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A lyrical biography of Canadian legend Emily Carr's beloved and enigmatic petmonkey, Woo.
About the author
Grant Hayter-Menzies has specialized in biographies of extraordinary women for over a decade, publishing the first full-length accounts of the lives of Charlotte Greenwood and Billie Burke, Princess Der Ling, Sarah Pike Conger, Pauline Benton, Lillian Carter and, most recently, Dorothy Brooke. He lives in Victoria, BC. He is donating 40% of his royalties from the sales of
Woo, the Monkey Who Inspired Emily Carr to Story Book Farm Primate Sanctuary in Sunderland, ON.
Summary
Although Emily Carr is now considered a Canadian legend, the most enduring image is that of her pushing a beat-up old pram into downtown Victoria, loaded with dogs, cats, birds—and a monkey. Woo, a Javanese macaque whom Carr adopted in 1923, has become inextricably linked with Carr in the popular imagination. But more than that, in her short lifetime Woo became equally connected to Carr’s life and art.
Born to a strictly religious family, Carr was never able to reconcile her wild and passionate nature with the stifling mores of the well-to-do Victorian society in which she was raised. Over the years, she increasingly turned to the company of animals to find the love and trust missing from her human relationships. Across the world in an Indonesian jungle lagoon, Woo (like Carr) was parted from her mother at a young age. The tiny ape with a “greeny-brown” pelt and penetrating golden eyes was then shipped across the world. When Carr spotted Woo in a pet store, she recognized a kindred spirit and took her home.
Woo was many things to Carr—a surrogate daughter, a reflection of herself, a piece of the wild inside her downtown Victoria boarding house. Welcoming the mischievous Woo into her life, Carr also welcomed a freedom that allowed a full blooming of artistic expression and gave Canada and the world great art unlike any other before or since. However, despite Carr’s clear love for Woo, her chaotic life did not always allow Carr to properly care for her. Tragically, after Carr was hospitalized due to heart failure, she arranged for Woo to be sent to the Stanley Park Zoo. Bereft of Carr, Woo died alone in her cage only a year later.
Hayter-Menzies approaches his subject from a contemporary perspective on bringing wild animals into captivity while remaining empathetic to the unique relationship between artist and monkey.
Additional text
“This is an extraordinary, profound, poignant and true story, brilliantly and fascinatingly told. Human and animal relationships are complex and, when they involve captive wild animals, troubling to say the least. Even when, as we find here, there is deep mutual affection. In such an unnatural situation there can rarely be a ‘happy ending.’ I have almost never read a book which I longed to read again, as soon as I had turned the last page. Such is the subtlety, sensitivity and skill of Grant Hayter-Menzies’ storytelling.”
