Authors Electric

There’s nothing like starting the new year with a new enthusiasm, interest, hobby, craze, obsession – whatever you care to call it. You may remember that my last month’s Authors Electric piece came from Vancouver, British Columbia, where I was having a wonderful stay with my daughter Em. Rather than generally continuing to rave about Vancouver this month – something I could very easily do – I will home in on a discovery I made on an earlier visit, which grabbed me even more tightly this time. Emily Carr. No, not my daughter Emily, though I sometimes wonder why so many of my favourite people have the name ‘Emily’. There’s Emily Bront ë , of course, and Emily Dickinson. My dear grandmother was called Emily, which is partly why my daughter has that name. And now a new Emily joins my list. Some of you may well know Emily Carr and her work better than I do, but for those who don’t, she was a British Columbian artist, born in Victoria, Vancouver Island, who worked in the first ha...

Greetings from what is currently a very wet Vancouver, Canada – though the rain is due to stop some time on Saturday, I believe. Never mind the weather – it’s great to be here visiting my daughter, who is now a permanent resident of this beautiful country and may well be a fully-fledged Canadian citizen before next year is out. She came here nearly five years ago, a qualified architect with several years’ experience of working in Glasgow. She found a job and quickly settled here, and I can see why. Vancouver is one of the finest cities in the world – it truly has everything, including mountains, beaches, forests and some wonderful traditional cultures. The Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia is one of my favourite places on earth and I’ve visited it on every one of my trips so far (this is trip number five), and this time will be no exception. It’s enthralling to see all the wonderful First Nations artefacts, though of course there are some very sad aspe...