I would like to say a special hello to everyone who has been reading my novels about the childhood of artist Emily Carr (Discovering Emily and Emily’s Dream) — especially Mrs. Fung’s class at Lord Nelson Elementary School!

During Spring Break last week I spent a day in Victoria, the city where Emily Carr was born and spent most of her life (1871-1945). Walking around her old neighbourhood, I tried to imagine what it looked like when she was a girl playing in the cow yard beside her house, cutting through her family’s back field to Beacon Hill Park, walking along the road to the James Bay Bridge…. and later, being a landlady at the House of All Sorts (a house built on a piece of her family’s property), raising her bob tail sheep dogs, walking along the streets with her monkey, Woo…..

Above: Carr house in the 1860s and me in front of the house last week.

Above: The House of All Sorts (at left), which is around the corner from Carr House (Carr House is now a museum you can visit, but the House of All Sorts is a privately owned house with apartments, and there is still a mural that Emily Carr painted on the attic ceiling). The house on the right is where I lived during my last year at University in Victoria (a room-mate and I rented the top floor, just a block away from Carr House, and no, Emily Carr was not still alive when I lived in her neighbourhood).

This street in front of the Empress Hotel (photo at left) used to be the James Bay Bridge, which Emily would walk across with her father. The hotel is sitting on what used to be the water of James Bay (the bay was filled in with earth, but sea water still sneaks into the hotel basement at high tide).

Above: The parliament buildings (behind the whale), which are across from the Empress Hotel and overlooking Victoria’s inner harbour (Emily Carr’s old neighbourhood is right behind them).

Below: Me dressed in 19^th century costume, reading in the Emily Carr section of the Vancouver Art Gallery a couple years ago (my daughter, sitting on the floor at left, is dressed like Emily Carr would have dressed when she was a girl).

While I was visiting my parents over the holidays, an old photograph surfaced of me before a high school dance. There is much I could say about this time in my life, but when I look at the photo, it’s hard for me to get past the hair.

As a teenager, I was very self-conscious and embarrassed easily. When I decided (shortly before this photo was taken) to get my long hair cut and permed, I was hoping for a slightly new look, but not a drastic, attention-drawing change. Not too short on the sides. Not too curly. When I ended up with what could be best described as poodle head, I was horrified.

How could I face the stares and jeers of everyone at school? (Yes, it sounds self-absorbed and superficial now, but this was high school, remember). I called up my boyfriend and we agreed to skip school the next day and drive to Victoria (about an hour away) – where no one would recognize me.

I can’t remember exactly what we did all day, except that we spent some time wondering around the neighbourhood of James Bay near Beacon Hill Park. Maybe we parked the car and walked or maybe we just drove around. In any case, one house caught our attention, and we stopped. On the grass in front of the house, sat a small brown monkey. Neither of us had ever seen a live monkey up close before. When we approached, a middle-aged woman came out of the house. She was very friendly, let us meet the monkey, and chatted with us for quite awhile.

It ended up being a good day, but with a strange quality – as if we had stepped out of our regular lives and even out of time. By our return home, I had grown accustomed (or at least resigned) to my new hair and bolstered enough to face school the following day.

I didn’t give the episode much more thought until two years later, when I was living in Victoria going to university and became interested in the artist Emily Carr. I had known about her before, but now something about her paintings and her life seemed to speak to me in a new and personal way. She had grown up in the Victoria neighbourhood of James Bay (she was born there in 1871) and had lived there as an eccentric older woman with many pets, including a monkey named Woo. As I looked at an old black and white photo of a middle-aged Carr standing in her James Bay backyard holding a small familiar-looking monkey, an eerie feeling of deja vu came over me. Is it possible I might have seen the ghosts of Emily Carr and Woo on that fateful bad hair day?

I’ve walked around James Bay many times since then, trying to remember which house was the one where we’d seen the woman and the monkey, but I never could find it again. If it really had been the ghosts of Emily and Woo, did they appear just to help me through a bad hair day? Or was there some profound message that Carr would have liked to pass on (a P.S. about art or trees or life, perhaps)?

A few days ago, I paid one last visit to “Emily Carr: New Perspectives on a Canadian Icon,” an exhibit which just ended at the Vancouver Art Gallery. As I walked through the rooms of Carr’s paintings, it occurred to me that she doesn’t need a ghost to pass on a message: her paintings have never stopped speaking. This is not to say I wouldn’t have a few questions for her, if I did meet her ghost….

[Click on “My Books” in the right sidebar for info on the two novels I ended up writing about Emily Carr’s childhood]