Opposite Contraries (28 page)

1863

Richard and Emily Saunders Carr and family emigrate to Victoria, British Columbia.

1871

British Columbia joins Confederation. Emily Carr is born in Victoria on December 12. She has four older sisters: Edith (Dede), Clara, Elizabeth (Lizzie) and Alice.

1875

A brother, Richard (Dick) Henry, is born.

1886

Emily Saunders Carr dies of tuberculosis. Emily is fourteen at the time.

1888

Richard Carr dies. The eldest, Edith, is left in charge of the four children still living at home. Emily is sixteen.

1890/91

Enrols in the California School of Design in San Francisco.

1893

Returns to Victoria, her studies incomplete. Spends the next five years giving art classes to children while continuing to paint and to show her work.

1899

Accompanies her sister Lizzie on a visit to the Presbyterian mission at Ucluelet in April. Meets William (Mayo) Paddon on board the steamship that takes her there. In August she leaves for England. Her brother Richard dies.

1900

Paddon visits Carr in London and proposes marriage; she rejects his suit. After some months, she leaves the Westminster School of Art to study with Julius Olsen and Algernon Talmage at St. Ives in Cornwall, and then with watercolourist John Whiteley in Bushey, Hertfordshire.

1903

Enters the East Anglia Sanatorium where she is diagnosed with hysteria.

1904

After a fifteen-month stay, Carr is released and returns home to Victoria.

1906

Moves to Vancouver where she rents a studio on Granville Street and begins teaching art. Forms a friendship with Sophie Frank, a basket-maker who lives across Burrard Inlet at Squamish Mission.

1907

Travels with her sister Alice to Alaska, where she sees large-scale carvings by indigenous peoples for the first time and conceives the idea of documenting what she perceives as the Natives’ disappearing heritage.

1908

Becomes a charter member of the British Columbia Society of Fine Arts and exhibits regularly with them for the next few years. Travels to Kwakwaka’wakw villages at Alert Bay and Campbell River, sketches at nearby Native communities at Sechelt and North Vancouver.

1910

Holds a studio show and auctions her work to raise funds for her sojourn in France. Carr and her sister Alice leave in July for Europe.

1911

Studies with Harry Gibb just east of Paris at Crécy-enbrie and at St. Efflam in Brittany, then at Concarneau with New Zealander Frances Hodgkins.

1912

Resumes her career in Vancouver holding studio exhibitions of her French work.

1913

Holds solo exhibition in Vancouver of some two hundred works on Native themes and delivers “Lecture on Totems.” Returns to Victoria and builds a small apartment house called Hill House on Simcoe Street.

1914

The apartment project is a financial failure and Carr spends the next fifteen years trying a variety of ways to make ends meet: raising sheepdogs, selling fruit, making pottery and hooked rugs decorated with Native designs for the tourist trade.

1924

Slowly resumes artistic activities, showing in Seattle and making contact with several American artists including Mark Tobey. She enrols in a correspondence course in fiction writing.

1927

The exhibition
Canadian West Coast Art — Native and Modern,
organized by Marius Barbeau, opens at the National Gallery of Canada. She travels east to Ottawa for the opening, meets the Group of Seven in Toronto and becomes friends with Lawren Harris.

1928

Makes a second major expedition to Native communities up the coast, visiting and sketching at Alert Bay, along the Nass and Skeena Skeena Rivers, and at Queen Charlotte Islands (Haida Gwaii). American artist Mark Tobey gives a class in Carr’s studio.

1930

Visits Toronto, Ottawa and New York, where she meets Georgia O’Keeffe. In mid-August makes sketching trips to Native villages around Quatsino Sound on the west coast of Vancouver Island and Port Renfrew.

1933

In the autumn, travels east for the last time to the Chicago World’s Fair. Misses the art exhibit but sees work by William Blake at the Art Institute, goes on to Toronto to visit with the Harrises and Houssers. Purchases a trailer, dubbed the Elephant, which serves as a mobile cabin for four summers.

1936

Gives up Hill House and moves to Beckley Street.

1937

Suffers an angina attack and turns to writing when doctors restrict her painting activities.

1938

First annual solo exhibition at the Vancouver Art Gallery.

1939

Suffers a serious heart attack. Ruth Humphrey introduces Carr’s writing to Ira Dilworth, who agrees to edit her stories for publication. Sophie Frank dies.

1940

Carr moves in with her sister Alice at 218 St. Andrew’s Street, right behind the old family home.

1941

Klee Wyck
is published and wins the Governor General’s Award for Non-fiction.

1942

The Book of Small
is published. Goes on her last sketching trip.

1943

Major exhibition at the Art Gallery of Toronto.

1944

House of All Sorts
is published.

1945

Dies on March 2 in Victoria.