The Arts and Crafts, a society of long standing in Victoria has rendered valuable service to Victoria by providing a yearly exhibition and also holding sketch classes. But there would seem to be a furthering need. One that touches all classes, all nationalities, all colours.

The proposed art gallery would have a different objective and would in no way interfere or overlay the undertakings of the other society. It would be a place for those who do know something about art., but would also be a place for those who do not and maybe want to. A place for the spirit of art to grow in.

Situated on the very edge of Beacon Hill Park. Possibly linked to the parkin the name and called the Beacon Hill Galleries. (A people’s gallery in a people’s park.) A warm quiet nook to drop into those on those dull winter days when no band plays. A place one could sit and rest and look at pictures in, which would be changed every few weeks. Pictures of all types: conservative, progressive, oriental, children’s. Let the gallery be open on Saturday mornings specially for the children. On Sundays let it be free for all. On weekends, a small fee might be charged to help with running expenses.

In summer the visitors who so frequently ask, “Is there  no picture gallery in Victoria?” could take it in, for the sightseeing busses pass the very door. These visitors would also help on the expense of upkeep.

It would be for the benefit to the artists of Victoria by getting their work well known. There are also young Orientals in our midst with their fine inborn sensitiveness to art, and no encouragement whatsoever to go ahead. Boys who have asked for membership to the existing club in Victoria and has been refused.

You would be surprised, as I have been, at the art popping out of odd corners. The other day a negro came to my house, delivering coal. I came to the door with my hands full of paintbrushes. As I signed his book, he said, “Gee! I envy you.” “Why? I asked. “Because I own a monkey?” For I had heard him joking with the monkey below. “No,” he replied. “Because you can paint. Gee I’d love to go out to nature and paint.”

Another day I came to my studio to find two men, hands shading their eyes and noses flattened against the big north window. I flew to the door, angry as a wildcat. “What do you want?” I asked. “Don’t you know it’s rude to peer into other people’s windows?” The man, a baker, drew back. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I did not realize it was rude. I do admire those pictures and this other man likes pictures too.” So I said I would show him some.

As for the vegetable Chinaman, he never misses an opportunity to look in and show real interest. When he went home to China, I gave him a picture to take to his wife. He was much pleased; he had three to choose from and unerringly choose the best. So there you are. Could any of those there go to the annual Victoria exhibition and feel comfortable?

One of the loveliest things about Louvre in Paris is Sunday. the “people’s day.” Then you see soldiers and peasants, workmen and butchers’ boys also, with the empty wooden trays and their blue blouses, doubtless pinching a few moments of their employers’ tie to reverently peep in at the nation’s art treasures.

We may not have Old Master to study and enjoy, but who knows what future masters may be hidden away among the rising generations in our very midst, who might be helped and encouraged by this little gallery.  We already have a splendid selection of art books in both our libraries, and short talks in the gallery would be very helpful too and start our young folk  a long way on the road to thinking on these things.

Now, of course, there’s the pestiferous money business that butts into everything. This is no job for the city fathers and the overburdened taxpayer. At present the poor things have more than they can bear. But it is the time of all the others that the people need a little happiness of art in their lives, to lead them for brief spells from the bread and butter problems. 

It would not take very much money. To start simply and happily we don’t need a stone edifice and liveried attendants, rooms full of priceless pictures and the wrangle and worry of trying to be able to boast that we have the most magnificent gallery in all Canada. We want to grow and to learn to see the real beauty in those things close about us, to learn to express them in paint or to see them so expressed and to understand. 

It is to many of these clubs and societies of Victoria. that I would make my appeal for help. and particularly the women’s clubs as well as to interested individuals. Not asking any of you to give a lot, but many of you to each give a little, and all of you, if the idea appeals to you, to give it moral support and mothering.

We have lots of material here to draw from, and I’ve a notion perhaps artists from other places might lean is a parcel of sketches sometimes. We’ll round up the artists we know and dig out unknown ones; we won’t worry about gold and silver frames in our shows but try to get down to understanding and expressing the real things right here all about us. 

I have thought about this idea over in a careful practical way for a considerable time, and it seems to me workable. Now I turn it over to you for your weighing, suggesting that it might be given a three-month trial. It would take Victoria quite that time to realize it’s existence, slow catcher-on we are. 

“Basket?” She undid a very large bundle tied at the four corners and exhibited some beautiful baskets of her own make. 

“Haho, chuckiman” — (No money).

“Warm skirt just the same.”

“Haho warm skirt, next month maybe. Cath um Victoria.” The basket I wanted was about 18″ wide and 24″ long, stoutly woven from cedar toot and inlaid with designs in cherry root an inlaid with designs in cherry bark and split cedar. It was square cornered with handles and a firm, beautifully fitted cover. We had a cup of teach and some bread and jam. Then the woman put the smaller baskets into her cloth, lashed the child tighter to her and got up to go. 

“Take the basket, I will come to North Vancouver and get back from Victoria with my clothes.”

“Just same bymby.”

“How can I find you in the village?”

“Me Sophie Frank. Everybody know me.”

This understanding trust, when I knew how often my race fooled her. 

That was the start of a deep friendship. Something that touched the very core of life. 

Sophie was the mother of 21 children, only six of whom I knew — she had already given birth and buried the others when I knew her — the three she brought with her on her first visit to my studio and three later infants. One was named for me. I saw Sophie part with these six, one by one. When life hit me hard, I went across the bay and sat a spell with Sophie. Her bare little house was clean. It faced the sea, and you could hear the lap or dash of waves on the beach at Sophie’s door. 

Inside the door there was always calm, even after there were no more babies to roll around the floor as Sophie squatted there basket-making. I know that Sophie felt the same thing for me as I for her. She was a Catholic. I was glad the priest told her that I was just like a Catholic and that she could love me. She was a little sad when she found that I did not belong to her church. So afterward we went to see the graves and the little Indian church, and I dipped my fingers into the little shell that held holy water and I crossed myself. I cannot feel if not according to my own faith that it was mockery. It wa gratifying to little Sophie. 

When I left Vancouver, Sophie cried bitterly. She said, “I love you like my own sister. I love you more because she forgets me sometimes. You will not forget.” I felt it a tremendous thing to be accepted by an Indian like this. I kissed her goodbye. “If you want, send word and I will come.” She did, and I went.

After Sophie had buried twenty children, she broke and took to drink. Frank, her husband, had the habit for years. Coming from Victoria to see her, I found her drunk. The shock of having me see her sobered her. Her shame and crying were bitter. 

Even the disgust of the vile-smelling liquor and Sophie dischevelled and wrecked couldn’t shake my love for Sophie and I love her still. 

Although she has passed on now, it was just all comprehensive love. Perhaps to me it needs neither defence or explanation. The people in the village called me “Sophie’s Emily.” She herself called me “My Emily,” and so I was. She is dead now, and the memory of her folded together with the little of handful of things particularly mine. 

Sophie had a friend called Susan who lived in the next house to hers. She too was a mother Indian. She wove a new papoose cradle every year and almost as regularly ordered a little coffin from the undertaker. I suppose the trouble was tubercular. Between the carrying out of a coffin and the weaving of a new basket, Sophie and Susan took their baskets, all tied up in cloths with knotted corners over their arms, and any remnants of their families still living came to Vancouver on the ferry, selling baskets door to doo. They had a standing invitation to a cup of tea in the studio, any many a tea party we had. 

Nothing escaped their notice although their eyes never roved. They say quite immobile, talked little, ate greatly. Susan was not so find as Sophie, and according to Sophie’s standard occasionally erred. Then she received a sharp slap on the hand  from Sophie. Sophie always wanted to be “nice.: Often, if I asked why, she replied, “Nice ladies don’t.”

“Sophie, you passed my house yesterday. Why did you not come in for a cup of tea?”

“I came last week.:

“That did not matter.”

” Nice ladies don’t come too often.”

Sophie and I respected each other’s “being nice.” Our friendship was based on honesty and trust. We never pretending to each other. Many veils, of necessity, fell between us, veils of race and creed and civilization and language. Each stood on her side, sensing the woman on the other. We were the same age. Sophie was very jealous. If I went to see other women in the village, she got angry. “But Sophie,” I said. “I like to know all the Indian women.” Sher refused to introduce me to Chief Joe Capilano’s wife 

“You are my first,” she said fiercely 

“You were my first Indian friend, Sophie. You will also be the biggest.”

The first day that Susan came with Sophie, she said, “This woman got Injun flowers?”

Uh-huh. She pointed to the wild ferns and the little cedar trees in my window boxes.

I attended the Westminster School of Art in London. But after the free, wild life of the West, London wilted the very life out of me, so I went down to Cornwall and studied in the open, also to the Bushey studios. Returning again to Westminster School, I broke down completely, wrestled three years with desperate illness, then returned to Canada and started all over again, working and saving, this time with Paris in view/

Teaching in Vancouver and very successful with children’s classes, I was asked to teach at the art club and made a complete failure, their complaint that being “that I could not realize that they were just amusing themselves and tried to make the ladies work in earnest.” So they dismissed me. I was glad. 

In 1911, I went to Paris with a letter of introduction to a modern painter of Scotch birth, Harry Gibb. This man opened my eyes to the joyousness of the new school. At that time he was being bitterly criticized. 

By his advice, I became a student at the Academie Colarossi, Paris. I could not stand the airlessness of the life rooms for long, the doctors stated, as they had done in London, that “there was something about these big cities that these Canadians from their big spaces couldn’t stand, it was like putting a pine tree in a pot.” So I left Paris and joined outdoor classes under Mr. Gibb, who was then in Brittany. 

When my money was spent, I returned to Canada, but they hated and ridiculed my work. My first exhibition here they dishonoured my work, putting it behind things, under shelves or on the ceiling. My friends begged me to go back to my old way of painting, but I had tasted the joys of a bigger way. It would have been impossible had I wanted to, which I did not 

Whenever I could afford it I went up North, among the Indians and the woods, and forgot all about everything in the joy of those lonely, wonderful places. I decided to try and make as good a representative collection of those old villages and wonderful totem poles as I could, for the love of the people and the love of the art; whether anybody liked them or not I did not care a bean. I painted them to please myself in my own way, but I also stuck rigidly to the faces because I knew I was painting history. 

The way came (1914). I had a living to make, Of course, nobody wanted to buy my pictures. I never tried to paint to please them anyway, so I did horrible things like taking boarders to make a living, and the very little time I had for painting I tried to paint in the despised, adorable joyous modern way. 

The last two years I have take up… pottery, adapting and utilizing my Indian designs for it is much pleasanter livelihood than catering to people’s appetites.