“You are not mad,” poet Robin Skelton once said to Susan Musgrave: “You are a poet.” At the time – the late sixties – the wiry teenager was hospitalized because everyone else thought she was indeed mad. Musgrave, like so many independent women who’ve spent their lifetimes battling conformity, is one of the 30 artists profiled in The Broad Canvas: Portraits of Women by Women by Victoria writer Linda Rogers and photographer Barbara Pedrick. Others portrayed include Salish basket weaver Maggie Jack, novelist Jane Rule, and singer/songwriter Daisy Debolt. The last word: The Broad Canvas is inspiration, strongly flavoured with the free spirit of the West Coast. (And yes, the title’s “broad” is an intentional pun.)