Ormsby, Heriot, Caetani

Extraordinary Women of the Okanagan
by Adriana A. Davies, CM, Cavaliere d’Italia, PhD

[Editor’s Note: With a nod to this Women’s History Month, October 2025]

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In terms of the development of the disciplines of history and science, as well as the development of the arts and culture in British Columbia, the Okanagan region contributed enormously. Three eminent women come to mind: Margaret Anchoreta Orsmby (1909-1996), Joan Heriot (1911-2012), and Sveva Caetani (1917-1994). Ormsby and Heriot were part of the British establishment and Caetani’s father Leone, Duke of Sermoneta and Prince of Teano had an English mother, Ada Wilbraham. Thus, Sveva’s direct paternal line was predominantly Anglo-Italian.

In the early part of the 20^th century, women, by and large, received minimal education (completing high school was uncommon); relatively few had the desire or more importantly the means to go to university. They married or were the spinster aunts helping their siblings raise their families. Otherwise, they worked on the family farm, orchard, retail, or other enterprise to help the family to get ahead. The profession that welcomed them was teaching and, in some jurisdictions in Canada at the time, they had to once they married. Medicine and health care also welcomed them but women doctors were few while nurses and nursing aides were many in a world in which the role of women was viewed as subservient to men.

The Okanagan Valley was blessed to have private schools for boys and girls and they were attended by the children of the British elite. Ormsby, Heriot, and Caetani all were educators and although they were not avowed feminists, their lives can be viewed as representing the goal of the suffragettes, who fought for votes for women and the right to pursue education and, then, choose their own career paths and not be forced into marriage, if they did not so choose. Manitoba and Saskatchewan were the first provinces to give women suffrage (January 28, 1916 and March 14, 1916), followed by Alberta (April 19, 1916) and BC (September 14, 1917). All white women won the right to vote in 1918. Indigenous women won the right in BC in 1949 and in the rest of the country minorities did not get the vote until 1960. Members of the Women’s Temperance Union led the fight. The Person’s Case (Edwards v. A.G. of Canada) put forward by the so-called “Famous Five” – Henrietta Edwards, Nellie McClung, Emily Murphy, Louise McKinney, and Irene Parlby – succeeded in 1929 in obtaining the right for women to serve in the Senate by being acknowledged as “persons” in the British North America Act. This would require that they present to the Judicial Committee of the Imperial Privy Council in London, which was the court of last resort for members of the British Commonwealth. 

The Okanagan Valley attracted many younger sons of the British aristocracy, who wanted to make a better living than they could do at home, or the “black sheep” of the family, who left for adventure, anonymity or both. In 1890, Lord and Lady Aberdeen visited the area and, the following year, they purchased the Coldstream Ranch and planted over 100 fruit trees beginning the area’s fruit-growing industry. John Campbell Hamilton-Gordon, Lord Aberdeen, served as governor general of Canada from 1893-1919. Leone Caetani’s British family would have known the Aberdeen peers; Leone’s mother, Ada Constance Bootle-Wilbraham was the daughter of the Earl of Lathom and the ancestral home was located in the County Palatine of Lancaster. Her father served in the Conservative governments of Disraeli and Lord Salisbury. But it was not just members of the “upper classes” who came, upwardly mobile members of the working and middle classes also came. This includes the Ormsbys and Heriots. Leone came to legitimize Sveva by first obtaining Canadian citizenship and, then, adopting her. He was already married when she was born in 1917 and there was no divorce in Italy at the time. The family arrived in Vernon in 1917.

Margaret A. Ormsby: Pioneer Historian of British Columbia

Ormsby was born in Quesnel, BC, on June 7, 1909 and grew up in the Okanagan Valley. Her father settled on a fruit farm beside Kalamalka Lake in the village of Coldstream, south of Vernon. In 1925, she enrolled at UBC where she completed a BA (1929) and MA (1931) and then went on to do a PhD at Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvania (1936). Besides having a lengthy career in academe, Ormsby wrote the foundational history of British Columbia simply titled British Columbia – A History, which was published in 1958. In his tribute to her titled “Margaret Ormsby: A British Columbia Institution,” Daniel Marshall reminisces about starting the Graduate History Association at the University of Victoria in 1990 and Ormsby agreeing to be their honorary president. He writes:

The next time I saw Dr. Ormsby was in 1992, in the company of my old friend Richard Mackie, who had invited me for a trip to Sugar Lake and to his cousin’s home, Lake House, on the shores of Kalamalka Lake two doors down from Professor Ormsby’s old family residence.

I remember the day well. We were graciously invited for tea and excellent discussions with regard to her time at UBC, and earlier in Ottawa, where she fondly remembered another graduate of her old alma mater of Bryn Mawr College, Phyllis Ross (1903-1988), mother of the Right Honourable Prime Minister John Turner.[1]

[1] Daniel Marshall, “Margaret Ormsby: A British Columbia Institution,” in The Orca, September 14, 2019, URL: https://www.theorca.ca/residentpod/margaret-a-ormsby-british-columbia-institution-6399362, retrieved October 20, 2025.

Marshall notes that Ross became the first woman chancellor of UBC (1961- 1966) and Ormsby the first woman to hold a permanent position as a lecturer in a Canadian history department (McMaster University, 1940). While at Bryn Mawr, in 1934 and 1936, she worked as a teaching assistant at UBC. In 1943, she got an appointment at UBC as a lecturer, became a full professor in 1955, chair of the department in 1965, finally retiring in 1974. These achievements occurred when the teaching of history was, effectively an “old boys” club. Honours included the Order of British Columbia, the Order of Canada, honorary doctorates from the Universities of Victoria and Simon Fraser, and being chosen as one of Canada’s 150 “Early Women Writers” for our country’s 150^th anniversary in 2017.¹ She was also the first woman president of the Canadian Historical Association and a member of the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada. At the provincial level, she was involved with the BC Historical Federation (president, 1949-1950); edited the Okanagan Historical Society Report (1948-1952) as well as writing articles; was a founder of BC Studies (1968-1969); and also served on the BC Heritage Advisory Board (1971-1983).

Margaret Prang in Ormsby’s entry in The Canadian Encyclopedia noted: “British Columbia: A History (1958; rev. 1971), her most important work, displays a characteristically fine line literary style which has helped to make the book popular with the general public. Other well-known works include A Pioneer Gentle Woman in British Columbia: The Recollections of Susan Allison (1976) and Coldstream – Nulli Secundus (1990).”²Allison, the wife of John Fall Allison, was the first white woman to settle in the Okanagan Valley; her husband founded the town of Princeton, first called Vermillion Forks. Ormsby also contributed a number of biographies of renowned British Columbians to the Dictionary of Canadian Biography.

Historian and journalist Richard Mackie named his journal The Ormsby Review (later the BC Review) in her honour, and provides some insights into her life and work in his article titled “#184 Margaret Orsmby remembered” (first published October 18, 2017 and revised September 26, 2018).³The subtitle is “Margaret Ormsby: Catalyst and Mentor.” He begins by noting that her father George was Anglo-Irish and part of the British settlement of the Kootenays. He served in the trenches in the First World War in the 30^th Regiment, BC Horse, and was wounded in action. When Mackie chose to name his magazine in her honour, there was some blowback and he quotes an anonymous critic as follows: “‘I was surprised to see that Margaret Ormsby is being honoured with a publication using her name,’ wrote the same person who disparaged her father’s occupation and background. ‘She was a tricky person to deal with, blowing hot and cold, and with a proprietary view of B.C. history. In the 1970s she reminded me of Queen Victoria in her later days.’”

There are always critics of overachievers and this unnamed person reveals an anti-British attitude that became common in the 1960s and 1970s as multiculturalism brought other voices into the mainstream. As if this slight were not enough, Mackie quotes an anecdote told by University of Calgary historian Janet Janovicek who told him the following anecdote: “I did not meet Dr. Ormsby but always tell my women’s history classes that her first office was a desk in the women’s washroom. I’m pretty sure it’s in Creating Historical Memory – probably in the introduction.” Mackie was able to find the source – an article by Alison Prentice in Journal of the Canadian Historical Association in 1991. It was not easy to be a woman academic in the first instance and, later on, as a part of the tide of anti-British (and later anti-colonial sentiment) difficult to have ancestors who were part of the British mainstream.

Mackie provides a countervailing opinion to the unnamed critic. John Bosher wrote: “Congratulations on your initiative in launching the Ormsby Review! As Margaret Ormsby was a colleague of mine, and head of the department of history at UBC when I was teaching there many years ago, I find this project very interesting. Margaret would no doubt be delighted to be remembered. I will be glad to assist in any way I can, certainly by reviewing any books you may care to send along.” Mackie also received a number of tributes from former students such as that paid by historian Barry Gough who wrote: “Your recollections of visits to that fountain of learning and wisdom are wonderful. I, too, have pleasant memories of this famed historian, especially from being in her History 426 Modern Canada class, arguably the finest undergraduate course on the History syllabus at UBC.”

With respect to her publications, Mackie writes: “Ormsby’s influence was felt at the provincial level through her magisterial British Columbia: A History (Macmillan, 1958) and in the Okanagan and Similkameen valleys through her local histories and articles.” He also includes a personal reminiscence as follows: “When I knew her, in the 1980s and 1990s, I had no idea that so many of her ex-students and colleagues made regular pilgrimages to Garafine, her house on Kalamalka Lake near Vernon. She was far from stranded or isolated at her lakeside house and orchard in B.C.’s interior, and I was not the only one to make the trek.” A quote from art historian and former museum director Martin Segger of UVic adds a note of levity:

I served for some years on the British Columbia Heritage Advisory Board, as a cross appointment from the Board of the B.C. Heritage Trust. Margaret was a member of the former. Both boards made an effort to meet in locations around the Province. On a couple of occasions while meeting in the Okanagan we dropped by for tea. She was a great host and raconteur.

However, one of my best memories was a meeting in Prince George. We went out to visit the alleged original (archaeological) site of Fort George. This required a river trip in an open boat, from which we had to wade ashore. Margaret wasn’t too keen on that so two volunteers jointly hoisted her on their shoulders to make the ship-to-shore transfer. We were all greatly amused, but no one more so than her!

It wasn’t just professional historians who were sometimes critical of Ormsby: local historians were as well. Richard Mackie provides an anecdote from Paddy Mackie, an illustrious resident of Coldstream and a teacher, artist and local historian (as well as his second cousin). He writes:

My cousin Paddy, who cordially introduced me to Margaret in the mid 1980s, in private was less polite. He felt she had a proprietorial attitude to Coldstream history. He found her Coldstream: Nulli Secundus (Friesen, 1990) dull. He thought she had relied too much on the dry documentary record and not enough on local historians and old-timers like himself with their vast and lively store of anecdotes, genealogical connections, tittle-tattle, and scuttlebutt. She was too much of a professional historian for his liking.

He retaliated by gossiping about her. He told me several times with considerable relish that Margaret’s father, George Ormsby, had been “blackballed” for membership in the orchardists’ and ranchers’ Kalamalka Club because, as a hardware merchant, he was “in trade.”

Paddy’s family was part of the British elite of Coldstream. His Uncle Augustine, a cleric, his father Hugh and mother Grace established a private school, the Vernon Preparatory School in Coldstream in 1913 so that the growing British population could provide a “British-type of education” for their sons.

In an essay titled “A Horizontal View,” which was her address as the new president of the Canadian Historical Association, delivered at a meeting at the University of Sherbrooke, Quebec, on June 9, 1966, Ormsby revealed her passion for Canada in the following passage:

Pioneer settlers in British Columbia, these grandparents of mine reached their western destination by cart-track and by rail-line, consuming on their journey great portions of their allotted time. But in so doing they gained an understanding of the linear expanse of Canada that I do not have. And they knew, as I do not know, that this is a country where there is such a succession of landscapes that only a few hold intimacy for any one individual. They saw granite defiles in which the waters of the rivers hurl themselves with great velocity, and they forded shallow, crooked, turbid streams. They discovered Canadian localities in which the definition of the valleys is wide and delitescent, and others in which it is narrow and manifest. But they did not see the farther line of the sky as I have seen it, or have the over-view that I have obtained of the pervasiveness of the northern wilderness, of the voids that separate settlement from settlement, and of the lonely desolation that in Canada surrounds the works of man. Through benefit of modern technology, spatial dimension is for most Canadians of my generation something quite different from what it was for my progenitors.[1]

[1] Margaret A. Ormsby, University of British Columbia, “Presidential Address,” 1966, URL: chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://cha-shc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/4zubh01wi.pdf, retrieved October 20, 2025.

In the presentation, she travels from East to West providing insight not only into Canada’s geography but also its settlement history and as an advocate for Canadian nationalism. In 1978, the University of Toronto Press published Personality and History in British Columbia: Essays in honour of Margaret Ormsby, edited by John Norris and Margaret Prang. This reveals the number of Canadian historians who were directly taught by her or were influenced by her writings. After an illustrious career, Ormsby died on November 2, 1996 near Coldstream. Efforts to preserve the Ormsby family’s historic home for community use failed. In an article by Jennifer Smith titled “Historic Ormsby property sold,” in the Vernon Morning Star, she writes:

A prime piece of lakefront property, with strong historic roots, has been sold and not preserved for community use. The District of Coldstream had hoped to purchase historian Margaret Ormsby’s home and property on Coldstream Creek Road. Not only would the property extend existing public waterfront from the Mackie and Sovereign properties, but Ormsby’s will noted that the district should have first opportunity to buy the property.  Coldstream’s offer was refused, and the property was listed on the open market for $5.9 million. It has sold and is now in private hands.[1]

[1] Jennifer Smith, “Historic Ormsby property sold,” in Vernon Morning Star, August 27, 2014, URL: https://vernonmorningstar.com/2014/08/27/historic-ormsby-property-sold/, retrieved October 20, 2025.

Joan Ethelwyn Heriot: Scientist, Educator and Artist

Joan Ethelwyn Heriot was born in Vernon on January 7, 1911, the daughter of Allan and Jessie Heriot, who pioneered in the area.⁴ According to Jan Waldon, who wrote a 2010-tribute article titled “Joan Ethelwyn Heriot: An Outstanding Okanagan Artist and Naturalist,” Allan was a “younger” son of a Scottish family and had a classic education.⁵ She writes: “He spent a year learning carpentry then set sail for ‘The Colonies’ in 1892. Allan spent three years working on his uncle’s ranch near Cannington Manor, Saskatchewan. Longing for greater adventures, he headed further west and, in 1904, settled in the Coldstream Valley.”⁶ He tried various things but did not succeed but, finally, found his true calling at the age of 53. With no formal training, he became an accomplished amateur entomologist (he published papers that included excellent drawings) and this inspired his daughter Joan. Waldon writes: “When Joan was six family friend Peter Venables showed her his collection of pinned beetles. She was fascinated and vowed on the spot that she would become an entomologist. Although it was her father and not Joan who eventually earned that title.”⁷

Heriot attended the St. Michael’s School for Girls in Vernon and wrote a short history of it. It was this institution that nurtured her love of learning and, I believe, it is important to understand its founding and operations. Heriot notes that it was founded by Miss Maud Le Gallais, who was born in Newfoundland and whose father, the Rev. William Wellman Le Gallais was an Anglican priest at the St. Anthony’s Mission.⁸ She was born and educated in England and attended the St. Michael’s Boarding School for Girls in Bognor Regis, Sussex. When she arrived in Vernon, she had to make the case for such a school and build local support. It was intended to educate the daughters of the British elite and Heriot writes:

At this time the valley was well described by some wag as “ninety miles of stony broke Englishmen” – because from end to end it was full of orchards and most of the orchardists were from the “Old Country: – and “approved as suitable settlers” by Lady Aberdeen. (We were stony-broke because, although we grew excellent fruit, we seldom managed to sell it at a profit.) But as boarding school was a part of the “Old Country” tradition, Miss Le Gallais’ project was welcomed. The Vernon Preparatory School for Boys founded by the Rev. Austin [Augustine] Mackie, was welcomed for the same reason.[1]

[1] Joan Heriot, “St. Michael’s Boarding School for Girls Vernon 1913-1937,” April 6, 2000. I found this in the Heriot Fonds, Vernon Archives MS 30.

By 1914, the funds were raised and the school was opened in March 1914 in a grand house on Hillcrest Road. Some teachers were brought in from England and students wore uniforms. Miss Le Gallais also believed in instruction in French, according to Heriot, since Canada was a bilingual country, so French was taught. In addition, performing arts were incorporated into the curriculum and students even performed George Bernard Shaw’s St. Joan. Singing and dancing were also taught and religious studies were not neglected. At a time when education of girls was not valued in many quarters, Miss Le Gallais aimed to give “her” girls a rounded education that would fit them for any role they wanted to pursue when they finished their schooling.

Though Heriot doesn’t mention this, the headmistress was likely a believer in votes for women. The school became so popular that by 1917 it had to expand, which it did into the Lefroy House. Continuing success resulted, in 1921, in construction of a new, purpose-built building. The school focused on both academics and sports and the girls were also encouraged to garden. Specialists such as naturalist G. D. Roberts were brought in and he talked about “how to see wild life.” Government exams were sat in the old Vernon High School (now demolished). On Miss Le Gallais’ retirement in 1929, another English woman succeeded her, Miss Orwin. She added home economics and science to the curriculum (prior to this only botany was taught). Students went to Vernon High for chemistry and physics. The transfer to new leadership did not work and the school closed in 1937.

After finishing school, at the age of 17, Joan decided to attend Victoria College in 1928.⁹After a year, she transferred to UBC where she completed a BSc. In a tribute article on Joan’s 100^th birthday, Cara Brady writing in the Vernon Morning Star noted that, when Joan wanted to continue her studies in entomology, a professor told her: “My poor girl. You’ll never get a job with that. You’re a woman. Women do not get jobs in science. You’ll have to go to England if you will persist.”¹⁰A feisty and determined young woman, Joan saved money to do this by picking apples, weeding gardens, and mowing lawns. She went to England and attended the University of Liverpool in 1936. She chose the university because one of her favourite maternal aunts (“Aunt B”) lived there and was a Congregational minister. She obtained an MSc degree (Hons), DEd and MSc. She then lectured in Zoology for 30 years at Brighton Technical College, part of the University of London’s External Program. She became chair of the Department of Biology in 1952 and served in that capacity until her retirement in 1966.

She then returned to Vernon where she lived at the Kalamalka Lake House, which was bequeathed to her by her Aunt and Uncle, Ethel and Joe Edgar. Joan pursued art lessons with her old teacher Jessie Topham Brown and her pastel landscapes were in high demand. Topham Brown came to Canada in 1900 and arrived in Vernon around 1916. She worked at St. Michael’s Boarding School for girls as a cook, coach and art teacher. She also worked at the Vernon Preparatory School and gave art classes during the summer at the Killiney Wharf on Okanagan Lake. She would also be instrumental in setting up the Topham Brown Art Gallery (later the Vernon Art Gallery).

Joan was also a committed member of the North Okanagan Naturalists’ Club and she notes in “Joan Heriot There – and Back Again,” a short memoir, that she volunteered to “pond dip” with children at every Club field day to teach them about the diversity of life in pond ecosystems. She also began art lessons with Jessie Topham Brown, who she had known from St. Michael’s. She became an accomplished artist using pastels. Heriot also travelled extensively in Canada, Alaska, and California, an expression of her love of nature.

On her return from the UK, Joan re-connected with old friends and, one of them, Paddy Mackie, reintroduced her to Sveva Caetani (she had first met her in 1921 when Sveva briefly attended St. Michael’s School). In a short “Remembrance” of Sveva that Joan wrote in 1997 for the 100^th anniversary of Crofton House School in Vancouver in 1998 (which Sveva attended 1930-1932), she noted that they met when she was staying in Paddy’s cabin at Sugar Lake during a holiday after her return from England in 1967.¹¹ Jan Waldon, in a tribute to Joan in the Okanagan History 74^th Edition of the Historical Society journal, writes: “While there was a great difference in their height – Joan was 5 foot 4 and Sveva was 6 foot 1 – their minds met on level ground. Except, Joan said, when it came to Scrabble. There, Sveva was truly a giant. The two became close friends and Joan was the greatest advocate for Sveva’s very original painting style.”¹² Joan notes that they had very different natures but that she was drawn to Sveva for the following reason: “In telling me about her imprisonment in ‘that house,’ Sveva described herself as a ‘survivor,’ adding that if one did survive such an experience it left one very strong in some respects but crippled in others. Her great strengths were evident during the rest of her life and particularly during her last difficult years. Our rare (but very fierce) quarrels were always due to misunderstandings.”¹³ As an individual who had grown up in a loving, extended family, Joan understood what was missing in Sveva’s life – friendship.

Heriot supported Sveva in her various artistic endeavours and, in 1985, moved into an apartment that Sveva had created for her on the second storey of her home. With the help of friend Sharon Lawrence, the Joan Heriot Centre for Environmental Studies was opened at Mackie Lake House. In old age, for a time, she taught art to first graders at the Lake House. Paddy established a foundation to ensure the upkeep of the property and its use as a museum and art centre. Joan died on July 29, 2012 at the age of 101.

Sveva Caetani: Painter, Educator and Philosopher

Sveva Ersilia Giovanella Maria Fabiani Caetani di Sermoneta was born in Rome, Italy on August 6, 1917 to a middle-aged, aristocratic father and his young mistress. She died in Vernon, BC, on April 28, 1994, an established artist who had created a series of paintings known as the Recapitulation Series and gifted her historic home to Greater Vernon for the establishment of a gallery and artist-in-residence facility.

She is not a “typical” female immigrant from Italy in the first decades of the 20^th century who were, by and large, members of the working class with perhaps 5 to 8 years of education (or illiterate) and skilled in the “female” arts of sewing, embroidery, knitting, crocheting, weaving, or other textile-based crafts. They were also, by and large, homemakers and helped in the family business whether a farm, vineyard, artisanal enterprise, or retail operation. With respect to a profession, most could only aspire to be teachers.

In contrast, Sveva Caetani became a consummate artist and teacher in spite of the fact that she was educated by governesses and the occasional tutor, attended two years of formal schooling and was largely self-taught. The illegitimate daughter of Leone Caetani, Duke of Sermoneta and Prince of Teano, and his mistress Ofelia Fabiani, she was nearly four years old when she arrived in Vernon. Though very young, she was aware of the various family residences both in Rome and the Italian countryside (including the Palazzo Caetani in Rome near Piazza Venezia, the Castle at Sermoneta, the Pontine Marshes and the Gardens at Ninfa) that had been the residences of the powerful Caetani family (including two popes) for 1,100 years.

Her father Leone, who though Italian had English and Polish ancestors, was educated by tutors in a range of subject areas and knew 13 languages including Sanskrit. He travelled not only in Britain but also Continental Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. His tours of Egypt, the Sinai Peninsula, Syria, Iraq, India, and other Muslim countries, with which he fell in love, resulted in the development of incredible scholarship on the Arabic world and production of the 10-volume Annals of Islam that he developed with a team of hand-picked scholars, who he supervised closely. The first volume appeared in 1905 and the final one in 1926. He gifted his entire collection to the Accademia dei Lincei in Rome, likely the world’s oldest scientific organization, established in 1603 that included among its members Galileo. He was made a member and in the early 20^th century other members included Albert Einstein and Benedetto Croce.

A renowned Islamic scholar, he went to Vernon in 1921 to take out Canadian citizenship and legitimize Sveva, as well as to evade Mussolini. He was a confirmed Socialist who had served in the Italian Parliament from 1909 to 1913. After completing his studies at La Sapienza, Rome University, he had visited the Selkirks in BC in 1891 with a friend and fallen in love with the countryside and it became a place of refuge when life got difficult for him in Italy. On their arrival in Vernon, Leone enrolled Sveva in St. James School but she was only four and was not allowed to continue her studies. Sveva was, thus, educated by governesses and the occasional tutor. The only full-time schooling that she had was two years in a well-established girls’ private school in Vancouver. She attended the Crofton House School for Girls from 1930 to 1932, when she was 13 to 15 years-of-age and studied the range of academic subjects as well as French, art and drama; she also took part in sports.¹⁴Like St. James Girls School, it emphasized both academic and non-academic subjects and was also a type of “finishing school” for girls introducing them to all of the cultural activities that Vancouver had to offer. She was removed from the school when she contacted a particularly bad case of measles and her parents decided to continue her education at home. Leone got advice as to the hiring of governesses and tutors for Sveva from the school the Reverend Augustine Mackie of the Vernon Preparatory School.

The Caetani children in Rome had the best tutors and were also encouraged to excel in sports and other outdoor activities including mountain climbing in the Alps, horseback riding, fishing, and hunting. The Caetanis were ravenous readers. As members of the ruling elite, they also benefited from “grand tours” and were instilled with a code of ethics of service to “la Patria” as a means of giving back for their acknowledged gifts of education and wealth. Leone, his brothers, Roffredo, Livio, Gelasio and Michelangelo, and sister Giovinella were involved in politics and diplomacy as well as philanthropy.

This is the type of education that Leone tried to give Sveva in the hinterland of British Columbia.

From the period 1922 to 1930 the family returned to Europe frequently and Sveva was tutored not only in academic subjects but also studied piano, attended ballet classes, and studied art for six months at the Académie Sanson in Paris. In 1930, she received private lessons from artist André Petroff in Monte Carlo – doing life drawing, painting as well as copying classical works which was an accepted way of studying art at the time. She was following in the footsteps of her older cousin, Lelia, who was her Uncle Roffredo and Aunt Marguerite’s child born in 1913. Around 1923, Lelia’s mother Marguerite arranged for her to take private lessons from her friend, artist Édouard Vuillard (1868-1940), a member of the avant garde group, the Nablis (the Hebrew word for “prophets”).

Marguerite Chapin was an American heiress who went to Paris to study music and met Roffredo Caetani there and they were married in 1911. She became an arts and literary patron and published Commerce magazine in Paris from 1924 to 1932 and, later, Le Botteghe Oscure in Rome. T. S. Eliot was her cousin and the magazines published the works of the emerging and established poets and novelists of England, Continental Europe and North America. In Commerce, Marguerite included, among others, the poetry of Claudel, Saint-John Perse, Aragon, Supervielle, Ungaretti, and T. S. Eliot as well as the prose of Gide, Giono, Jouhandeau, Artaud, André Breton, Faulkner, Joyce, and Virginia Woolf. The magazine ceased publication in 1932 when Roffredo and Marguerite moved to Rome because of the adverse impact of the stock market crash in 1930. Marguerite created a second periodical titled Botteghe Oscure (literally, dark shops), named after the arcades that flanked the streets besides the Circus Flaminius and which had become shops in the Middle Ages. This was close to Palazzo Caetani. The magazine was published from 1948 to 1960 and featured writers from both sides of the Atlantic including Tomasi di Lampadusa, Moravia, Calvino, and Arpino among the Italians; Carson McCullers, Isabel Bolton, Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams, and Elizabeth Bowen among the Americans and English; Germans such as Hofmannsthal, Rilke, and Bertolt Brecht; as well as French writers such as Camus and Malraux. Poets featured included Dylan Thomas, William Carlos Williams, Vernon Watkins, Theodore Roethke, Robert Lowell, and W. H. Auden. Marguerite sent cratefuls of books to Sveva in Vernon. Marguerite sent her niece Sveva not only paints but also crates full of books.

Sveva’s readings were, thus, eclectic and also were reflections of post-war (both First and Second World Wars) questioning of what at the time comprised civilized values. Sveva also mentions that her mother encouraged her to read French and Russian literature. Her “alter ego,” which was noted in some of the cartoons that she did as a child in the late 1920s and 1930s, was “Beo the Librarian.”

Leone’s death on Christmas Day, 1935, when Sveva was 18, effectively ended her schooling. Widowhood imprisoned her mother Ofelia in a country that was alien to her and for 25 years she clung to her only child allowing her to have no life beyond the confines of their home. It was her reading, self-directed after her father’s death that continued to shape her intellect. After her mother’s death in 1960, without teaching qualifications, she was offered a job at St. James Catholic School in Vernon and among the subjects that she taught were French, social studies, and art. Realizing that to be more effective in her teaching she needed qualifications, in 1969 she attended the Adult Institute in Victoria (later Camosun College) for a year to finish high school. She then registered at the University of Victoria and completed the 2-year Standard Teaching Certificate with an Art major.

Sveva truly had “encyclopedic” knowledge of subjects that interested her and saw herself following in her father’s footsteps. The catalogue of her personal collection includes over 700 books (she gifted another 150 to 180 to the University of Victoria), and others to the University of British Columbia. Currently on display in the Caetani Cultural Centre are about 75 to 100 books, which are studies of individual artists but there are also a significant number relating to individual periods in art history, world-wide in scope and ranging from past to present. The latest acquisitions date to the early 1990s just before her death in 1994. Her collections also included works on mysticism, psychoanalysis, the rise and fall of civilizations, as well as contemporary culture, which are evident in her notes to the series in the book titled Caetani Recapitulation A Journey, edited and published by her protégée Heidi Thompson in 1995 (the year after Sveva’s death).

One of her professors at UVic, artist Peter Shostak, created a kind of “research assistant” position for her when she told him that she needed to earn money to support herself. Her first assignment was to create a profile of Emily Carr for inclusion in the package of materials for teaching Canadian artists in the school system and, when she succeeded, he assigned her a number of other profiles. From the 1970s onwards, Sveva’s book purchases proliferated and reveal that she was expanding her knowledge of art history and also was interested in the teaching of art, which is natural since, when she completed her teaching certificate in 1972, she began to teach art to high school students at the high school in Lumby, a forestry town near Vernon. A third group of book purchases relate to her own art and it is as if she was doing background research for paintings, in particular, the Recapitulation Series. This list included ancient Greek and Roman art; Islamic art; art of the Middle Ages and Renaissance; philosophy; Christian/Judaic/Islamic mysticism; and modern art relating to specific schools. Through these readings Sveva acquired extensive knowledge of art history and individual artists but also world history including the great civilizations as well as religious history, mysticism, psychoanalysis, space science and “New Age” belief systems.

All of this scholarship is represented in her spiritual journey that she encapsulates in her artistic masterwork – The Recapitulation Series created in the period 1978 to 1989 and which consisted of 47 works (some in multiples for a total of 56 works), which she gifted to the Alberta Art Foundation, beginning in 1985. It was returned to the Caetani Cultural Centre in 2021 and Board and staff has worked vigorously to get her work well known as well as running a dynamic artist-in-residence program which was one Sveva’s wishes when she gifted her home and grounds to Greater Vernon. This work has culminated in the exhibit titled “Sveva Caetani Forma e Frammento/Form and Fragment,” which opened at MAXXI the National Museum of Art of the 21^st Century in Rome on October 3, 2025. For the first time, all 47 works were exhibited. A contingent of 18 supporters from Vernon and myself from Edmonton, were there for the opening and also visited Caetani properties. My book titled “Sveva Caetani’s Recapitulation Series: From Medieval Mysticism to the Space Age” will be published in 2026 by Guernica Editions.¹⁵

Supporters of Sveva are working to arrange a travelling exhibit to go to various cities in Canada. Sveva was a consummate artist who used her life and extensive readings to throw light on the human condition. Her art was outside of the Modernist traditions current during the period in which she created her masterwork; however, the art world at the beginning of the 20^th century is much more diverse and ranges from representational works to abstraction and multimedia and is therefore more receptive to her creations. She was not an “academic” painter of her time and that, in my opinion, is to her credit. Her work is “ripe” for re-discovery and for the development of new audiences.

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Adriana A. Davies, Order of Canada and Cavaliere d’Italia recipient, was born in Italy, grew up in Canada and has BA and MA degrees from the University of Alberta, and a doctorate from the University of London, England. She has worked as a writer, editor, curator, fine and decorative arts specialist, and cultural executive director.  She was science editor of The Canadian Encyclopedia and also created the Alberta Online Encyclopedia, comprising 84 multimedia websites (33 with Indigenous content). She was involved in the Canadian Museums Association and Assembly of First Nations Task Force on Museums and First Peoples; implemented three Alberta Museums Association symposia on the same subject the last being, “Re-inventing the Museum on Native Terms”; and created three internships to engage Indigenous young people in content creation for the Alberta Online Encyclopedia.  Publications include The Dictionary of British Portraiture (two volumes); From Realism to Abstraction: The Art of J. B. Taylor; The Rise and Fall of Emilio Picariello; The Frontier of Patriotism: Alberta and the First World War (co-editor and contributor); From Sojourners to Citizens: Alberta’s Italian History; poetry anthology Changing My Skin: Dark Elegies and Other Poems; and memoir My Theatre of Memory: A Life in Words. (Editor’s Note: Adriana Davies recently contributed an essay on the subject of Sveva Caetani centered around an exhibition of her work at The Caetani Centre in Vernon.]

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The British Columbia Review

Interim Editors, 2023-26: Trevor Marc Hughes (non-fiction), Brett Josef Grubisic (fiction)
Publisher: Richard Mackie

Formerly The Ormsby Review, The British Columbia Review is an on-line book review and journal service for BC writers and readers. The Advisory Board now consists of Jean Barman, Wade Davis, Robin Fisher, Barry Gough, Hugh Johnston, Kathy Mezei, Patricia Roy, and Graeme Wynn. Provincial Government Patron (since September 2018): Creative BC. Honorary Patron: Yosef Wosk. Scholarly Patron: SFU Graduate Liberal Studies. The British Columbia Review was founded in 2016 by Richard Mackie and Alan Twigg.

“Only connect.” – E.M. Forster

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Notes

1. Karen Huenemann, “Canada 150: Margaret Ormsby,” a blog that was part of the Canada’s Early Women Writers (CEWW), one of the seed projects for the Canadian Writing Research Collaboratory, a larger project based at the University of Alberta, in Edmonton. The mandate for CEWW is ultimately to include “all notable [female] English-language writers active before 1950 who lived in Canada or wrote about Canada, whatever their audience and genre, ranging from travel journalism and scientific writing to poetry and fiction” URL: https://ceww.wordpress.com/2017/05/01/canada-150-margaret-ormsby/, CWRC website, retrieved October 21, 2025. ↩︎
2. Margaret E. Prang, “Margaret Anchoreta Ormsby,” The Canadian Encyclopedia online, URL: https://thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/margaret-anchoretta-ormsby, retrieved October 20, 2025. ↩︎
3. Richard Mackie, “#184 Margaret Orsmby remembered,” in Ormsby Review, October 18, 2017 and revised September 26, 2018, URL: https://thebcreview.ca/2018/09/26/184-margaret-ormsby-remembered/, retrieved October 20. 2025. ↩︎
4. Anon., “Joan Heriot,” an article for Canada History Week, November 20-26, no date, Vernon Museum and Archives, URL: https://vernonmuseum.ca/joan-heriot/, retrieved October 20, 2025. ↩︎
5. Jan Waldon, “Joan Ethelwyn Heriot: An Outstanding Okanagan Artist and Naturalist,” in Okanagan History 74^th Edition of the Okanagan Historical Society founded 1925, 115-125. ↩︎
6. Ibid., 115. ↩︎
7. Ibid., 116. ↩︎
8. Gwyn Evans, “Boarding School Memories: Take a look back at Vernon’s first boarding school,” Vernon News, September 20, 2020, URL:  https://www.castanet.net/news/Vernon/311007/Take-a-look-back-at-Vernon-s-first-boarding-school, retrieved October 27, 2025. See also, Gwyneth Evans, “Joan Heriot,” The Museum and Archives of Vernon Blog Post, no date, URL: https://vernonmuseum.ca/joan-heriot/, retrieved October 27, 2025.
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9. For biographical details for Joan, see North Okanagan Naturalists’ Club tribute, URL: http://www.nonc.ca/ewExternalFiles/Joan%20Heriot.pdf; the British Columbia Archival Information Network, URL: Heriot, Joan – MemoryBC; both articles retrieved May 31, 2024. ↩︎
10. Cara Brady, “Celebrating 100 Years [Joan Heriot],” in Vernon Morning Star, January 4, 2011. ↩︎
11. Joan Heriot, “Untitled Remembrance of Sveva,” Vernon Archives MS 228 2000.  There are several versions in her fonds, two hand-written and a third in typescript form. The last is dated September 3, 1997. ↩︎
12. Jan Waldon, “Joan Ethelwyn Heriot: An Outstanding Okanagan Artist and Naturalist,” Okanagan History 74^th Edition of the Historical Society journal (2010), 115-125. ↩︎
13. Heriot, “Untitled Remembrance of Sveva,” 2. ↩︎
14. According to the school’s website, Crofton House was founded in 1898 by Dr. Jessie Gordon, who attended Newnham College, University of Cambridge, which was one of the first women’s colleges in England, and was a firm believer in education for women. ↩︎
15. See also Adriana A. Davies, “Sveva Caetani’s Recapitulation Series,” BC Review, June 17, 2024, URL: https://thebcreview.ca/2024/06/17/2201-caetani-davies/; and, Adriana A. Davies, “Sveva Caetani and Her Recapitulation Series,” ACCENTi, December 17, 2024, URL: https://accenti.ca/sveva-caetani-and-her-recapitulation-series/, retrieved October 27, 2025. ↩︎