes and cheeks.

The cover carries no caption, credit, or cultural attribution for the mask or its carver — standard practice on Canadian promotional materials of the period, which regularly used Northwest Coast ceremonial objects as regional imagery without situating them in their specific cultural context. Similar masks are held in major museum collections including the Brooklyn Museum and the British Museum, and the technique is well documented in academic literature on Northwest Coast art.

  • The subtitle notes insets for Calgary, Edmonton, Vancouver, and Victoria — the four urban centres impossible to navigate at provincial highway scale.
  • A yellow filing tab has been added at the lower-left corner, suggesting the map was indexed after entering the archive.
  • The Shell pecten (scallop-shell) logo in red and yellow at the top matches the simplified mark introduced in 1971, placing this edition no earlier than that year.

Researched with claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 on May 24, 2026. AI-assisted — verify before citing.

Highlights

  • The Shell pecten logo — red and yellow scallop shell, in the simplified form introduced in 1971 — is centred at the top of the cover above the red 'Shell' wordmark.
  • The subtitle 'Featuring City Area Maps of Calgary, Edmonton, Vancouver and Victoria' is set in a lighter roman face beneath the main title, signalling urban insets within the folded sheet.
  • The outer bird panels of the transformation mask are spread fully open, a position that in ceremonial performance signals the completion of the dancer's shift from animal to human identity.
  • The inner carved human face — blue-painted, with formline detailing around the eyes — is fully exposed beneath the open outer mask.
  • The bird element above the face — beak open, painted blue and rust — is consistent with a thunderbird figure common in Kwakwaka'wakw ceremonial regalia.
  • A yellow paper tab is visible at the lower-left corner, added after the map entered the archive as a filing or indexing marker.

Further reading