Emily Carr. Kate Braid
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to the village.
Emily asked a little nervously, “What did he say?”
“That you had no fear,” the missionary told her, “that you were not stuck up, and that you knew how to laugh.”
The native people gave her the name “Klee Wyck,” the Laughing One, and she quickly made friends in their community. Without speaking either Chinook Jargon or the local native language, and using only gestures and facial expressions, she received permission to visit them and sketch in the great houses that were home to several families. But it never occurred to her to paint the forest. The Canadian forest was still too vast to imagine trying to express it in paint.
Living conditions on the reserve were poor. There was little work for the men, and many people were fatally ill with German measles, whooping cough, or tuberculosis. Residents were sick at heart, and perhaps because of this, there was widespread drinking and gambling.
Emily felt great sympathy and she firmly blamed Europeans for the natives’ dispirited condition. She especially blamed the missionaries, who called traditional ways “ungodly” and taught native people to be ashamed of their heritage.
Her sympathetic response was unusual for the time. Most white people in British Columbia, although they had relied heavily on the skills and kindness of First Nations people to help them adjust to a new country, by the 1870s were hostile, and regarded most native people as “drunks and idlers.”
Her visit to Ucluelet was the first time Emily found comfort and pleasure in the company of First Nations people. Unlike most of the white people she knew, native people left her alone. She didn’t feel lectured or scolded or disapproved of. Mostly they accepted her presence in silence, and so, in their company she could focus on her passion – her art.
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