E. Pauline Johnson Cairn, Stanley Park

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Writing and engraving on the E. Pauline Johnson Cairn erected in 1922 by the Women’s Canadian Club of Vancouver.

Emily Pauline Johnson (usually referred to as E. Pauline Johnson) was a noted Native American poet in Vancouver during the late 19th Century. Her body of work focused on Canadiana, bringing Native history and stories to a global stage. Her later work in Vancouver focused on Stanley Park and bringing a voice to Northwest Natives. After her death, the Women’s Canadian Club of Vancouver erected a cairn in 1922 in her honour on Stanley Park's western shore close to Ferguson Point. Emily Pauline Johnson's literary and poetic masterpieces have gained notice in Canada as depictions of her experiences growing up between two cultures, European and Aboriginal, gave her the ability to embrace them both. The Cairn which rests in a forested glade is a quiet, contemplative space close to the ocean, commemorating the woman who inspired generations of poets and writers after her.

In a small clearing surrounded by young saplings off Ferguson Point in Stanley Park is a monument dedicated to the late Emily Pauline Johnson, a noted and respected poet who resided in Vancouver.

Funded by the Women's Canadian Club of Vancouver and erected in 1922, it aims to celebrate the life of a woman who found a balance between the two clashing cultures she was born into, European and Native - many of her later works were themed around many prominent Vancouver landmarks, especially those within the park.

E. Pauline Johnson is best known for her musings about the Lost Lagoon for which this body of water was named for:

It is dusk on the Lost Lagoon,
And we two dreaming the dusk away,
Beneath the drift of a twilight grey,
Beneath the drowse of an ending day,
And the curve of a golden moon.

It is dark in the Lost Lagoon,
And gone are the depths of haunting blue,
The grouping gulls, and the old canoe,
The singing firs, and the dusk and--you,
And gone is the golden moon.

O! lure of the Lost Lagoon,--
I dream to-night that my paddle blurs
The purple shade where the seaweed stirs,
I hear the call of the singing firs
In the hush of the golden moon. [1]

When she died in 1913, her ashes were buried in Stanley Park marked by cairn carved in her likeness.

1. (Source: The lost lagoon by Emily Pauline Johnson (Tekahionwake))