Becoming Myself: A Memoir

Pauline Carey is the author of Magic and What’s in a Name?

Maria Tippett, who won the Governor General’s Award in 1979 for her
biography of Emily Carr, knew as a child that she wanted to become a
writer. What she wanted to write about was not other people’s
histories but her own. She grew up in a foster home with the Tippett
family, had little (and awkward) contact with her biological mother, and
never knew her biological father. She did dream of him, however, and by
Grade 6 she felt the need to create her own story.

At 19, she was working as a waitress when she decided to accompany her
friend Carmen on a trip to Europe. Mother Tippett accused her of putting
on airs, but in the 1960s Maria landed in Germany, where she discovered
European art, Australian men, and a determination to go her own way.
Back in Canada, she met her future husband, Douglas Cole, with whom she
wrote a book on British Columbia’s landscape artists. In the early
1970s, she read Emily Carr’s journals and began to reconsider what she
later described as Carr’s “rejection-myth.” Bringing the Carr
biography to fruition demanded a combination of tireless detective work
and solitude that left Tippett with a growing sense of confidence and
independence.

What gives this modestly told memoir its special flavor is its insight
into the development of an art historian. Photographs would have been a
welcome addition.