Emily Carr Quotes

Bobtails,” murmured the butcher caressingly – “Bobtails is good dogs!... ‘Member the little ‘un I bought from your kennel a year back?”

“I do. Hope she turned out well – good worker?

“Good worker! You bet. More sick nurse than cattle driver. Our Min’s fine! Y’see, Missus be bed-fast. Market days she’d lay there, sunup to sundown, alone. I got Min; then she wasn’t alone no more; Min told hold. Market days Min guards sheep from cougars, Min shoos coon from hen-house – Min, Min, Min. Min runs the whole works, Min do!

More than ever was I convinced that the old way of seeing was inadequate to express this big country of ours, her depth, her height, her unbounded wildness, silences too strong to be broken - nor could ten million cameras, through their mechanical boxes, ever show real Canada. It had to be sensed, passed through live minds, sensed and loved.

Vancouver city was more beautiful to look at across the water than to be in.

It is hard to remember just when you first became aware of being alive. It is like looking through rain onto a bald, new lawn; as you watch, the brown is all pricked with pale green. You did not see the points pierce, did not hear the stab - there they are!

For one moment the morning took you far out into vague chill, but your body snatched you back into its cosiness, back to the waiting dogs on the hill top. They could not follow out there, their world was walled, their noses trailed the earth. What a dog cannot hear or smell he distrusts; unless objects are close or move he does not observe them. His nature is to confirm what he sees by his sense of sound or of smell.

The forest was almost like a garden - no brambles, no thorns, nothing to stumble over, no rotten stumps, no fallen branches, all mellow to look at, melodious to hear, every kind of bird, all singing, no awed hush, no vast echoes, just beautiful, smiling woods, not solemn, solemn, solemn like our forests. This exquisite, enchanting gentleness was perfect for one day, but not for always - we were Canadians.