Canadian Wild Flowers

Canadian Wild Flowers, written by Mary Louise Phillips and directed by Layne Kriwoken, runs at Duncan United Church Heritage Hall February 20 to March 8. The second of three Canadian plays being produced this season by Mercury Players, the play is based on a true story set at the time of Confederation.
It is 1865 in Upper Canada, and young widow Agnes FitzGibbon, mother of six, must find the courage and hope to meet the challenges of poverty, sexism and loneliness. A talented amateur painter, she sets out to create the very first book of Canadian wildflowers. As a Victorian woman in a man’s world, she faces her publisher’s reluctance, her mother’s disapproval and her own self-doubt. When she learns that no press exists in the colony to print colour illustrations, Agnes fears her dream will wither on the vine. When she enlists her three young daughters to help hand paint each page, Agnes discovers the importance of family and of belief in her dream…and changes the nature of Canadian book publishing forever.