C Ihe Ladies c cu. V'VVAN - History and Classics, Department of

197endix 1\)~an 's Field Notes15 MI9-15 August 1926The field notes of C. C. Vyvyan (ClaraCoitmanRogers when she wrote them) are held in a private collection inEngland. They occupy one beige notebook, with "Alaska" and"I926" written in black fountain pen ink on the front cover.The notebook measures I7.8 ern x II, 5 ern, and contains 72leaves (144 pages) oflined paper, and two leaves-one at eachend-of unlined paper. The inside back cover bears the names"Lazarus Sittichili" and 'Jimmy Koe" in blue ink on two lines.A short-form mark favoured by the author is the uSe of theletter X to denote" cross," as in aX, Xed, and Xing. The writingbears one other interesting feature: because, as is clear from aremark in the field note for 9july, Vyvyan found her penuseless for "uphill" writing in a tent, most field notes duringthe canoe trip were written in pencil. These were overwrittenin ink at a later date. It is possible that the overwriting occurredaround the time of the preparation of the book, for the overwritingis shaky-the handwriting in pencil is firm-andresembles that seen in letters written by Vyvyan in the I970s.As one would expect of field notes, nearly all the writing inthe notebook comes under dated headings, beginning at 15May and extending through 15 August I926. (Some additionalmaterial follows the last dated entry. It includes a report of thetrial at Aklavik, a list of expenses as well as sales of some ofDorrien Smith's sketches, two recipes, a list of books readduring the journey, and various names and addresses[225-29].) Each note is written in the context of the day'sexperience-in the cities of the Canadian west, among the oldtimersof the North. or in the mosquito-infested valley of theRat River. The abbreviated style (parataxis) and concrete detailsof travel create a vivid sense of immediacy as. with the author,the reader journeys across Canada in 1926. The excitementand bustle of Winnipeg, the newer, growing city of Edmonton,the small northern communities-all appear as Vyvyan encounteredthem with eyes accustomed to the grand historicbuildings of English cities and the different scale of theCornish landscape. Since she was already a published writer,Vyvyan doubtless had some idea of writing about this trip; thus,the field notes form not only a record of expenses and activitiesbut also a repository of description and anecdote, impressionand detail, fuel for future writing. As such, they offer a vividfirst impression of Canada through the eyes of the professionalwriter.Any material that occurs in the field notes but not in thepublished narrative has been printed in italics in this appendix(however, see note at the bottom ofp.226). While some of theitalicized material merely highlights weather observations orincidents of travel that Vyvyan repeated or emphaSized in herdaily entries, other passages are more significant. Personaldetails, and many people mentioned in the field notes, werealso omitted when Vyvyan wrote her book. A few personalnames were also altered in the published version ("Harris ofSimpson" becomes "Murphy" in the narrative, and CaptMcIntyre becomes Capt Cameron). and many more were leftout, their owners described only as "the judge" or "the