Pauline Johnson’s grave stone in Stanley Park. (click on any image to enlarge) — Pauline Johnson’s grave stone in Stanley Park.
*(click on any image to enlarge)*

THE STORY OF LOST LAGOON
Pauline Johnson’s “Fancy”

by Jacqui Birchall
E. Pauline Johnson was born to a Mohawk father, Chief George Johnson and an English Quaker mother, Emily Howells on the Six Nations Reserve in Ontario in 1861. Her Mohawk name was Tekahionwake.

Johnson is buried in Stanley Park. Her carved memorial lies in a peaceful grove of trees immediately west of the Ferguson Point Teahouse.

The memorial itself is fitting, with a profile of her face on the front, a carved feather and arrow on the left, and on the right-hand side are the prow of a birchbark canoe and paddle. The plaque reads, “Erected in 1922 by the Women’s Canadian Club of Vancouver” and bears her Mohawk name. Despite the parking lot and the Teahouse, the spot retains a fitting sense of calm.

Some people say that Johnson’s grave is the only grave in Stanley Park. Not true, of course. It may be the only grave sanctioned by European settlers, but the First Nations people buried their dead on Dead Man’s Island, and poor settlers lived and died in the park for many years.

I wondered why the Women’s Canadian Club of Vancouver gave Johnson such a huge funeral and a lovely burial spot. This at a time when First Nations people were much maligned and ill-treated by settlers, and a government that sought to assimilate them and which also created the vile residential schools.

Johnson as she dressed for public performances.

Pauline Johnson was an enigma. A performance poet for many years, Johnson crafted a stage costume that she thought was sexy and gave an Indian princess impression. It was not authentic. She would wear that outfit for the first half of her recitations and then change into a Victorian lady’s evening dress for the second half. Perhaps she represented the assimilated savage, the Europeanized Indian to the ladies of the Vancouver Club.

Or maybe it was her free spirit at a time when women had few freedoms.

Johnson loved to camp, she loved her canoe and she travelled around Canada, the US and Great Britain at a time when women rarely had those choices.

Johnson wrote of Lost Lagoon during its tidal days before the Causeway was built. The Causeway stopped the tidal effects in the Lagoon.

The profile image on Johnson’s grave stone.

Johnson wrote of Coal Harbour; “I have always resented that jarring unattractive name for years. When I first plied paddle across the gunwale of a light canoe and idled about the margin. I named the sheltered little cove Lost Lagoon. This was just to please my own fancy for, as that perfect summer month drifted on, the ever-restless tides left the harbour devoid of any water at my favourite canoeing hour and my pet idling place was lost for many days; hence my fancy to call it “Lost Lagoon.”

Her success as a poet came after a recitation at the Toronto Art School Gallery in 1892. She shared the stage with several male poets including the well known Duncan Campbell Scott and William Wilfred Campbell. The evening was described as “a snooze fest of droning old men.” Johnson’s recitation of “A Cry from An Indian Wife” brought the house down.

Following the death of her father and ensuing poverty, Johnson was able to support her mother with her recitations and publications. She was regularly published in Canada, the US and Great Britain, writing about racism, poverty and violence. She fought against prejudicial ideas of race and gender.

“Tekahionwake” etched in stone with crossed feather and arrow.

In about 2008, Charles Barber the artistic director of City Vancouver Opera, wanted to produce an opera based on the life of Pauline Johnson. He wanted Margaret Atwood to write the libretto, but didn’t know how to contact her. Well, the editor of The West End Journal, Kevin Dale McKeown, was a friend of Barber’s and as the publicist for the Vancouver Writers’ Festival for many years, he knew how to contact Atwood and Barber was able to reach her. Remarkably, Atwood had already penned a libretto and the opera was born, with music by Tobin Stokes. The opening was delayed for several years for various reasons, but opened on May 23 2014, starring the Coast Salish mezzo-soprano Rose-Ellen Nichols.

Margaret Atwood admired the hard work of Barber and had always admired Johnson. She was very happy to be part of the opera. When Atwood was the editor of the New Oxford Book of Canadian Verse in 1982, she returned Johnson’s work to the book. It had been removed by a previous editor.

Johnson died in Vancouver’s West End, a painful death from breast cancer shortly before her fifty-second birthday.

She died, sick and on morphine, as Janet Smith wrote in a Georgia Straight review “torn between two cultural identities, Victorian Lady, First Nations Artist, trying to find her true self before entering that last river door as the ghost of her grandfather keeps beckoning her.”

If you want to read more about Pauline Johnson, you’ll find more about her life here, her poetry here, and the opera here.