Becoming the biographer of E. J. Hughes

Robert Amos interview segment
produced by Trevor Marc Hughes

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[Editor’s Note: As a new feature, we will embed our new interview segments as posts, viewable here.]

“One day in 1993,” Robert Amos told interview segment producer Trevor Marc Hughes, “out of the blue, his assistant Pat Salmon called me. And Mrs. Salmon said ‘Mr. Hughes is coming to Victoria to have his car serviced…and he’s asked me if I would invite you and your wife to join him for lunch.'” At this point in the interview, the jaw of Robert Amos drops, to indicate his shock at that time in being invited to lunch with his favourite artist. What an offer for a British Columbia art historian!

Thus began an ongoing correspondence and connection between the prolific artist E. J. Hughes and the arts columnist for the Victoria Times Colonist, Robert Amos, which led in time to Amos becoming entrusted with the life story of E. J. Hughes.

In the above interview segment, author and art historian Robert Amos tells The British Columbia Review of his various meetings with the late reclusive artist E.J. Hughes and how he came to become the man given the responsibility of telling the story of one of the greatest artists in Western Canadian history.