Rare glimpse into life of Emily Carr awaits readers

Page 10

Opposite Contraries-

The Unknown Journals of Emily Carr and other Writings

Edited by Susan Crean

Douglas & McIntyre

250 pp; $35 Can.

Lovers of the arts, especially literature and painting, and Canadian history aficionados are sure to love the most recent book about painter Emily Carr.

Edited by Susan Crean, a well-respected teacher, literary critic and author, the book Opposite Contraries-The Unknown Journals of Emily Carr and Other Writings contains information about Carr in her own words that only a scholar is likely to come across elsewhere. This is the first time that previously unpublished selections from Carr's journals, letters and notebooks have been assembled under hard cover.

Painstaking research by Crean has resulted in a coherent collection of materials that reveals as much about Carr's art, struggles with philosophical questions, and the culture that contributed to her world view as any other book about her.

That Opposite Contraries is not dry reading material has much to do with Carr herself, however. Born in 1871 in Victoria, B.C., the well-travelled Carr lived at a time when the nuances of thought and language were more frequently and more eloquently expressed in letters and diaries than now. Carr's journals and letters circumvent much of the blatant over-writing that was common to many, if not most, writers of her day. There is both candour and coyness in Carr's revelations, and for those with a literary or historical bent, it is fascinating reading.

That being said, it is important to note that Carr expresses her ideologies on various subjects through the medium of fictionalized diary accounts.

The book is divided into three parts, each part with an introduction by Crean. The first covers Carr's journal entries and journal fragments written between 1930 and 1941; the second covers Carr's public life; and the third, her correspondence. The book reveals much about Carr's spiritual leanings, her family, her loves and especially her relationship to the Indigenous people of British Columbia.

Better known for her painting than her writing, Carr made excursions to sketch and paint in Alert Bay, Campbell River, Haida Gwaii, along the Nass and Skeena rivers, Sechelt and North Vancouver.

Carr's ambiguous writings about the Indigenous people she met on her travels not only illuminate facets of her personality, but they say much about the prevailing mores of the time. There are friendships, to be sure, but there is also an attitude of condescension towards First Peoples.

Crean says as much in her introduction to the journal section (p. 19):

"It would seem that Carr was quite conscious of the racism around her and was not reticent about chastising white society for its intolerance and superior attitudes. However, she was not able to turn the critique on herself, tending instead to promote herself as the exception, a special friend and interlocutor for Native culture. She is conflicted and inconsistent."

The artist reveals this herself in her discussion of West Coast Indigenous beliefs about totem animals and taboos, in her Lecture on Totems (pp. 178 ff):

"Although these people would not have hesitated in bygone years to commit great acts of cruelty, they would not dare to kill or eat their totem" (p. 180).

The inference seems to be that only the heathens were capable of great acts of cruelty.

In the same lecture, Carr expresses more positive thoughts about the people who welcomed her, for the most part, in their territories:

"I leave my coat, sketchbook and paraphernalia all round the village, much against the advice of the missionaries, but I have never once found my trust in these people misplaced, and I think they are keenly appreciative of the confidence shown, though I assure you I would not leave my paraphernalia five minutes unguarded in one of our villages with white children around."

Carr died in the same city as she was born in 1945, her reputation as a painter and, to a lesser degre, as a writer, well launched in Canada and abroad.

Crean's well-crafted critical look at the life of this artist will be welcomed by those who admire Carr's work.