Elizabeth's Seven-Eyed "Grandpa Beaver"



On Childrens' Day ~

"I wanted to draw a dog.  I sat beside Carlow's kennel and stared at him for a long time.  Then I took a charred stick from the grate, split open a large brown-paper sack and drew a dog on the sack.

"My married sister who had taken drawing lessons looked at my dog and said, 'Not bad.'  Father spread the drawing on top of his newspaper, put on his spectacles, looked, and said, 'Um!'  Mother said, 'You are blacked with charred wood, wash!'  The paper sack was found years later among Father's papers.  He had written on it, "By Emily, aged eight."

~GROWING PAINS The Autobiography of Emily Carr,  Clarke Irwin & Company Ltd., 1946.

"Father pruned the cherry tree under our bedroom window.  The cherry sticks were twisty but I took three of the straightest, tied them at one end and straddled them at the other and put two big nails in the wood to hold a drawing-board.  With this easel under the dormer window of our bedroom I felt completely an artist.  My sister Alice who shared the room complained when she swept round the legs of the easel."