Marilyn Jones | Emily Carr Chronicler

Finding Emily Carr’s “Happiness” at Legacy Art Gallery in Victoria

Published: 4 November, 2025
Written by Marilyn Jones

In the first session of my ten-part series on Emily Carr at Cook Street Activity Centre on October 8, I asked participants to name their favourite Carr painting. Each had a different choice—proof of Carr’s broad and lasting appeal. I shared mine: Happiness (1938–1939). A week later, I received an email from a participant: “Where can I see Emily Carr’s Happiness painting?” That simple question sent me on a fascinating journey—discovering not only Happiness…

read more

Emily Carr’s Award Winning Short Story “The Hully Up Paper”

Published: 3 November, 2025
Written by Marilyn Jones

Emily Carr wrote sporadically throughout her life, but in 1928 she drove herself relentlessly in both painting and writing. But a heart attack in 1937 and her doctor’s orders forced her to curtail her painting. She began to focus more on her writing. By then, she had take two short stories writing courses. The first by correspondence from the Palmer Institute in Los Angeles in 1926 and the second at Victoria Summer School in…

read more

Emily Carr’s Mysterious Oak Bay Cottage

Published: 1 November, 2025
Written by Marilyn Jones

In 1913, Emily Carr paid $900 for a plot of land on Victoria Avenue in Oak Bay, according to a story told by Edythe Hembroff in her biography Emily Carr: Untold Story (1978), On the plot of land, she had built a 12 by 20 foot cabin the following year, “nail by nail” at a cost of $150 with the help of “one old carpenter.”. According to Eve Lazarus, author of Sensational Victoria, assessment records…

read more