Canadian Lit Wits

            Books are an important part of a society’s culture as they capture the contemporary views of those living there.  Much like the rest of the world, Canada offers a literary tradition of its own.  For those of you who have never seen one of my blog posts (surprise, surprise) I am a major bibliophile.  This post is going to present a list of books that I feel are worth checking out from the annals of Canada’s library.

Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town – Stephen Leacock (1912)

Stephen Leacock
1869-1944

            To start off, I give you Canada’s answer to Mark Twain: Stephen Leacock.  This professor of Political Science at McGill University developed a reputation for his humorous stories like “My Financial Career” and anthologies like Literary Lapses and Nonsense Novels.  One book that has held a special place in Canadian hearts is Leacock’s book Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town, a collection of stories based off of Leacock’s observations of the prominent people in the Canadian town of Orillia.  In fact, it is said that there are people in Orillia who hate Leacock for making fun of their ancestors and equally families who are livid that he didn’t make fun of theirs!

            Sunshine Sketches follows the lives of the prominent townspeople in the fictional North Ontario town of Mariposa.  These tales vary from love between a young bank teller and the town judge’s daughter, the eventful sinking of a riverboat, and the whirlwind that was the election of 1911.  The major protagonist in this book is Josh Smith, a hotel and bar owner who rises from struggling to stay in business after locking the judge out of the bar to become a candidate in the town election.  These entire stories orbit around a central theme of the innocent past, this is heavily supported by the use of an unreliable narrator and the closing line of the last story, “L’Envoi. The Train to Mariposa: “…as we listen, the cry grows fainter and fainter in our ears and we are sitting here again in the leather chairs of the Mausoleum Club, talking of the little Town in the Sunshine we once knew” (Leacock, 336).

Home From the Vinyl Café – Stuart McLean (1998)

Stuart McLean
1948-2017

            Where Leacock is the Canadian answer to Mark Twain, Stuart McLean is Canada’s contemporary of Leacock.  McLean, who sadly passed this year from skin cancer, had made a career out of casual story telling, the kind of storytelling that feels more like a conversation with a close friend (including the odd tangent now-and-then) rather than a long, drawn out story.  Many older CBC Radio listeners would remember McLean from his appearances on Peter Gzowski’s program Morningside, providing stories of real discoveries from flower auctions and crane climbing to trailer parks for former barbershop singers.  While being able to reveal beauty in the everyday, McLean was also renowned for his reporting of serious events, most notably the Jonestown Massacre.  It is very hard to narrow down one book by Stuart McLean as each one is special for their own reasons, but the book that I am going to put on the list as a place holder would be his second volume in his Vinyl Café books Home From the Vinyl Café.

            Home from the Vinyl Café is an anthology about the life of a roadie turned record store owner named Dave, his wife Morley, and their two children Stephanie and Sam.  These stories, much like the rest of the series, orbit around the normal and abnormal, with such escapades like when Dave decides to stick his tongue to a pole on the roof of his house or the time Dave and Morley went to Holland to skate, back when they were just married.  The main reason I chose this book especially is it opens with what is considered to be the most famous story by McLean, “Dave Cooks the Turkey”.  If you have not read it yet, I highly recommend picking up the book or finding an audio file of McLean reading the story (an easy find on Spotify and iTunes).

           

“The Hockey Sweater” – Roch Carrier (1979)

            For anyone who grew up in Canada, the story “The Hockey Sweater” is more than a children’s story, but a Canadian institution.  Carrier’s story is a tale of childhood innocence and the love of Canada’s greatest pastime, hockey.  When a young boy’s Montreal Canadiens sweater is worn out from use, his mother writes to Eaton’s for a new one only to receive a sweater of the Toronto Maple Leafs.  The end result is adorably humorous and the story’s timelessness has made it a tale that is even used in ready comprehension classes in school.

Le Guarre? Yes, Sir! – Roch Carrier (1968)

Roch Carrier
1937-present

            Another Carrier work but morbidly different from “The Hockey Sweater”.  Where “The Hockey Sweater” portrays rural life as innocent and build around a strong sense of Christian virtue, Le Guerre? shows a world of bluntness and ignorance, where a funeral is seen as a party, father’s beat their children for sharing the same level of twisted blasphemy, and a man will chop his own hand off just to get out of being conscripted (the novel actually opens with this!).  The entire book is a commentary on the culture of Quebec during what is call Le Grand Noircire, a time when the Quebec government under the leadership of Maurice Duplessi emphasized the importance of the farm and placed social programs in the hands of the Roman Catholic Church.

            The novel Le Guarre? Yes, Sir! is the story of a single night when the body of a local man is brought back from the horrors of the Second World War, cultures clash between the villagers and the English soldiers who bring the body home.  At the same time, readers see the utter hypocrisy and chaos in the course of on night in the Quebec village.  As Carrier’s novel unfolds, we witness a clash of cultures as the French farmers despise the English for their cold, unfeeling appearance during the funeral; while the English despise the French for their rural life and what they think of as cowardice for not fighting in the war.

The National Dream – Pierre Berton (1970)

Pierre Berton
1920-2004

            Pierre Berton was and is an accompished Canadian writer.  Through out his writing carreer, Berton has chronicled Canada's history from the War of 1812 while covering events like the exploration of the Klondike, the Battle of Vimy Ridge and others.  For those who've never read Berton's work, his historical works celebrate the Canadian Spirit and the country's progress from colonial holding to statehood (something that if not done properly could border on Whiggish).

            In Canadian history, the iron horse and two lines of steel rails was the major force in Canada’s early years.  Canadian writer Pierre Berton’s book, The National Dream, paints an eloquent picture of early Canada, where only five provinces made up the dominion and the fear of American expansion into the new North West Territory and a promise made to British Columbia made the goal of building a transcontinental railway ever more urgent.  Here Sir John A. Macdonald plays the role of a political phoenix, falling from grace with the Pacific Scandal and eventually rising from the ashes to continue with the title of “The Old Chieftain”. 

Anne of Green Gables – L. M. Montgomery (1908)

L. M. Montgomery
1874-1942

            L. M. Montgomery, a provincial and national treasure for Canada and Prince Edward Island.  Writer of works like Emily of New Moon and (most of all) her books about an imaginative young girl named Anne and her life on Green Gables Farm.  Her works are so popular and influential that in Japan, young girls are taught English with an East Coast accent so they can mimic that of Montgomery’s greatest character Anne Shirley.

            Anne of Green Gables is the first novel in Montgomery’s series.  Anne arrives from an orphanage into the home of the Marila and Matthew Cuthbert, two siblings wanting a boy to help with the work of running Green Gables Farm.  While Mathew and Marila were expecting a boy, Anne proves to be more than what they needed and equally a handful with escapades like breaking a slate over Gilbert Blythe’s head for calling her carrots or nearly drowning in an old boat while recreating a scene from a Tennyson poem with her friends.  Reader’s of Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables fall in love with Anne’s innocence and feisty attitude, traits that have made Anne and the many books that chronicle her adventures long lasting works of Canadian literature.

Comic by Sarah Andersen