Articles



On Death and Writing
Abstract: “Τ,ΗΕ TWENTIETH CENTURY SHALL BE the century of Can- ada!” So declaimed SЖirНWЕilfrid Laurier, Prime Minister of Canada, in 1904. ...

On Doukhobor Psalms
Abstract: Introduction ON DOUKHOBOR. PSALMS Mark Mealing I am dreaming of someone who entered a great garden and wandered happily, amazed ...

On Making The Meaning of Life: An Interview with Hugh Brody
Abstract: An interview with Hugh Brody—an anthropologist who has worked for over thirty years with Indigenous peoples in Canada and abroad—on the making of The Meaning of Life. His documentary examines Kwìkwèxwelhp Prison in the Fraser Valley of British Columbia. Operated in collaboration with the neighbouring Chehalis First Nation, Kwìkwèxwelhp (Kwi) is a minimum-security prison that offers programs to Indigenous and non-Indigenous prisoners based on Indigenous spiritual and cultural philosophies. A key figure in the men’s lives is Grandma Rita Leon, an elder-mentor whose approach is to separate the crime from the man. By the film’s end, some of the men have been successfully discharged from the prison; some have not. The Meaning of Life explores the challenging issues accompanying the journey to recovery while also reflecting on the meaning of a life lived in prison.

On Not Knowing: A Tale for the Time Being and the Politics of Imagining Lives After March 11
Abstract: On March 11, 2011, Japan was struck by a series of disasters including a 9.0 magnitude earthquake, a tsunami that devastated the northeast coast of Honshū, and the meltdown of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. This paper investigates the stakes involved in attempting to respond to stories in the aftermath of these devastating events. Through a discussion of Ruth Ozeki’s A Tale for the Time Being (2013), read as a novel about not knowing, it underlines how stories that are apprehended in Canada are not limited to Canadian stories alone. It suggests that reading Ozeki’s novel can foreground some of the ways we might take on, from our various locations, the fraught and difficult task of imagining lives of figures who are not present.

On Refugees, Running, and the Politics of Writing: An Interview with Lawrence Hill
Abstract: A former journalist and political speechwriter, Lawrence Hill has published ten books of fiction and non-fiction. The impact of his work as a novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist, and educator speaks to the power of writing to effect social change. “Artists have voices,” he affirms in the interview below, “and their voices can help influence—profoundly, sometimes—the way we see ourselves, and the way we see our country and the world and our roles in them.” Hill’s voice has contributed widely to pressing conversations about race, Black history, and social justice in North America for over two decades. Laura Moss, Brendan McCormack, and Lucia Lorenzi joined Hill to discuss his most recent novel, The Illegal (2015), which explores the contemporary refugee crisis in a global context, as part of a larger conversation about the conjunction of art and politics in Hill’s work as an author, public intellectual, and prominent voice within the Canadian literary community.

On the Edge: Michael Cook’s Newfoundland Trilogy
Abstract: MICHAEL COOK HAS WEAKNESSES AS ADRAMATIST that have drawn down upon him the obloquy of critics, and it is perhaps ...

On the Pastoral Challenge in Lowry’s The Forest Path to the Spring
Abstract: What characterizes the modern pastoral? One argument stresses its self-consciousness, making the reader ambivalent toward any latter-day voice that professes ...

On the Road with Thomson Highway’s Blues Harmonica in “Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing”
Abstract: Tomson Highway observes in the Production Notes that precede his play “Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing”: The ‘sound-scape’ of ...

On W. W. E. Ross
Abstract: Τ[HE DEDICATION of New Wave Canada by its editor, Raymond Souster, to W. WÄ.HE. Ross as Canada’s first modern poet ...

Ondaatje’s Metamorphoses: “In the Skin of a Lion”
Abstract: Ж ROBERT ALTER’S DESGRIPTION of contemporary fiction captures much, but not all, of Michael Ondaatje’s prize-winning novel, In the Skin ...