Tag: Emily Carr

MEDITATION 90

I am seated by my candle recalling memories of my Canadian vacation again. However, I am not remembering breathtaking landscapes as in my last meditation, or revisiting with affection the small town of Sidney on Vancouver Island which is the inspiration for ‘Driftwood’, my collection of short stories. I am recalling gnarled and twisted tree roots, crunchy dead leaves, mud, puddles and small pools, tree stumps and rocks, slippery hillocks and a swaying bridge over a gaping chasm. In short, I am reliving with a wry smile and a modicum of pride an accidental trek through a forest.

My cousin Mark’s son, Justin, was driving us towards Sooke Harbour where we planned to have lunch. He suggested we drive a little further on and briefly visit Mystic Beach beforehand. The name of the beach appealed to my imagination, so I agreed. We soon arrived at a car park and there before us, in all its verdant green splendour was a dense forest. Apparently we had to follow a trail through the forest to get to the beach. As far as I remember, Justin had been on the trail before and told us that it wasn’t very far.

Having spent much of the holiday by the ocean so far, and being eager to give my friend Simon a glimpse of the beautiful forests on the Island as well, I agreed that we should go ahead. I was presumably asked to make the decision because I was the oldest member of the group. Underlying this was probably the others’ awareness that trekking through a forest was not quite my thing. And they were right. (Although I had gone on a mini-trek with Mark several years before).  

So we blithely left water, snacks and my backpack containing my asthma inhaler behind in the car and started the trail, thinking it would be quite short. It turned out that the trail was 2km to the beach and 2km back of course as there was no other way. It became a 3 hour round trip without ‘supplies’ or the right footwear. I must admit to being rather resentful of the cheerful, confident and well-equipped hikers who greeted us with a smile on our way. Especially when they made comments like ‘You’re about half way through’ or ‘It gets more difficult from now on.’  

I am sure the journey would have been been quicker except that I was unused to trekking and was therefore rather slow, needing help climbing over rocks and pools and those ubiquitous tree roots. And help was given I must admit: patient and good-humoured help! I have learnt from the experience that I am not as agile as I used to be.  As I was wearing the wrong footwear I was rather concerned about spraining my ankle or worse in this forest where we were nowhere near medical assistance. I had visions of airlifts and helicopters. I guess I am not the explorer type. Or a hiker for that matter.  In the middle of the trail was a bridge across a deep chasm, which was single file but mercifully made of steel rope with a steel walkway, though it did sway a lot. It looked quite new. I must admit the trail was well signposted with markers in different colours on the trees. There were a few wooden duckboards here and there too, but unfortunately no asphalt footpath through the undergrowth, which I would naturally have preferred. 

When we got to the end of the trail, we had to go down a long stairway of rickety wooden steps to the beach. Some of the steps were missing and replaced with virtually vertical boards. Quite treacherous. Needless to say the view from the beach out to the ocean was stunning and there were a couple of beautiful mini waterfalls in the rock below the stairway too. But I would have been glad of a refreshment hut with a few tables and chairs in front of it as well. My appreciation of the beauty of beach was somewhat dimmed as I was hot, sweaty and wheezy by then – not to mention weary and hungry too (as were we all). It is only when I looked at the photos I had taken afterwards that I realised how beautiful the little cove was.  

Fortified with some polo mints from Simon, and an asthma inhaler from Mark, I began the trek back with the others. I am unsure whether the journey back was quicker or slower: quicker because we’d done it once before or slower because I was more weary. I had to stop more often to catch my breath. Simon found me a large branch to help with the walking. As I walked back over the bridge more confidently the second time, I brandished the stick like Gandalf in ‘Lord of the Rings’ (or more accurately like Ian McKellen in the film) shouting ‘You shall not pass!’ which echoed through the trees. I understand a new TV version of ‘Lord of the Rings’ is being filmed. Though I am probably the right height for Bilbo or Frodo, I don’t think I would cope with filming all those endless journeys.They seemed relentless to me when I read the books, and would be even more so if I was heavily involved in recreating them in front of the cameras. We were in an ideal location for filming, I must admit. Fans of the books or the film would love to be wandering through our trail, imagining scenes as they trudged along. 

Trudge we did. It was a bit of an ordeal in some ways, because we were ill-equipped and I was out of my comfort zone, scampering over the rocks and roots. Or was I?  There were moments as I stood briefly to catch my breath, or sat down for a minute to rest, when I could feel the stillness, the mystery of the forest, calming me, refreshing me. It was a good place to be. I would look up to marvel at the sun glowing through the tall tree tops and turning the leaves and the grass from green to silver grey. I would notice this more and more as I trudged on, admiring the deep green lichen too, festooned on the tree branches, as if it were limpidly dripping off them. And the sheer variety of the growth around me and its vitality.

I was reminded then, or rather, for a moment, I could see then as Emily Carr, the Island’s famous local artist, saw the trees and the forests and the life force within them. There is one picture of hers called ‘Dancing Trees’, tall pines and spruces like the ones surrounding me then. They are not only dancing in the wind but they are dancing within themselves. In fact they may not be dancing in the wind at all. But the life force within them is. Perhaps now, I can more fully understand why I love her pictures so much. It wasn’t just that they are a cultural way, an artistic way of remembering my vacations on Vancouver Island, cultural tourist that I am. A connection was made between us, quite a few years ago, through her artwork and her writing.  And now like her, but only momentarily, on this trail which I had struggled with, I was connecting with the forests that she loved so much. And connecting with her again on an even deeper level.

At the end of the trail back in the car park, I found myself telling the others that I would happily do the trail again. But properly equipped of course! I would go back not to trek so much but to sit in the forest, with a notepad, as Emily did; not to sketch, but to write. I would go back to savour the stillness, to let the mystery take over me. To spend a day there even, to admire the natural grandeur of the surroundings, to fully appreciate the variety of the undergrowth, which was then only ground to be clumsily covered. A phrase comes to my mind: ‘not seeing the wood for the trees’. Well during that accidental trek, I was not seeing the trees for the wood – or rather the tree roots, rocks, mud and pools! We struggle and we strive in life (and yes that is necessary) but we don’t stop to enjoy the moment sometimes, to appreciate the natural world we live in and are part of. Sometimes we are too busy with heads down, clambering over the roots and rocks. We don’t connect with the natural world. Or with the spirit, the life force, within us, like Emily’s ‘Dancing Trees’.

In the end I felt a sense of achievement having completed the trail. About half way on the way in, after we had covered a kilometre or so, Justin could see I was struggling and asked me if we should just go back. But something made me determined to go on. In fact, at the end of the trail, he told me he had noticed how determined I was. It took me aback for a moment.  Determined? Yes I am a determined. I would never have achieved what I did in my career, if I wasn’t. But that determination seems to have been on the wane since I retired and through lockdown. I feel as if I have lost it sometimes – or have I? Perhaps it is just lying dormant.

Behind my struggle with the trail, aside from being out of my comfort zone was a feeling of not being in charge, of not being in control, of being taken out of myself. Most of all I didn’t know when the end of the trail was in sight, how far we had to go to get there. That thought nagged at me. I suppose it comes from needing to be in charge, in control, and being conditioned to planning and working to deadlines.

But then, as I have come to understand in my retirement, none of us knows when the end of the trail is in sight. Or how much further we have left to go.

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Meditation 89

It is still light this evening as I sit beside my candle and gaze through my lounge window. However, my thoughts are led to wider vistas than my modest front garden can provide. I am thinking beyond compact suburbia to more expansive scenes. I am remembering wide-ranging mountains capped with snow. Not the mountain ranges that my dear friend and inspiration Marcus Aurelius might have seen on his military campaigns: the Carpathians, the Tatras, or even the Buda Hills, which, though smaller, can be capped with snow too. 

I am remembering the Canadian Rockies which provide the epic backdrop to the city of Vancouver, which I have recently visited once more. My thoughts have also turned to the Olympic mountains in Washington State in the U.S.A. This equally impressive mountain range lies on the misty horizon across the water from where I also stayed: a little town called Sidney on Vancouver Island, where my relatives live. My friend and I could see the mountains from the little balcony of our hotel suite, mysterious in the early haze of morning. We saw their grandeur more clearly when we were bobbing about in a boat on a tour around Victoria harbour. 

Victoria is quite near to Sidney and despite being on Vancouver Island and therefore not on the mainland, is the capital of British Columbia. It has a nineteenth century colonial atmosphere, with its Royal Empress Hotel, named after Queen Victoria, whose statue stands imperiously outside the Parliament building by the harbour. The Parliament building is lit up at night – as  are our own Houses of Parliament of course. However, as well as being floodlit, the outline of the building is traced by lines of lights too, making it look like a fairy castle or a Disneyland attraction, which contrasts strangely with its legislative dignity. I digress and I am being unkind as I like the city very much. 

Indeed, on this recent trip, I realised how much the Island has become a part of me. Perhaps I have become aware of this because I last visited in July 2019, before the pandemic. Prior to that, I made visits nearly every year for 15 years or so. It was good to be back and my relatives are fine thanks. It was also good to show a friend around a little. I enjoy showing people around places I have visited before. Over the years I have learnt a great deal about the history of Victoria. This was because I became interested in the work of Emily Carr (1871-1945), the artist and writer who was born in Victoria and spent most of her life on Vancouver Island. Maybe showing him around also made me realise how attached I am to the place. 

Because I spent so much time in Sidney, staying with my aunt in her apartment, I gradually became so attached to the sleepy retirement enclave of Sidney that I began to write stories about it several years ago. Or rather about the people who may have retired there. What might be the secrets from their past which they are now forced to face up to?  Or the feelings of guilt or grief, remorse or regret that return to haunt them, eddying around their thoughts, like waves over a rock pool? What might be happening behind the placid exterior of the town?  I called the collection ‘Driftwood’ after all the strange shaped logs that lie around on the beaches there. I’ve almost finished a (hopefully) final revision of the stories now and my next stage is to see how I can get them published as a collection, or even separately in magazines. 

One of my reasons for starting this blog was to promote my writing. It is strange that only now, four years after I started publishing these meditations, I am finally mentioning ‘Driftwood’  in them. But then, there has been so much else to reflect upon over the last four turbulent years, hasn’t there? I will keep you posted about the future progress of ‘Driftwood’ in these pages no doubt in the future. 

Of course, Sidney has changed since I was last there, nearly four years ago. Shops and restaurants have closed down and new ones have opened, as has been happening here in the UK. The pandemic seems to have drawn a line in the sand, hasn’t it? It has caused some businesses to go under and new ones have replaced them. In the same way, I sometimes wonder how some small businesses or independent cafes or eateries have survived through it all. I thought as much when walking around Sidney. But then, nothing is immutable, not even us. Yet, like the little town of Sidney, we change and yet we don’t change. We move on, often imperceptibly, and yet somehow we are the same person. Something retirement has taught me: just because our circumstances have changed, we don’t  have to give up who we are. Retirement should enhance who we are.

Aside from new businesses emerging, new apartment blocks are going up everywhere. The town doesn’t seem so small now or so cozy. It had a ‘village’ atmosphere about it when I first went there in 2004. Now it is definitely a small town and growing. Things have moved on. And yet if you walk down the main thoroughfare, Beacon Street, at night, it is as quiet and sleepy as ever.  

The streets are definitely quiet and sleepy in April, before the summer season starts, as everything closes around 9. Except, we discovered, the Dickens Pub at the top of the town. I think Charles Dickens would be pleased that despite the low season, conviviality was continuing in a pub named after him. Although somehow I can’t imagine him watching ice hockey games on the TV like some of the customers in the bar. He would be more interested in engaging them in conversation and observing the other customers casually but intently (as a possible inspiration for a character or story). However, as he was fond of games and pastimes, he may not have been averse to shooting a game or two of pool with some of the regulars. 

Always observing everything and everyone around him, Dickens loved to walk the streets of London late into the night. It was a compulsion in him and of course his nocturnal rambles provided him with so much material for his novels and stories. I think he would find the streets of Sidney rather tame in comparison. Like me, he would have to imagine what was behind the silent facades of the properties. Dear me, I should not be linking myself to Dickens in a sentence! It is most immodest of me!   

Sadly one of my favourite haunts, the Rum Runner bar and restaurant, right by the ocean, was closing the week I was there. It was a happy coincidence that I was visiting Sidney before it finally closed its doors. The Rum Runner (under a different name – The Cannery) has a story all to itself in my collection, and the story is coincidentally about its possible closure.  Dickens would definitely have been at home there. He often frequented waterfront inns and pubs, though the ones he visited  would have been far less salubrious than the Rum Runner, as is evident from the low dives along the Thames waterfront that appear in his novels. 

I think he would have got on famously with Bill, the landlord, and would have commiserated with him heartily on the Rum Runner’s closure. No doubt he would have dashed behind the bar, juggled with a couple of lemons and immediately set to making his own rum and brandy punch to cheer Bill’s spirits. The recipe is mentioned in one of his letters and, indeed in ‘David Copperfield’. When David finds Mr Micawber at home in a melancholy mood, he asks him to make a bowl of punch and immediately Mr Micawber’s spirits soar as he begins to make the punch, ‘his face shining out at us out of the delicate fumes’. Perhaps Dickens would get Bill to join in to cheer him up.  When I return to Sidney, I shall miss the Rum Runner.      

My visit to Sidney has reminded me of how much change we have all been through in the last few years. I am no longer able to stay in my aunt’s apartment now, as she is in a care home. She is still very much alive and alert, aged 88! Her accommodation may have changed, but she hasn’t. There may have been many changes in and around Sidney, indeed, in our own lives,  but there is so much that hasn’t changed.  The Pacific ocean for one and the driftwood on the shore, blanched by the endless ebb and flow of the waves. And the mountains on the horizon shrouded in the morning mist. 

And the stillness.

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Meditation 46

As I write this meditation, I am not gazing at the candle in front of me. I am writing on my kitchen table and looking at the array of magnets on the fridge in the corner. The surfaces of the fridge door, the freezer door under it and the side of the fridge opposite me are almost completely filled with magnets.

I have been collecting them on my travels for over fifteen years I think. Some are from museums or art galleries or historical buildings as I can’t resist gift shops in those places. I have a penchant for cultural souvenirs, you see.

Many of them are small oblong pieces of tin with a photo or art reproduction printed on them and some are encased in plastic squares or oblongs. There are those of places I have visited around the world. As might be expected not a few are from Hungary and my numerous visits there and from Vancouver Island where I usually visit every year too.

 Others are from the exhibitions I mentioned. Indeed my fridge boasts its own miniature art gallery: there are a Van Gogh,  a Vermeer, 2 Caravaggio’s, 3 Michelangelo’s (including the statue of David), a Toulouse Lautrec, part of the stained glass at the Church of Sainte Chapelle in Paris, a portrait of Anne Boleyn, 2 pictures by Emily Carr (from Vancouver Island -one of my favourite artists), an Atkinson Grimshaw (the 19th Century Yorkshire artist) and a view of Lake Keitele in Finland by Aksell Gellen-Kallela (one of my favourite pictures in London’s National Gallery) among others. You might argue that in the early days of lockdown, when movement was severely restricted, there was no need for me to visit a gallery anyway. All I had to do was look at my fridge!

There is also a photo of the head of a Greek Philosopher, (from Budapest’s National Gallery), a magnet which Marcus Aurelius would no doubt appreciate. Needless to say, he also graces the side of my fridge: in a photo of the impressive statue of him in Rome’s Capitoline Museum, arm uplifted and hailing his empire on his horse. I do not know how he would react to being reduced to an image of 2 inches by 3 inches on a fridge wall. It is so unlike the large statues of him around the empire or the huge column with its spiralling frescoes of his triumphs in the Piazza Colonna in Rome. Perhaps he would accept the reduction of his grandeur to a small picture with stoic humility.

Some of the magnets are ceramic or metal figures. There’s a mini Shakespeare memorial from Stratford’s Holy Trinity Church where he is buried; a gargoyle from Notre Dame in Paris, a bejewelled masked gentleman from the Venice carnival and a miniature plaque of the Renaissance King Mattyas of Hungary. Reflecting my love of movies, there’s an Oscar statuette, a mini movie clapperboard and an tiny enamel ruby slipper from ‘The Wizard of Oz’ as well as long oblong posters of ‘Metropolis’ and ‘King Kong.’ There are several theatre posters too including one from Broadway.

One of my favourites is from Vancouver: a small wooden scene in dark and light brown and ivory wood showing a bear and a cub in the snow. The largest magnet is a mini upright piano with a lid which opens to reveal a tiny keyboard. I got this in Budapest when the Liszt 200th anniversary celebrations were on.     

My literary interests are reflected in magnets of several quotes from Shakespeare and from Oscar Wilde and Dickens (as well as an illustration from ‘A Christmas Carol’) and my love of John Steinbeck’s ‘Cannery Row’ by a 1930’s advert for canned anchovies from Monterey in California. There’s also a mini library of books from the Bodleian Library at Oxford.

However, I have frequently found that a museum or gallery gift shop doesn’t stock a card or magnet of the picture I would most like a copy of. Some of the ones on my fridge are therefore second best!

I have almost forgotten to mention that several friends have brought me magnets from their own travels. Isn’t it lovely to be remembered by friends when they are on holiday?

As you may have already gathered, this plethora of magnets not only  reflects my travels but also my interests. Like photographs, there are memories encased in them. I can remember where and when I bought most of them. With some of them, I have distinct memories of the complete day or afternoon when I purchased them: who I was with; where else I visited that day and other pictures or artefacts I looked at in the same place.

There are two magnets with 19th century American portraits on them, from a small exhibition in the tiny art gallery in the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas. I had dived in there as I wanted to escape the relentless crowds and overpowering noise of the main strip. It was blissfully quiet in the gallery I remember. There was an impressive exhibition of landscape photography there too (but no magnets!).  I have rarely spent such a long time in such a small gallery – I was there for over an hour, partly just to get some peace and quiet. I told the assistant as I was leaving that it was the best $15 I had spent. She beamed at my compliment till I told her it was the only place where I could find peace and quiet in Las Vegas!  Then she laughed and agreed with me and I sweetened my potentially acid comment with some genuine appreciation of the exhibits, especially the photographs. Although, I desisted from purchasing the glossy book of the photos at $150 a copy! I bought the magnets of the 19th Century portraits instead. I remember treating myself to a blueberry ice cream and coffee in the gelateria next door afterwards before braving the crowds again.

I am afraid Las Vegas and I didn’t get on. It is endlessly brash and loud; yes the word is ‘endless.’ It is like a loud uncontrollable class except in school the class will disappear when the bell goes. In Las Vegas, the class goes on 24/7!  However, if asked, I would be delighted to headline there with my cabaret!

I found the fridge magnets were a comfort early in lockdown when I couldn’t go far, let alone travel to another country and when all the galleries and museums in London were closed. They reminded me that I have been very fortunate to travel abroad and so regularly and through my travels to make international friendships. I have also been fortunate to have seen so many wonderful works of art and historical buildings first hand and to share them with my friends who accompanied me and sometimes with yourself, dear reader, in this blog.

My life so far has been so rich, most of all in friendships. If I never travel again abroad or never enter another gallery, I haven’t done so badly out of life! I learnt in those early months of lockdown that it is important to be thankful for what we have and for what we have had. It is a way of being positive in these difficult times, which sadly continue.

It appears that the lockdown is tightening again, especially if people aren’t sensible and do not adhere to the new restrictions. Once again our horizons are potentially becoming narrower and in some areas of the U.K., this is already the case. We are being asked to accept and endure the situation again. Marcus, as a Stoic philosopher, would encourage us to do this.  But ‘endure’ is a harsh word  it is a difficult thing to do, as we have all learnt in the last six months or so. At least we have had some practice if another major lockdown comes.

Despite the ominous signs, nevertheless, I am hoping that next month I will be able to finally take my luxury trip to Puglia, in Southern Italy, which is my retirement present to myself. So by the end of October, hopefully another magnet (or two) will grace my fridge doors.

In these last months, I have learnt that ‘hope’ is a difficult thing too, even though the word is only one syllable and sounds lighter than ‘endure.’ It is difficult because it involves the future, which we have no control over. The more our plans for the future are scuppered, the less we feel like hoping. But hope we must, for it is a positive virtue and the best way to endure is to be positive.

Ave atque Vale – Hail and Farewell – until the next blog!

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Neilus Aurelius

I am home again from my Canadian sojourn in British Columbia. Once again I am writing this meditation beside my familiar candle with its steady flame. It has taken a while to recover from my trip. My return flight was the customary overnight one and so I have been suffering from jet lag. This, combined with the extreme heat we have been experiencing here in the UK, has been quite a heady cocktail for me! Perhaps, when we suffer jet lag, our bodies are telling us that it is not right that we should travel such long distances in so short a time by air, (aside from the carbon emissions issue). Perhaps our bodies are telling us that we have travelled too far too quickly.

Nevertheless, it is wonderful to think that within half a day or so I travelled over 4,700 miles. And then made the same journey back again two weeks later. An impossible feat for Marcus – even though he was an emperor! Of course I did not have a real sense of those thousands of miles as I jetted through the clouds. Only a journey by sea would have given me a real impression of the distance travelled. It would take over a week, I imagine. This is the illusion that air travel creates: we do not realise how far we have travelled. Only a different time zone or a different language or culture reminds us of that – once we have landed at our destination of course.

Our lives sometimes create the same illusion as air travel. We do not realise how far we have travelled, how far we have moved forward. That is because we are thinking of the next destination: be it a job, a project or a relationship or another stage of our life. It is only when we have the chance to look back, to reflect, that we can see how far we have come as a person, and appreciate how much we have changed – hopefully for the better!

I do not think this perspective is only for older people looking back on their lives. It is a perspective we should all have, whatever our age. To do this we need to forget our immediate, pressing destination for a moment and take time to reflect, to appreciate how far we have travelled thus far. So often, when I was teaching, I have comforted a student with the observation, ‘You have come a long way since you started this course.’ It is a comfort. And it can be a challenge too to move on further. Reflection is rather like a plane landing to refuel before moving on.

So over the last few days I have been in the throes of heat and jet lag. I have also been bereft. I am missing the big skies and the ocean; the tall pines and firs and cedars; the beaches with their rocks and scattered driftwood blanched white by the waves and that special moon I mentioned in an earlier blog. And I have met with so many people, who have been kind and generous towards me. So I am missing them too. There is an emptiness when you come back to your house alone after seeing so many people.

When I have laid awake at night, unable to get back into my normal sleep pattern, moments from my holiday have flooded in: people I have met, places I have explored or stayed in, details of conversations, views and vistas I have seen and meals I have enjoyed. A myriad of impressions, like a frantic slide show on a laptop or like one of those kaleidoscope toys I had as a child. I would shake the tube and look through the glass at one end and the colourful pattern at the other end would have changed. The moments of my holiday seemed to change shape too, melding into eachother.

One place keeps coming back to me. Maybe it is because it is a place where I could see myself. It is in a little town called Brackendale and it’s quite near to Squamish, an hour or so out of Vancouver, up the ‘sea to sky’ highway. My godson Jonathan drove me there as he has a friend who lives there. The journey itself is very spectacular. You can see the ocean below one side of the highway and rocks and mountains towering over the highway on the other.

It’s a small community and there’s a rail track at the back of it. We heard the train go through while we were in Jonathan’s friend’s home – that old fashioned train bell ringing that you usually only hear in Western movies. It’s a really small town and calls itself ‘the World Centre for Eagles’ as it is near Eagle Run, which we visited, where thousands of bald eagles spend the winter. Understandably, as it was summer, we didn’t see any eagles (though there are other species in the area) but we did see hawks circling around in the sky.

And we also visited the Brackendale Art Gallery. It is a small wooden building set in a lush little garden of greenery, where statues by local artists are scattered about. There are First Nations designs on the outside walls too. As I went inside from the brilliant sunshine, the gallery looked quite dark but welcoming nonetheless. There were some artefacts by local artists on display and pictures by local photographers too. As I stood at the top of the steps at the entrance and looked down into the gallery, the place was a hive of activity. A group of volunteers were arranging tables and chairs for what looked like some kind of meal that evening or maybe a party or cabaret. Because of the wooden architecture of the place, inside seemed snug and cosy and the volunteers were warm and welcoming. Then I noticed the stage: a modest black platform at one end with a black back cloth, a few theatre lights and some old church pews for seating. At the opposite end was a tiny bar, more like hatch, for interval drinks I guess.

I was quite excited by that stage. I wandered down the stairs to take a closer look. Standing in the centre of the room, I could see myself in that gallery, helping to run the place, performing and directing. What a way that would be to spend my retirement! Looking around at the little gallery and watching those volunteers shifting furniture there was a real sense of community. In fact, it felt like home.

I went upstairs where there was a loft area with some local Squamish artwork and some striking photographs of the forests and of course eagles and hawks. There was even an office behind a screen. And there at one end, underneath a window, were some copies of pictures by one of my favourite artists, Emily Carr (1871-1945).

On my visits to Vancouver Island I have got to know Emily very well, through her pictures and her books. When she stopped painting, she had a whole new career in her 60’s and 70’s writing books, mostly quirky memoirs of her youth in early Victoria and the boarding house she ran for a while. I have mentioned her once before in my blog.

I have seen the permanent exhibition of some of her drawings and paintings in Victoria Art Gallery several times. She was a true original who embraced tribal art forms and frequently visited far flung Haida villages by boat and canoe to do so, an amazing feat for a single lady to do at that time in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Her paintings of totems have become iconic. Most of all she is a great painter of forests (especially in the last phase of her work) and she was an early environmentalist. She finds the teeming life force within tree trunks and branches. The trees are never still, they are always in motion, sometimes even dancing in the wind.

I don’t know why I like her pictures so much. I normally prefer portraits or scenes with people in them. That’s why I love Rembrandt. His portraits are such wonderful character studies. Any actor or director should go and look at them: the hands and the eyes say so much about the person sitting for the painting. That’s what acting is about: hands and eyes.

But Emily’s trees? I guess I like them because they are so full of life, her forests are teeming with life. Emily and the trees are rejoicing in being alive, rejoicing in being. She made several sketches and paintings of areas in the forest where the trees have been cut down. The logging industry in BC was taking off in the early 20th century, when she was painting. Those pictures have a real sense of desolation about them, of stark tragedy.

So apparently Emily came across the water from Victoria on Vancouver Island to Brackendale on the mainland to look after her two nieces who were ill. This was in 1913 so that would have been quite a journey then. She made several visits to the area and made sketches of the forests nearby which led to some of the tree paintings I have just mentioned.

Somehow Emily will not let me go. I didn’t visit her pictures in the Victoria gallery on this trip but here she was in Brackendale, reminding me of herself.
What was it about that little gallery and art centre that made me want to be part of it? It is amazing to think that a place thousands of miles away could have gripped me in this way.

Was it Emily? Or that little stage? Or the friendly community of volunteers? Or the cosy atmosphere? It was more than somewhere where I felt I could do. It was somewhere where I felt I could just be. Where I could live another life -not that different from the one I am living now – but different enough.

Now that I am home, I have learnt that British Columbia has become a part of myself. I have also learnt from Emily and her trees to rejoice at just being. Here where I am.

Ave atque vale until the next blog.

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Neilus Aurelius