malcolm's katie: or, women are possessions and don't you forget it

I still don't like long poems. I think I get frustrated because deviations from the narrative line are so much harder to make sense of than in a novel. Maybe I'm just dopey. I've been reading the poetry of Isabella Valancy Crawford, however, and I like it quite a lot. She's very adept at capturing images for her readers and really taking time to construct a specific feeling of the colonial/confederation wilderness. Crawford has a real passion for landscape and even in her narrative long poem is fascinated by depicting the changing seasons.

Again, this entry may be on the short side as it is only one long poem and a few companion pieces.

Malcolm's Katie: A Love Story (and other poems)
by Isabella Valancy Crawford

The South Wind laid his moccasins aside,
Broke his gay calumet of flow'rs and cast
His useless wampum, beaded with cool dews,
Far from him, northward; his long, ruddy spear
Flung sunward, whence it came, and his soft locks
Of warm, fine haze grew silver as the birch.
His wigwam of green leaves began to shake.

In Isabella Valancy Crawford's famous long poem, Malcolm's Katie: A Love Story, the reader is introduced at the opening of the poem to Max and Katie, two young lovers secretly betrothed to each other. But Max is a poor labourer -- an axeman whose job is to fell the trees of the Canadian forest. Max is out logging many months at a time. Katie, conversely, is the daughter of a rich man (the Malcolm of the poem's title), and Max is convinced that Malcolm will never agree to the match. Katie promises Max that while he is away at the logging camp, she will convince her father to approve her marriage to Malcolm.

But Max has one last prediction before he leaves. He tells his beloved Katie that she is young, and that he is worried about her ability to commit to him. He predicts that a suitor will come while he is absent, and that this new suitor will test the extent to which Katie can really remain true to Max. This suitor does appear, and his name is Alfred. He knows Katie doesn't love him -- she tells him as much -- but he expresses to her that that doesn't really matter, because he is in love with her father's money and that love will find a way to conquer her doubts. Alfred engages in many manipulative techniques to attempt to secure the marriage -- saving Katie's life, telling Max that he is already betrothed to Katie, and even attempting to murder Max -- but in the end he is not successful and Max and Katie are united. Determining that Alfred is evil, Max kills him. Malcolm comes to support Katie's choice of a husband, and the first grandson is named Alfred in order to show that his evil can be conquered by love. That's the story of Malcolm's Katie in a nutshell, and now I want to talk about some of the interesting appropriations and commentaries that Crawford makes in the piece.

To start with, take a look at the passage I quoted at the opening of this blog entry. Note how Crawford appropriates aboriginal images as the "natural;" all the elements of the wilderness are coded native. The Winds are First Nations' Spirits, with the full gamut of wampum, wigwams, and moccasins. The mountains represent chiefs of the wilderness. Interestingly, though, the winter seems to be coded white. From the same section as the above quotation, we see:

"Esa! esa! shame upon you, Pale Face!
"Shame upon you, Moon of Evil Witches!
"Have you killed the happy, laughing Summer?
"Have you slain the mother of the flowers
"With your icy spells of might and magic?
"Wrapp'd her, mocking, in a rainbow blanket?
"Drown'd her in the frost mist of your anger?"

She later makes the analogy more obvious by referring to "Indian Summer" and contrasting that to "the cold Moon of Terror," whose whiteness is equated with Europeaness, elaborating on an attack on the Natives (Summer) by cruelty (Winter). What is interesting is that Crawford chooses to see this as a circular, cyclical relationship. She describes the summer as "always shot, and evermore returning," suggesting that there is no finality in death here -- does she mean that there will be an eventual reemergence of the native peoples, and that as summer returns so to do they? Later, this metaphor gets muddled. Winter weather is attributed to a North Wind Spirit, who is again appropriated from aboriginal custom, but he rails against the "White Squaw" of winter... Is she white as in European, or is she a Squaw (aboriginal) made of winter weather? But while the white man's place in this shifts, the elements as a whole remail native-tinged - for Crawford, to be aboriginal is to be of the land.

This interpretation highlighting the emergence of native peoples is supported by a passage wherein Max highlights some of the failures of Canada. He refers to:

A throne propp'd up with bleaching bones;
A country sav'd with smoking seas of blood;
A flag torn from the foe with wounds and death;
Or Commerce, with her housewife foot upon
Colossal bridge of slaughter'd savages.

Crawford here is making reference to the fact that Canada is built on the backs of dead aboriginal people. She highlights this in the poem in such an overt way that the message can't possibly be missed, and I feel like it must relate to the way she personifies the summer as native and the winter (or at least the killer of summer) as white.

Crawford also builds images in this poem of the rich experiencing progress only at the hands of the poor. For every blow of the axe in the wilderness, she writes, "Cities and palaces shall grow!" This is particularly poignant as it comes in the same section where Max is nearly killed by a falling tree -- Crawford seems intent on reminding us of the price of progress. Max is angry that gain for Katie's father has come relatively easily -- he needed only to come to the New World willing to work, and land was granted to him. Max works hard, but points out to Katie that it's hard to work for land you do not own. While hard work is valued in the colonies, the lack of free land places unexpected obstacles in Max's way.

I think, though, my major problem with this poem is that it supposes women as objects. Katie is Malcolm's until she is Max's -- for a while it seems as though she may be Alfred's -- but she is not her own person in any way. Though her will is ultimately met, it is only on (a) the good will of her father and (b) the cunning and strength of her fiance. This is a tale of the times, certainly, but Katie never seems opposed to this way of being in the world. Crawford is strong and bold enough to comment on the plight of the aboriginal population, but passes no judgement on the situation of women in the colony. I find this curious indeed.

I don't really think there's much point in commenting on the other poems here by Crawford -- the theme of nature-as-native is rehashed in the other poems, and for the most part they are otherwise rather quiet pastorals. Of these poems, Malcolm's Katie is clearly her most important work.

canadian poetry is all the rage

I needed a break from the bleakness of the modernist period, and so I shook off the modernist shackles and moved into poetry for a little bit. You deserve the truth, dear blog readers -- I'm not really very good with poetry. I kind of find it... annoying. I'm big on literature that says what it means, or that has a really developed sense of irony. I'm not really one for metaphors. I actually don't mind the stuff I've looked at for today's blog post. I find contemporary poetry royally irritating. But this is good -- I'm facing my literary fears and leaving behind novels for the next month while I work through all the poetry and drama on my list. I'll see you again, novels... On August 6th. Sigh.

Canadian Poetry: From the Beginnings Through the First World War
selected by Carole Gerson and Gwendolyn Davies

Instead of starting with a quote from the text as I usually do, I'm going to do a survey of the themes across this collection and use quotations from the different poets as appropriate. The text here is broken into two sections -- part one is Foundations, and part two is Continuations. Foundations is the colonial period, and Continuations is the confederation period leading into the moderns only so far as the immediate post-WWI period can be considered modernist in Canada.

The Foundations period is a time of celebrating Canada, and comparing Canada to England and America. Robert Hayman, for example, wrote of the comparisons between Newfoundland (where he was a governor) and England as early as 1628. Jonathan Odell spoke of leaving America and coming to Canada as the time he "renounced our native hostile shore" in his "Our Thirty-Ninth Wedding Anniversary" in 1810. The comparison to the homeland reminds the reader of the newness of Canada, and adds importance to the development of a national literature separate and apart from the poets' home countries.

The comparisons tend to focus on celebrating the freedom and the democratic spirit of Canada, as for example Alexander McLachlan writing "The Man Who Rose From Nothing" in 1874:

In other lands he's hardly knows,
For he's a product of our own;
Could grace a shanty or a throne,
The man who rose from nothing.

For most of the poets in this Foundations period, freedom is celebrated and preferable in comparison with the comforts of England -- better to be less comfortable but to own one's own land than to have creature comforts but live as a tenant. In the end, it seems, the real thing that Canada offers to immigrants is relative freedom compared to the oppressive circumstances of England / America.

Indeed, there seems to be a consciousness in the early poetry of Canada of the role of poets as nation-builders. For example, Griselda Tonge was a poet who lived from 1803-1825. She was the great-granddaughter of Deborah How Cottnam, an earlier Canadian poet, and she makes an effort in her own poetry to echo back to the work of her great-grandmother. She is on one hand simply acknowledging the good works of a family member, but she is also creating a Canadian cultural legacy, showing that there is a lineage to writing in Canada and creating a kind of literary dynasty.

Many of the celebratory poems were loosely-veiled or not-so-veiled forms of propaganda to encourage immigration to the new colonies. In 1750, the anonymous "Nova Scotia: A New Ballad" emerged to sing the praises of Nova Scotia and remind people that, in the new world:

No landlords are there the poor tenants to teaze,
No lawyers to bully, nor stewards to seize;
But each honest fellow's a landlord, and dares
To spend on himself the whole fruit of his cares.

This is clearly propaganda, but other celebratory poems are perhaps less overtly tools for the attraction of new immigrants. One example of such is the joyful "Annapolis-Royal" by Roger Viets, which was actually distributed in pamphlet form.

Towards the end of the Foundational period, a real social consciousness emerged from the poets. John Arthur Phillips, for example, focused on the plight of the female workers who were making less than their male counterparts (sound familiar?) in his "The Factory Girl" in 1873:

A man gets thrice the money,
But then "a man's a man,
And women surely can't expect
To earn as much as he can."
Of his hire the laborer's worthy,
Be that laborer who it may;
If a woman can do a man's work
She should have a man's full pay,
Not to be left to starve -- or sin --
On forty cents a day.

[...]

If she sins to escape her bondage
Is there room for wonder then.

There's also the anonymous "A Popular Creed" that satirizes the idea that money is what creates a good man, and that the worst crime a man can commit is the crime of poverty. Other emergent themes are not really surprising, because they echo from the literature of the period -- a deference to God, a focus on the natural world, natives as representatives of pre-White Canada, and a sense of optimism about the choices and options available to people through immigration. These themes in large part carry through to the poetry of the Continuations period, because Canadian poetry will likely always feature things like nature in some capacity, but there are shifts that occur.

First of all, there is a stronger sense of an emergent national identity, and with that comes the beginning of a questioning of the demands of the empire. For example, as William Wilfred Campbell argues in "The Lazarus of Empire" in 1899:

But lowest and last, with his area vast,
And horizon so servile and tame,
Sits the poor beggar Colonial
Who feeds on the crumbs of her fame.

[...]

How long, O how long, the dishonor,
The servile and suppliant place?
Are we Britons who batten upon her,
Or degenerate sons of the race?

Campbell is clearly concerned with the relationship to the empire, which is interestingly early in Canada's progress as a nation. This way of exploring the Canadian identity is supplemented by a fear of brain drain and the challenges of being loyal to Canada. Charles G.D. Roberts wrote of this phenomenon as early as 1886 in a poem called "The Poet Is Bidden to Manhattan Island." This poem about 19th Century brain drain ends with the narrator of the poem referring to the United States as "pastures new," and pointing out that a Canadian poet has "piped at home, where none could pay." In the US, then, there is financial support for poetry -- the Canadian poet must choose between staying at home to develop the Canadian poetic scene. There is a sense of responsibility in the artists in Canada in this period that they are creating a national art.

This development of Canadian poetry was really important to the works of Charles G.D. Roberts. In his poem "Aye!," for example, Roberts sets an Ode to Shelley in the Tantramar. New Brunswick is inserted into the canon, here, but furthermore the Canadian marshland is equated with Shelley -- both are considered poets in the writings of Roberts, which is an interesting idea and adds legitimacy to the burgeoning poetic scene of Canada.

Not all poets saw it this way. For Bliss Carman, for example, in his "The Ships of Saint John" from 1893, he depicts Canada as a "great nurse and mother." Canada, then, is something that gives you what you need to grown, but that you eventually must leave. In this poem, Carman makes it clear that dreams are something that you fulfill elsewhere, not in Canada. This is fitting for a writer who started in Canada but eventually settled down and became a professional writer in the United States. (In "Wild Geese," he revisits this theme by lusting and longing to be with the geese who fly south -- he views it as an exodus and longs to be a part of it.)

The other major theme that emerges, especially in the Confederation Poets, is a privileging of the rural over the urban. In "Among the Timothy," for example, Archibald Lampman contrasts the "blind grey streets" of the city with the "enchanted climes" of rural Canada. There is an emerging nostalgia for the natural world that develops as a response to the urbanization and industrialization of Canada.

I have no pretty way to end this post beyond saying that it's midnight and I'm tired. More poetry tomorrow, ladies and gentlemen.

feminism, femininity, and turn-of-the-century canada

I have been silent lo this last week because, frankly, I haven't been getting work done. But I have, however, been having a really good time -- which in the end is possibly more important for now. I'll have to get the lead out this weekend, but until then I'm enjoying having family in town and also reading two books, both of which I highly recommend to all known readers of this blog (and which local readers can borrow from me at will). One book is Lamb, by Christopher Moore. Lamb tells the tale of Biff, Christ's childhood pal, and the 'lost years' of Christ's life in the bible (birth to 30? 6 to 36? something like that) and attempts to humourously document where Christ's teachings had emerged from by the time Christ reappears in the bible. Moore sends Christ and Biff on a quest to find the three wise men, and in the process learn about Taoism, Confucianism, Buddhism, Hinduism, and possibly more faith systems but this is as far as I am in the book. It's sort of a beautiful idea of religious devotion through synthesis -- and it's freaking hilarious -- and if you liked Life of Pi you will fall for Lamb.

The other book that has me enamoured right now is Cracked, by the amazing Dr. Drew Pinsky. Dr. Drew is a board-certified physician and addiction medicine specialist (Loveline listeners, are you playing the home game?) and in this book he talks about not only the difficult and sometimes thankless work of treating addicts in a major psychiatric hospital in Los Angeles, but also his own battles with his emotional and psychological health. Pinsky wants to save everyone, and struggles not to take on the pain of his patients himself. The book explores the societal causes and ramifications of addiction, and deals heavily with examinations of childhood traumas and family patterns of addiction that lead to this sort of cyclical reexamination of the trauma. I don't buy into everything Drew is selling here -- it would be hard to come out of Carleton believing as strongly as he does in psychoanalytic therapy -- but the exploration is truly fascinating to read, and it examines a population many of us will never know or understand in real life. Pinsky discusses the failures of addiction medicine as much as the successes, and the difficulty in treating addicts is enlightening.

But now, it's back to the Confederation period, with a text that can only be described as incredible...

Sister Woman
by J. G. Sime

"You women don't know what you want," he said.

"Perhaps not," I said, "but you be sure we won't be happy till we get it."

He laughed.

"Be articulate then," he said.

"Did you ever try," I said to him, "to be articulate? It's not so easy as it sounds."

"You talk plenty, anyway," said he, "you women."

"Yes," I said, "that's the way we're learning to be articulate."

"It's a wearing way," he said, "for other people."

"Granted," said I. "But it's the only way. You have to talk to find out what you think, when you're a woman. Besides that, if we didn't tell you men, and keep on telling you, you'd never find out anything was wrong with us."

He sat and puffed.

"Don't think," I said apologetically, "I'm complaining. I'm not. I think you men are patient -- wonderfully, extraordinarily patient -- with us. But--"

"Now," he said, "for the grievance!"

And we both laughed.

"Suppose," he said, after a bit, "suppose you try and be articulate yourself. For me -- just for my benefit. I hate to have you women discontented -- it makes a world that's not worth living in. And more than that, I hate to see you with a private grievance of your own -- oh, yes, you have one sometimes! Stop being antagonistic. Be articulate and tell me. Perhaps it's something I can fix. Perhaps," he said hopefully, "it's something I would like to fix..."

"Perhaps," he said, "it's yours already, only you don't know it."

"You're very nice," I answered him. "You really are." And then I said: "It's not so easy!"

Then I said, "Shall I try?"

"Do," he said.

He puffed, and I sat looking at him.

"Well," I said, after a long pause for consideration, "I'll -- I'll skirt the question if you like."

"The Woman's Question?" he inquired.

"The woman's and the man's," I said. "It's the same thing. There's no difference."

... and that is the prologue to Sister Woman, a short story cycle written in Montreal at the turn of the twentieth century. Sister Woman is primarily about working class women during the first world war -- these are stories of girls employed in munitions factories, and as maids and cooks, seamstresses... and prostitutes. J.G. Sime shies away from no dark corners of the world of poor, primarily immigrant, women in Canada during the war. And that is what is so startling about this text; every few pages, I found myself checking and rechecking the publication date. In 1919, it would have been ballsy enough to write about working women period. Their stories simply wouldn't have been considered interesting beyond the purpose of war effort propaganda. It's radical enough to read about women earning independent wages in the factories. Add to that the fact that Sime explores the personal lives of these characters and exposes women who are working in the sex trade, who are contemplating abortion, who choose to be single parents rather than put a child up for adoption, who are carrying on affairs -- Sime writes frankly about the sexual and emotional lives of these women, and does so so overtly that you have to keep telling yourself, "No, this is not a Carol Shields book!"

Sime herself was a magnificent figure. A British immigrant, she had been employed by an ob/gyn in the UK as a receptionist, where she met a young medical student. She fell in love with him and followed him to Canada to work for him. He was married and a major figure of the Montreal establishment, but together they carried on what Sime calls an "irregular union" -- she was his mistress, but not in the traditional sense of the word, because Sime was a strong woman earning her own pay cheque and maintaining her own place of residence. She didn't rely on him for financial support. For 1907, it can only have been described as a modern relationship. In Sister Woman, Sime draws on this interest in "irregular unions" and explores the changing face of sexuality and relationships. She explores a psuedo-common-law set up, lots of mistresses, and many many women who choose to remain single rather than seek out a partner. All of these would have been surprising portrayals in 1919,when the book was published, and show just how forward-thinking Sime was.

Interestingly, though Sime explores working class women in factory and wage slave environments (especially the retail workers who are earning $7 / week and paying $10 / month to rent a squalid room from their employers), she doesn't condemn the experiences of these people. There's a sense that this is simply the way it has to be, and Sime is an observer rather than a critic. This can be a sticking point for a contemporary reader. There's no doubt that Sime sees the situation as negative -- she paints a picture in one story of a shop girl who has aged out of her position and now cannot even stretch her pay cheque to cover her expenses. But though there is injustice, there is no impetus to change.

Also, although these stories are all passionately and obsessively gynocentric -- there are very few men in the stories at all, and those who do appear tend to be hidden and shadowy figures rather than people who dominate the situations -- there is a question of whether these women can sustain society alone. Many of these stories were penned during wartime, when women really were the backbone of the economy in Canada. Sime seems unclear as to whether or not there is any chance for women to sustain this way of life. There is a crushing loneliness in this book -- the women in "irregular unions" know they can never have the stability of marriage, nor can they ever have children, and the freedom becomes less important than the loneliness as time goes by. Sime thinks women are strong enough to lead the economy, but seems concerned about the emotional and psychological cost of these choices in the long run. There is a maternal feminist bent to the period, and the childless Sime seems plagued by the question of whether or not a woman without children can possibly be living up to her full potential. One woman in the text feels this so keenly that she buys a child -- such is the desperation of the mothering instinct.

In this end, this book is important because it documents the lives of the invisible, but more importantly because it is really damn good. If you haven't read Sister Woman -- and I dare say few of us have -- you're missing out on a brilliant work of feminist and Canadian literature from a time period many of us would not think was fertile ground for such work.

dead white guy writes depressing stories about dead animals, news at eleven

Without even commenting on the content of this book, this one was a really, really painful read. Why? Well, ask the good people at New Canadian Library in the 1950s, who felt that the best way to set a text was with negligible margins and the tiniest font it is humanly possible to read without a magnifying glass. It's unlike anything else I've experienced. The text seems to be constructed with the end goal of causing migraines. I don't understand what I did to deserve this book, but here it is.

On the upside, the Sens are destined to lose tonight (down by two at the end of the first and playing away... good freaking luck, you masters of choking!) so at least something is right with the world. Senators status quo is, and always has been, the choke.

The Last Barrier and Other Stories
by Charles G.D. Roberts

For nature, though she works out almost all her ends by tragedy, is ceaselessly attentive to conceal the red marks of her violence.

-----

As he lay gasping and struggling on the hot pebbles, which scorched off the delicate bloom from his tender skin, a tall shape stooped over him, and a great hand, its fingers as long as his whole body, picked him up. He heard a vague reverberation, which was the voice of the shape saying, "A poor little beggar of a salmon -- but not badly hooked! He'll be none the worse, and perhaps none the wiser!" Then, with what seemed to him terrible and deadly violence, but what was really the most careful delicacy that the big hand was capable of, the hook was removed from his jaw, and he was tossed back into the water. Dizzy and half-stunned, he turned over on his back, head downward, and for a moment or two he was at the mercy of the current. Then, recovering from the shock, he righted himself, and swam frantically...

-----

Then, as he perceived that the porcupine had not seemed to notice them, the boy's hunting instinct revived. He stopped, set down the tin dinner pain, and picked up a stone.

"No, you don't, Jimmy!" intervened the girl, with mixed emotions of kindliness and caution, as she grabbed his wrists and dragged him along.

"Why, Sis?" protested the boy, hanging back, and looking over his shoulder longingly. "Jest let me fling a stone at him!"

"No!" said his sister, with decision. "He ain't a-hurtin' us, an' he's mindin' his own business."

If you really like becoming emotionally attached to characters for a page or two before they are killed in horrific and graphic ways before your very eyes, this is the collection for you. Charles G.D. Roberts pioneered the literary form known at the realist animal story. Unlike what we are used to in stories with animals as protagonists, the audience for this collection is clearly an adult one. These stories are not targeted at children. Furthermore, the animal characters in this text do not speak and they do not moralize. Roberts' animal heroes are not allegories for larger human society. They don't serve a human thematic or teach a human lesson. Instead, they are "simply" animals, if you will. They think and behave as do animals. They act out of instinct, rather than reason -- and Roberts does an exceedingly good job of describing what I imagine it must be like to act purely on instinct, not understanding why but feeling drawn to act regardless. Interestingly, though, Roberts does not leave his animals devoid of emotion. The animals feel familial loyalty, they experience fear, they have moments of great joy, they stumble over frustrations, and so on. Roberts does an interesting job of weaving together the idea that animals do not experience the world as do humans with the idea that animals can feel profoundly. In the end he creates extremely rich characters who never speak a word and scarcely understand why they act as they do.

So there are some very good points to this text. It was nice to see animals so richly characterized without anthropomorphism, and I think these stories really show Roberts' love for the Fredericton and Tantramar regions of New Brunswick and the animals he met on his walks here. That said, it's a violent and depressing collection of short stories. In Roberts' zeal to create naturalistic depictions of animal life, he forgets one of the hallmarks of fiction writing -- hope. For the first few stories, it's very easy to connect to the characters and find an attachment to the animal heroes. You care very much about them because they are beautifully created and sensitively drawn. And then they die. A lot. All of them. And by the third or fourth story, you no longer want to allow yourself to connect to the animal heroes who you know are going to die. And because the animals are not allegorical and the stories are not moralistic, much of the slaughter seems painfully unnecessary. You want to see good rewarded and evil punished, but there is no good and evil. So instead, personable creatures perish just as do the unpersonable. And while it's true to the reality of life in nature, it denies the reader a certain amount of hope or connection that keeps the reader connected to the text.

If there is an overarching theme to the narratives included in this collection, I think Roberts wants the reader to see the intricate connections between humans and the animal world, and between animals themselves. Throughout the text, the characters are saved by their relation to one another -- an accidental porcupine saves a hive full of bees, a fisherman sends a salmon on his way, a lynx knocks over a carnivorous plant and saves the insects inside, and so on. The accidental relationships between things is important to Roberts.

And echoing yesterday's post, there is a strong anti-urbanization note to this collection. The whole thing seems to be a comment on how we have lost our touch with the natural world, and the detailed sketches seem to be a means for Roberts to revisit the rural childhood he himself eventually left behind. More overtly, though, is an entire story devoted to the horrors of a child moving to Boston, whoring it up, and moving back to a small town to die in childbirth, leaving her tiny bastard to the care of her grandparents. The grandfather, so fixated on not allowing the child to make the mistakes of her mother, fakes an accident and nearly kills himself to manipulate her into staying in the rural community and not following her heart to the big city. It's a disturbing story, but it makes clear the suspicious nature with which Roberts eyes the urban world.

heartbreaking sketches of staggering genius

Well, it's official. Wacousta is on hold for a little while. Everytime I pick it up, I seem to have a narcoleptic reaction that is completely involuntary -- and completely stunting progress on my comprehensives. So I'm putting Wacousta to the side. The bad part of that is that I now get to be constantly aware of the reality that COLONIAL CANLIT IS NOT AND NEVER WILL BE BEHIND ME, but the good part is that I get to move into some slightly more contemporary stuff as I excitedly plunge headfirst into..

THE CONFEDERATION PERIOD. DUN-DUN-Duuuuuuuuuuuuuun.

Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town
by Stephen Leacock

Now and then, too, you could have heard them singing the steamer -- the voices of the girls and the men blended into unison by the distance, rising and falling in long-drawn melody: "O, Can-a-da.... O, Can-a-da!"

You may talk as you will about the intoning choirs of your European cathedrals, but the sound of "O Canada," borne across the waters of a silent lake at evening is good enough for those of us who know Mariposa.

I think just as they were singing like this: "O, Can-a-da," that word went round that the boat was sinking.

-----

Suicide is a thing that ought not to be committed without very careful thought. It often involves serious consequences, and in some cases brings pain to others than oneself.

I don't say that there is no justification for it. There often is. Anybody who has listened to certain kinds of poetry, or heard certain kinds of performances upon the concertina, will admit that these are some lives which ought not to be continued, and that even suicide has its brighter aspects. But to commit suicide on grounds of love is at best a very dubious experiment.

If you haven't read Sunshine Sketches since high school, it is imperative that you go out now and pick up a copy -- it'll run you about $3.00 at a used bookstore, or you can check out your favourite local library -- and reread it. Sunshine Sketches is going on my list of "CanLit Ruined by High School English Classes," along with The Stone Angel, The Stone Diaries, and Each Man's Son. The fact is that there are some books which, no matter how brilliant, fifteen year olds will never really relate to. I read Sunshine Sketches in high school and thought it was a cuteish collection of short stories, and then I put it aside and moved on. THIS RESPONSE WAS INCORRECT. If I hadn't had to study for comps, I may never have picked it up again -- ever. And that would have been a great shame, because it was only in rereading it today that I discovered just how complex and beautiful this book really is.

I think that in Canada, there are two distinct traditions of literature: the rural story, and the small town story. Urban stories have increased in prominence as society has urbanized, but that took a long time to come. Indeed, the rural and the small town narratives spent a lot of time eulogizing their own existence -- it was a long time after the urbanization of Canada that anyone really wanted to read urban narratives (Richler went a long way to creating interest in urban narratives, but stories of the city set outside Montreal took longer again to emerge). Sunshine Sketches, obviously, emerges from the small town tradition. Other writers have straddled the worlds -- Alice Munro, for example. But the pure small town narrative, like Anne of Green Gables, for example, is notable because it makes the town itself a character in the text, and the joy of reading the novel or short story collection comes not only from befriending the characters, but getting to know the town itself. One knows Avonlea long before one ever steps foot on Prince Edward Island. Likewise, one knows Mariposa long before one ever goes searching for it north of Toronto.

Sunshine Sketches is very profoundly a eulogy for small town Canada, and in many ways -- especially in the last story -- Leacock is scolding those of us who have left small towns behind and promised to return, but never have. Leacock, throughout this collection of stories, places the reader in the position of the cityslicker who was born in Mariposa (or a town like it), but has moved to the city and built a life there that neglects or forgets the small town roots. For Leacock, the urbanization of Canada is not merely a process of movement, but it's a process of forgetting. The city, to Leacock, is a memory-less place that is filled with people who are denying their own heritage. This plays into the Canadian myth of rurality (I invented the shit out of that word) -- the idea that we have assumed ourselves to be a culture of rural people. This is a natural assumption rooted in, as we can see from our colonial literature, our history as settler people. Canada was founded on the farm and the homestead... It has just taken us a very long time to move beyond that image of ourselves towards a more urbanized sense of ourselves. The images we pimp as "Canadian" are always landscape images -- we have a tendency to deny the extent to which we are a nation of cities strung together by rural communities, and there is an extent to which the "soul" of Canadian seems to be supposed to live in the small towns.

To Leacock, the city is a soul-crushing place. As his narrator says at the end of the collection:

What? It feels nervous and strange to be coming here again after all these years? It must indeed. No, don't bother to look at the reflection of your face in the window-pane shadowed by the night outside. Nobody could tell you now after all these years. Your face has changed in these long years of money-getting in the city. Perhaps if you had come back now and again, just at odd times, it wouldn't have been so.

A finger is being pointed here at the reader, and through the reader at anyone who has moved away from their rural roots. Leacock is accusing Canada for forgetting the "true" Canada in the push to become as urban as possible. The quest for money leads many young people out of small towns like Mariposa and, if they never make the effort to remember their roots, they change beyond recognition. By extension, the urbanization of Canada has changed us, as a nation, for the worse; the past self of Canada -- the rural, hard-working, protestant self -- would never recognize the new, urban Canada. Leacock writes a cautionary tale here, and by sketching his little tales hides withing amusing anecdotes the memory of small town Canada. We befriend Mariposa, and we remember how important it is not to deny our history, however mythical, as a people.