Cougar Annie's Garden: An Overview

A remote garden blooms at the head of Hesquiat Harbour on the West Coast of Vancouver Island. Surrounded by rainforest and mountains, this garden has endured for over ninety years. It is powerful with story.

In 1915, Ada Annie Rae-Arthur came to this part of the coast as a pioneer settler, with three young children and her husband Willie. She set to work clearing the land. Over the years, a garden of strange, meandering beauty slowly emerged from the deep forest. Cougars prowled nearby, and Ada Annie shot dozens of them. She became known as Cougar Annie.

Wily and stubborn, she operated a small nursery garden here, planting hundreds of varieties of shrubs and perennials, becoming known for her dahlias, which she shipped all across Canada. She opened a small general store and she ran a post office from her home, outfoxing everyone who thought this was impossible.

Eight of Ada Annie’s eleven children were born in the Rae-Arthur cabin in the garden. Three died in infancy, another son drowned as a teenager in the harbour. After Willie also drowned in 1936, Ada Annie remarried, eventually outliving and outworking four different husbands.

Although a logging road came through this area in 1974, it never connected to outside roads. Cougar Annie’s garden remained accessible only by boat or, in later years, by float plane. As the years passed, the place became increasingly isolated as the inhabitants of the nearby First Nations village of Hesquiat gradually moved away, relocating down the coast to Hot Springs Cove. But Cougar Annie stayed on.

In nearly seventy years on the West Coast, she left her garden only a handful of times. She remained there until she was in her mid-nineties. By then she was nearly blind, but still able to find her way around the garden, knowing by instinct the location of all her plants, remembering all their Latin names. She died in 1985.

Many strands of history and coastal lore combine in Margaret Horsfield’s book to weave together Cougar Annie’s story. Many tales are told of the grim courage, blind hope and bitter losses that have shaped history here. Many images and stories convey the heart-stopping beauty of this place, its isolation, and its powerful appeal.

In her book, Margaret Horsfield sets the story of Cougar Annie' s Garden into its historical context. She examines what was happening on the West Coast at the time, she reveals many ventures and dreams that briefly flourished, and then died, in this area. Her book shows how Cougar Annie’s garden took shape when Hesquiat Harbour was a much busier place than today; when the Roman Catholic missionary held great sway; when hope ran high for development and change on the coast; when a coastal steamer came by every ten days. As time passed, the coast changed; the hopes for a road, for development in this remote area, disappeared – but all the while Cougar Annie remained.

Her garden became dramatically overgrown as she aged. The fast- growing rainforest moved in and began to take over, blurring the outline of her garden beds, overwhelming cultivated areas. By the time of her death, its fate seemed to be sealed: the garden would surely die with her, reclaimed by the wilderness.

Not so. Thanks to the persistence and hard work and vision of Peter Buckland, who took over the property, the garden has survived. For years following the death of Cougar Annie, he worked with his chainsaw, usually alone and far too often in the pouring rain, reshaping and reclaiming and revitalising the garden.

And so, remarkably, Cougar Annie’s Garden tells of a dream that lives on. Against all odds, this remarkable garden has been restored, and it now enters a new era, thriving with fresh energy and beauty.

Margaret Horsfield won the Roderick Haig-Brown Prize at the 2000 BC Book Awards for Cougar Annie's Garden. This prize is awarded annually to the book contributing most to the understanding and appreciation of British Columbia.

Now in its third printing, Cougar Annie's Garden continues to cast its spell. The writing and the photography in this full-colour book are of the highest quality. The book appeals to a wide audience, including gardeners, local history buffs, and anyone interested in the West Coast and its tall tales. The book has become a classic of coastal history.