PAINTER’S PET

Among Emily Carr’s many companion animals, she retained a special affection for her Javanese macaque monkey, Woo, pictured here with her in 1930. Carr obtained the monkey in 1923 from a pet shop in downtown Victoria. The monkey “named herself” on her first night in Carr’s home, with her “sad wailing, ‘Woo, woo, woo,’” Carr wrote in her story collection The Heart of a Peacock. Woo had her own corner in Carr’s studio and may have inspired the artist’s creativity. “Some of Woo’s stupid critics might well have learned, from my monkey, ingenuity, thoroughness,” Carr wrote. “Every object must be felt, smelt, tasted, pulled to pieces before her curiosity was satisfied.” When Carr fell ill in 1937, Woo was sent to live at Vancouver’s Stanley Park Zoo.