Emily Carr and Victoria

Outside the Empress Hotel there is a statue of Emily Carr, one of Canada's most prominent artists and writers. The statue shows her with her favourite monkey Woo on her shoulder, one of her dogs by her feet, and her sketchbook at the ready on her lap.
She was born in 1871, and the only thing she really wanted to do from an early age was to draw and paint. She attended art schools in USA, England and France, but it was the forests  of her Canada, i.e. Vancouver Island, that eventually opened up her artistic vein to full flow. I am reading her autobiography, 'Growing Pains', and enjoying every page, which reveals her long and tough unglamorous life journey with an unabated sense of humour. She reminds me of my Swedish grandfather's sister, Tora Vega Holmström, who, born in 1880, also wanted to do nothing but paint, who also choose not to marry to in order to have her artistic freedom in tact.