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have been asked to write a preface to these Legends
of Vancouver, which, in conjunction with the members
of the Publication Sub-Committee—Mrs. And Mr.
R. W. Douglas—I have helped to put through the
press. But scarcely any prefatory remarks are necessary.
This book may well stand on its own merits. Still, it
may be permissible to record one’s glad satisfaction
that a poet has arisen to cast over the shoulders of
our grey mountains, our trail-threaded forests, our
tide-swept waters, and the streets and sky-scrapers
of our hurrying city, a gracious mantle of romance.
Pauline Johnson has linked the vivid present with the
immemorial past. Vancouver takes on a new aspect as
we view it through her eyes. In the imaginative power
that she has brought to these semi-historical sagas,
and in the liquid flow of her rhythmical prose, she
has shown herself to be a literary worker of whom we
may well be proud: she has made a most estimable contribution
to purely Canadian literature.
BERNARD
McEVOY
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