Opposite Contraries: The Unknown Journals of Emily Carr and Other Writings

Patricia Morley is professor emerita of English and Canadian Studies at
Concordia University. She is the author of several books, including The
Mountain Is Moving: Japanese Women’s Lives, Kurlek and Margaret
Laurence: The Long Journey Home.

There are many books about West Coast writer and painter Emily Carr, but
award-winning author Susan Crean has found fresh material in Carr’s
previously unpublished journals, notebooks, and correspondence.
Crean’s narrative is divided into three introductory parts:
“Carr’s Journals,” “The Public Carr and Klee Wyck,” and
“Carr’s Correspondence.” There is a short bibliography,
principally of Carr’s books, and a four-page chronology of her life.

Carr was born in Victoria in 1871, the fifth daughter in a family that
had moved there in 1863. A brother was born four years later. Emily’s
mother died when she was 14 and her father passed away when she was 16,
leaving Emily’s eldest sister, Edith, in charge of four children. At
18, Emily enrolled in the California School of Design in San Francisco,
Before completing her studies, she returned to Victoria in 1893 to give
art classes to children. She continued to paint and show her work. In
1899, Carr headed to England for further study but, plagued by ill
health, returned to Victoria in 1904. Soon she was teaching art and
travelling to Native villages in British Columbia, while beginning to
document what she believed to be the disappearing Native heritage.

Studio shows and auctions of her work financed a long trip to Europe
(1910–11), but Carr’s life was never easy financially, nor was her
health strong. During her last years, when doctors warned her to
restrict activity, Carr turned to writing. She published Klee Wyck
(1941), The Book of Small (1942), and The House of All Sorts (1944).
Klee Wyck won the Governor General’s Award for Non-Fiction in 1941.
Writing led to Carr’s friendship with Ira Dilworth, an important
relationship begun in 1939. Long before her death in 1945, Carr had made
her mark both as a writer and an admired painter.

Her prose style is delightfully informal. Crean reproduces it as
written, noting that Carr’s prose often has a stream-of-consciousness
feeling and occasionally takes off like a trill on a tenor saxophone.
Sentences may be short and snappy, or long and convoluted. Crean
concludes that Carr must be appreciated as “an accomplished prose
stylist very much in control of language.” Readers are likely to agree
that Carr’s patchwork of story, reflection, and confession is
refreshing and charming.

In Part 3, “Introduction to Carr’s Correspondence, “ Crean
sketches Carr’s strong relationship with her Native friend, Sophie
Frank, the only indigenous artist with whom Carr had a lasting
friendship. Crean calls Sophie a significant figure in Carr’s life,
probably a mentor. The friendship with Ira Dilworth was very different
but equally important. He helped to brighten her last years by phoning
and sending flowers. Drawing on a different persona, Emily addressed
Dilworth as “Dear Guardian” and “Eye.” and described their
relationship as one founded “in lovely things.” They were comrades.

Carr’s unknown journals broaden the composite portrait of this richly
gifted writer and painter, while Crean’s patient research provides a
welcome addition to the critical cannon on a rare spirit.