Molly Lamb-Bobak

The View from the Bridge

Vancouver-born artist Molly Lamb Bobak (1920–2014) was the first Canadian woman war artist. The daughter of celebrated photographer Harold Mortimer-Lamb, Bobak longed to be a painter like her family friend the Group of Seven’s A.Y. Jackson. In 1942 Bobak joined the Canadian Women’s Army Corps and was sent overseas to London where she depicted female military training as well as dynamic scenes of marches and parades—subject matter for which she would later be well known.

Upon her return from the U.K., Bobak married fellow war artist Bruno Bobak. In 1960 their family moved to Fredericton, New Brunswick, where they lived and worked for over half a century. In one of the first generations of Canadian women who earned their livings as artists, Bobak became known for her paintings, drawings, and watercolours. For her role in the Second World War and many other accomplishments she was elected to the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts in 1973 and presented with the Order of Canada in 1995.