We are thrilled to announce the arrival of Canadian Literature, Issue 250. Nicholas Bradley writes in his editorial:
For whatever reason, I’ve been in a funk, a slump, all year. But in May, in the midst of a cool, damp late spring, no summer in sight, I travelled twice to sunny destinations. First I visited Kamloops and then I flew to Orange County. Two locations with comparable topographies of hills and canyons, a shared palette of tans and greens. Two places in different countries with vastly different populations. Two settings, nearly two and a half thousand kilometres apart, linked by the happenstance of travel. In the lingering era of COVID-19, any trip is unusual, for me at least, and my double excursion took on more significance than I should have allowed. It promised too much.
. . .
The city of Kamloops occupies the traditional territory of Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc. The former Kamloops Indian Residential School sits across the river from where I sat to do some work. A few years ago I might have guessed that most Canadians, if they had heard of Kamloops at all, associated it with a minor-league hockey team. (English professors think of Wilson’s Swamp Angel [1954].) But now it has become widely known as Canada engages, however haltingly, with its past and present as a colonizing entity. Since the terrible summer of 2021, Kamloops has become synonymous with unmarked graves—their existence and the dismissal thereof—and with the atrocities of that School and the national system of which it was a part. The prime minister expressed regret for the deaths associated with the School, and for choosing to spend the first National Day for Truth and Reconciliation on holiday in Tofino rather than at Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc. Being sorry, saying sorry: it was possible once to joke about a reflexive Canadian deference, but now public apologies have become a central part of governmental attempts to atone for injustices perpetrated by the state (and foibles committed by its representatives). Such gestures can be seen as both necessary and empty. Sorry: in everyday speech, that stereotypically Canadian word is an almost phatic term. Just something we say.
– Nicholas Bradley, “Feeling Sorry”
This issue also features:
- Articles by Gage Karahkwí:io Diabo, Smokii Sumac and Sam McKegney, Erin Akerman, Julie Rak, Julie St-Laurent, as well as Brendan McCormack‘s introduction of a new CanLit Guide
- Poetry by Nina Berkhout, Robert Hilles, Kyle Gervais, Brandon Marlon, Rocco de Giacomo, and Michael V. Smith
- Opinion & Notes by Marta Dvo?ák
- Reviews by Melanie Dennis Unrau and Kelly Shepherd, Suzanne James, Danielle Taschereau Mamers, Sarah Lawson Welsh, Sylvie Vranckx, J. A. Weingarten, Alexandra Kovacs, Jérôme Melançon, Emily Arvay, Robert McGill, Kelly Shepherd, Neil Surkan, Lauren Rule Maxwell, Jenny Kerber, Krzysztof Majer, Asha Jeffers, Wendy Roy, Gage Karahkwí:io Diabo, Irene Gammel and Jason Wang, Margery Fee, and Carole Gerson
The new issue can be ordered through our online store at canlit.ca/support/purchase/single-issues. Happy reading!