Some key themes we detected in the letter are:  Isolation, remote locations, and anxiety about school success:

“I have six children to (sic) whom school is an impossibility

and my only neighbour on the island has a child also.

We live on Valdes Island…and we have no school, store, or

post office. Our nearest school is over two miles away on

Galiano Island but the intervening water in Portier Pass is

very treacherous and unsafe. The tides flow through at

from four to eight knots an hour and there are bad

whirlpools in it. It is out of the question that the children could row there,

and we have no motorboat, so I have been trying to teach

them myself. ” (Mrs. E.M. Patterson (name changed) , Valdes Island, BC. 1923)