Canadian Literature

Abstract

The pressures on Canadian writers have been more diverse than in some of the other excolonies: there have been two ‘home cultures’, French and British — as well as the presence of the strongly-developing American culture to the immediate south. The fact that the French and the British (one should perhaps say English and Scottish) cultures exist side by side raises the question of whether there is, even now, such a thing as a single, indigenous Canadian culture. Certainly it is only very recently that young Canadian writers have felt anything like confidence that there is — and this is largely owing to the emergence of an international feeling (among young people) that racial and political differences belong to an older generation. … And yet from this supposedly ‘boring’, archaic and ‘square’ society emerged the first ‘unsquare’, new-style prime minister in the history of the modem world: Pierre Elliott Trudeau (Olof Palme of Sweden was the next). It is true that when a Canadian politician was kidnapped and subsequently killed by Canadian separatists Trudeau in mid-crisis looked (and spoke and acted), suddenly, much like any other conventional politician — but although now tired and bowing out, he was once different.