Emily Carr (1871-1945) was a Canadian painter and writer without equal as an interpreter of the native peoples and forests of British Columbia.

Emily Carr (she sometimes added the initial M in front of her name) was born in Victoria, British Columbia, on Dec. 13, 1871. About 1888 she persuaded her family guardian to let her study at the San Francisco School of Art. Returning to Victoria about 1895, she set up her studio in a barn on the family property and began to teach. In 1897 she made her first sketches of a native village, while on a visit to Ucluelet on Vancouver Island with a missionary friend. From her teaching in Victoria and Vancouver she saved enough money to study in England from 1899 to 1904, but her pictures of totem poles, painted on summer trips up the coast after her return to Victoria, are barely more than competent records of their subjects...