FROM 'GROWING PAINS: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY'

By Emily Carr

　
Forward

Dear Emily:

You have asked me to write a forward to your autobiography -- this summing up of a number of things that have mattered in your life. It is a hard task but one for which I thank you.

What can I say? Certainly nothing that can possibly matter much. I know how courageous your life has been, how dauntless your purpose, how unshaken and unshakeable your faith that this is not all, that we go on. I know too how intensely you have felt the influence of nature -- its loveliness, its deep solemnity, its mystic, overwhelming power to strike awe and sometimes terror in our hearts. You have told us of your reactions to those forces in your painting and your writing. Canadians will remember as they open this book and will be grateful.

You will understand when I say that I should like a poem to stand as preface to your book, a poem which we have both admired so much, Thomas Hardy's Afterwards. I know and you know that Hardy did not think it a sad poem -- just a comment and a summing up. So, Emily, I shirk my task and set as foreword to your autobiography these lines:

When the present has latched its postern behind my tremulous stay

And the May month flaps its glad green leaves like wings,

Delicate-filmed as new-spun silk, will the neighbours say,

"He was a man who used to notice such things"?

If it be in the dusk when, like an eyelid's soundless blink,

The dew-fall hawk comes crossing the shades to alight

Upon the wind-warped upland thorn, a gazer may think,

"To him this must have been a familiar sight."

If I pass during some nocturnal blackness, mothy and warm

When the hedgehog travels furtively over the lawn,

One may say, "He strove that such innocent creatures should come to no harm,

But he could do little for them; and now he is gone."

If, when hearing that I have been stilled at last, they stand at the door,

Watching the full-starred heavens that winter sees,

Will this thought rise on those who will meet my face no more,

"He was one who had an eye for such mysteries"?

And will any say when my bell of quittance is heard in the gloom,

And a crossing breeze cuts a pause in its outrollings,

Till they rise again, as they were a new bell's boom,

"He hears it not now, but used to notice such things"?

　
There is a change somewhere in the east. In my western garden this evening grosbeaks are paying their annual visit, a brief pause in our elm trees during their migration; and high in the Canadian sky wild geese, great flocks of them, are shouting their mysterious cry. They are all going on as you and I must, Emily. Life will not stand still.

So, fare forward, deal soul.

Ira Dilworth

　

Emily's Last Chapter In The Book

　

Wild Geese

　

　

Spring was young, I over seventy. With Spring all about me I sat sketching in the clearing that was now given over to second growth -- baby pines, spruce, hemlock, cedar and creeping vines, fireweed, bracken.

The clearing was off of Happy Valley Road at Metchosen, not far from Victoria. Seventy years had maimed me, loggers had maimed the clearing. I could no longer scramble over great logs nor break my way through networks of brambles, creep under bushes and drown myself crown-high in lush, young growth. I had to be taken out, set down and called for, which was a nuisance, but I got immense delight in just being there, in the quiet wood, nobody for company but Spring.

In spite of the doctor I went into the woods to paint a few times more. The longing was too terrific to subdue and I felt better. I did not go in my old van (it was deteriorating with unuse so I had sold it). I rented a cabin and took a maid along to cook and carry for me.

The maid was too busy attending to her own work to bother about me; she carried my things out into the woods and came back for them and me later. I was very happy but the last expedition I over-did and came smash.

For a year painting lay dormant but I did some writing. One day a friend took my sister driving. On the way they planted me in a thick lonely place just off the high road while they took a long ride. It was here that I painted The Clearing and here the wild geese flew over.

Hark! Hark! High up in the blue, above the clearing, wild geese migrating. Honk, honk, ya honk! A triangle of noisy black dots.

Every Canadian thrills at the sound -- the downpour of cackling honks broken, irregular, scattering with the sharp monotony of hailstones while the geese sail smooth and high, untroubled by fear of men, for migrating geese fly far, far above man's highest shooting.

On the ground the wild goose is a shy, quiet fellow. In the sky he is noisy and bold.

I lifted my face to watch the honking triangle pass across the sky. The day was clear, not dazzle-bright. I could look into the face of the sky without blinking. There was just one cloud. The geese caught up with the cloud. The leader dove into it, his flock followed. For a few seconds the cloud nestled the geese to her breast, emptying the sky, snuffing the honking, but the company pierced through the cloud. The leader and those few birds that fly in close formation behind him appeared, then the two long wavering side lines of singly-spaced birds emerged, to continue their way sailing, sailing into the north, one glad rush of going, one flock unswervingly following one leader. At that height each bird appeared no bigger than a small black bead, evenly strung one goose behind the other, a live necklace flung across the throat of heaven.

The racket passed over the clearing, the sky was again still, my eyes came back to the greying stumps amongst which I sat. Young growth had already hidden some. Even the echoes had forgotten how they had shrieked sympathy when the axes bit into the great original forest giants, forgotten the awful crash, the groan, the tremble of the ground as each tree fell.

Today the clearing was not sun-dazzled, rather it was illumined with Spring, every leaf was as yet only half unfurled and held light and spilled some.

Today at seventy I marvelled more at the migration of the geese than I had at the age of seven when, standing in our cow-pasture holding Father's hand and looking up into the sky, I heard Father tell the story of bird-migration and only half believed. Today a new wondering came to me as I watched the flight. What of the old or maimed goose who could not rise and go with the flock? Of course there was the old, the maimed goose. What of him when the flock, young and vigorous, rose leaving him grounded? Did despair tear his heart? No, old goose would fill the bitter moment, pouring out proud, exultant honks that would weave among the clatter of the migrating flock. When the flock were away, animal-wise he would nibble here and there, quietly accepting.

Old age has me grounded too. Am I accepting? God give me the brave unquestioning trust of the wild goose! No, being humans, we need more trust, our hopes are stronger than creatures' hopes. Walt Witman's words come ringing, -- We but level this lift to pass and continue beyond.

　~~ Thank you Emily. You know your fellow citizens, oh (!) so well -- by heart, even in this century. And the "calling" that beats within our fondest making. This is one of the most beautiful things I have ever read. So much so, I already knew what you would say next, before I came to it; carrying on ... in tears, with trembling lips, ache of throat. Unable to say why. Blessed in the oneness of no end, unable to speak.

Rose xo ~~

Juno Awards

Amy Sky & Marc Jordon

Santana Featuring Chad Kroeger (Canadian) - Into The Night

Bryan Adams

Loverboy

Celine Dion

Divine Brown

leahy

Shania Twain

Chantal Kreviazuk

Gordon Lightfoot

Serena Ryder

Alanis Morissette

Beaches, Phantom of the Opera, Out of Africa, The Lord of the Rings movies, Across The Universe, Little Women, Pride & Prejudice, Momma Mia!,This Is My Father, Pineapple Express , Miracle at St. Anna, Ray, Casino Royal. , Julia, Julia, State of Play, The Hurt Locker.

She without arm, he without leg - ballet - Hand in Hand

Hand & Foot Painting

Canadian Classroom

Terry Fox -- Canadian Hero


Royal Canadian Mounted Police In Parade
with Governor-General Michaëlle Jean

Canada Day - July lst - Poster