Islander

Wolfgang Paalen, a big-league European surrealist, and Emily Carr, the great Canadian modernist, met at her studio in Victoria in August 1939. This sounds like a momentous event.

This column first appeared in the Victoria Daily Times on July 29, 1939. There is a great body of opinion against the shipping of war material to Japan. A few days ago, I saw a petition, presented by a Chinese boy with pages and pages of names.

Judging by the upbeat atmosphere at Esquimalt’s Memorial Park on Tuesday night, quoting the lyrics of a classic Trooper song seems appropriate. Nearly 300 music lovers of all ages were there “for a good time, not a long time” from 6 to 7:30 p.m.

Canada’s largest summer lunch program, delivering free lunches on a daily basis for underprivileged kids attending subsidized summer camps in nine cities across Canada, launched last week in Victoria.

Project is progressing — years late and far over budget

A vision to make Oak Bay a destination for arts and culture continues this summer with four new pianos in public spaces painted by local artists.

From the new show at the Legacy, I expected nothing out of the ordinary — a survey of screen prints by eight First Nations artists from southern Vancouver Island.

This column first appeared in the Victoria Daily Times on July 22, 1939. If I wakened in the black middle of a soundless night in a hospital, I would know where I was.

Molly Lamb Bobak was a celebrated painter, the first woman to travel overseas as an official Canadian war artist, and a member of the Order of Canada. She was also mother and friend to Victoria author Anny Scoones.

Wendy Huntbatch dedicated most of the last 25 years of her life to caring for parrots that had been given up by their owners. That dedication gave birth to the World Parrot Refuge in Coombs, where as many as 800 parrots lived.