Beneath Alaska, between the islands of Haida Gwaii and the northern British Columbia coast, is the wide but shallow Hecate Strait. Originally termed Seegaay by the Haida, Captain George Henry Richards, affixed the name Hecate to the strait in the early 1860s. Hecate was a Greek goddess associated with magic and crossroads, a governess of the wilderness and liminal regions where the spirits interact with the living.

The title has proved an appropriate one for the region. The north coast is unique, famous for its Kermode or spirit bears, a rare and regionally isolated white variant of the black bear that haunts the local forests. Even the woods themselves are rare, as temperate rainforests such as the Great Bear Rainforest cover less than one per cent of the earth's surface.