● Introduction: the Literature of Survival
● Native Canadian Mythology
● Early Colonial Literature
● The Literature of Nation-Building
● Canada in the Ascendant
● Canadian Literature in the Modern World

Canadian Literature in the Modern World

A Painting by Authur Lismer

Canada's most famous and successful writers have appeared in the postwar period. Canada itself of course finished the war as a confident, wealthy and influential nation, and played a major role in building postwar international institutions. Canadian nationhood was no longer in doubt from an outside perspective, but from the inside the nature of that nation and the strength of its institutions remained somewhat in question. Ethnic, region and gender were the topics Canadian literature investigated in a process of self-analysis. A description of some of the best known of these writers follows.

Margaret Laurence

Margaret Laurence was born in Manitoba but spent many years living in Africa, and began writing there. Her ideas were shaped by the political environment she found there, and the position of women in such societies. This experience also gave her a sense of her own cultural "difference" from the culture she found herself in. This idea of a "difference" which must be respected between peoples, races, regions, the sexes, generations is a powerful one in her work, and makes her highly representative of contemporary Canada with its emphasis on "multiculturalism". When she returned to Canada she wrote a series of books set in the fictional small town of Manawaka in Manitoba. Her 1974 novel in this series, The Diviners, tells of the reconciliation between a middle aged woman, her lower—class adoptive parents, her grown-up child, her estranged husband and her French/native American lover. Across the series Laurence effectively portrays the arrival of successive waves of settlers: Native, Scots, English, Irish, Ukrainian, Asian, thus challenging the emphasis of Canadian culture on dealing with the "two solitudes" (French and English) and emphasizing instead a more complicated mix of cultures.

Alice Munro Lake Huron

Alice Munro (1931-) is one of the best Canadian novelists and short—story writers. Her first collection of short stories, Dance of the Happy Shades, appeared in 1968. Now she is till active in her writing career. Her latest book, Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage was published in 2001 and was a great success. Munro was born and brought up in a small town in Ontario, a farming district not far from Lake Huron. She began publishing short stories about that part of the country while she was still a student at the University of Western Ontario. Her novel Lives of Girls and Women was published in 1971, followed by her second collection of short storied, Something I've Been Meaning to Tell You in 1974. Since then her short fiction has appeared even more widely in Canada and the United States. She publishes regularly in the New Yorker. The strength of her fiction arises partially from its vivid sense of regional focus, most of her stories being set in Huron County, Ontario. Her theme has often been the dilemmas of the adolescent girl coming to terms with family and small town. Her more recent work has addressed the problems of middle age, of women alone and of the elderly. Characteristic of her style is the search for some revelatory gesture by which an event is illuminated and given personal significance. The two collections of stories, Friend of My Youth (1990) and Open Secrets (1994), have shown her continuing development as a writer and have extended her fame far beyond Canada's borders.

Margaret Atwood, with whose views on Canadian literature we began this chapter, is the most successful and internationally recognized of current Canadian novelists. Perhaps her best-known novel is The Handmaid's Tale (1985), a fantasy set in the future in which women have lost all political rights and become the possessions of men, valued only for their ability to bear children. Those fertile women are known as "handmaids". The novel tells the story of one such "handmaid" called "Offered" (property of Fred) who rebels against the system.

Mordecai Richler grew up in Montreal's Jewish community, part of the complex ethnic geography of Canada's second biggest city, with its wealthy English—dominated business community, its numerically dominant French Catholic community, as well as many other groups. His novel The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (1959) thought to be among his best, is a highly critical view of Montreal society in which his hero, Duddy Kravitz, cheats his way to success. As an English—speaking Jew, Richler has been very critical of the Quebec independence movement, feeling that it ignores the fact that not all Quebecois are French or French—speaking.

Mordecai Richler	Sainte-Carmen of the Main	Michel Tremblay

Michel Tremblay’s work derives from the same Montreal setting as Richler's, but from the French perspective. His 1976 play, Sainte Carmen de La Main (Saint Carmen of the Main) tells the story of a pop singer trying to gain success on a Montreal street known as "The Main", with a reputation for low-class nightlife.

Michael Ondaatje

Michael Ondaatje was born in Sri Lanka, went to school in England and moved to Canada as a young man. He first found success as poet. Among his poetry is The Collected Works of Billy the Kid, an innovative retelling of the story of the American outlaw of the Old West, William Bonny. But he is now best-known as novelist, particularly for The English Patient, a novel set in the countries around the Mediterranean during the Second World War, telling the story of desert romance from the perspective of the terribly injured "English patient" of the title. This was made into a phenomenally successful film in 1997.

The Egnlish Patient	The English Patient

Farley Mowat

One of the biggest selling authors in Canada is Farley Mowat. His adventure stories for older children introduce many Canadians to the wilder parts of their country (the vast majority of Canadians live in cities in the south). His novel Lost in the Barrens tells the story of two children, one a white boy of Scottish descent, one a Native Canadian, who become lost in the northern wilderness, but through determination and by using all their knowledge of the north they survive the winter and make their way back to safety. With their technical details of survival techniques and wilderness travel, and their insight into the natural world, Mowat's exciting books initiate many Canadians into the idea that life is a struggle to survive.

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