"Elmay" was home-schooled by her scholarly parents, learning draughtsmanship first at four years of age. At age six she sold her first piece of artwork and she won her first writing contest by age eight. Elmay is well known in Canada for her custom paintings, stage sets and wall murals.

As a little girl, Elmay was dubbed "the second Emily Carr of Canada" by the Honorable Mark Kearley, who along with Emily Carr, were founding members of the Federation of Canadian Artists.

Elmay is best known worldwide however for her colourfully illustrated children's stories, each delicately hand written in rhyming couplets. "Speck the Brownie Here and There" and the "Speck the Brownie and his Friends" story collection were both quickly in demand by school libraries across Canada. These became part of a larger thirty-five story series, thirteen of which have been published to date.

Elmay also penned and illustrated the well received "Ronny meets the Sasquatch" and it's little brother book "Ronny meets the Cadborosaurus", both part of a larger children story and novel series. "Ronny meets the Sasquatch" was also on the recommended reading list for Canadian schools and became part of the teacher training curriculum at the University of British Columbia.

Elmay's Collection totals over one hundred and fifty titles, celebrating seven full decades of amazing fictional and non-fictional story worlds, written about and colourfully depicted in her Children's Books, Novels and short stories along with a gallery of over one hundred related paintings.

Elmay's daughter Lisa has started to digitally clean and reproduce her Mother's works in multiple formats and make them available to the public through her site at speckthebrownie.com. In addition to the titles currently digitized you will find Elmay's full Biography, appreciative notes from Children and Parents, drawing tools and even Art Decorated Teddy Bears, T-Shirts & Pillows.

Lisa's intention is to add as many of Elmay's children's stories, novels and poems as possible to speckthebrownie.com and as time permits provide a gallery of Elmay's artistic expressions of fantasy, nature and historical sites. All posted alongside a hand-written journal of Elmay's "other life", the one of wilderness, motherhood, ranching, and gruelling homestead construction.

Pencil Sketches of Historical Sites in Victoria, B.C.
Book Review, Province Newspaper Dec. 3, 1971
Interview, Citizen Newspaper c. 2000

Titles currently available in digital formats at: speckthebrownie.com

The Elf Rodeo
Rose Fairy Finds Friends
Brownie Snow Games
The Musical Ride
Speck and the Mouse
Ronny meets the Cadborosaurus

Elmay's full biography can be found here.