The Strange vision of the North in Canada- a lecture

The North in Canadian Literature, art and culture

• I am not an English professor, nor a film expert
• Historian, who has long taught courses in International Studies and security issues
• I have long had an interest in the Canadian north because of my own background
• Grew up on a farm in southern Ontario
• as a child I would hear family stories about different parts of the Canadian north
• Great grandfather worked as a hunting guide in Northern Ontario
• My uncle owned a silver mine in the Yukon
• Growing up: stories by my cousins about encounters with grizzlies, or working in the Arctic, with people who had never seen a tree before
• This background has shaped the interests of both my sister and I
• My sister is a film-maker who wrote a mystery novel, Strange Things Done, set in the Yukon. I want to talk about the north today, and how the idea of the north has been reflected in Canadian culture
• in a sense, this is a ridiculous lecture, because this is one of the most studied topics in Canadian literature and culture studies
• For anyone interested in this topic, I have listed a book on the topic on the board, which I highly recommend
• Grace, Sherrill. Canada and the Idea of North. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2001.
• today I am not taking a deep dive into this secondary literature
• rather I want to begin by talking about my own thoughts on some key stories and novels
• I need to begin by discussing the Canadian identity

Canadian Nationalism

• It is a commonplace to say that Canada –or at least English Canada- has a relatively weak sense of national identity
• The nation has a thin population strung out a long border, so that most Canadians are close to the United States
• Given that English Canadians are linguistically and culturally similar to their American cousins, there is a constant questioning as to whether the nation can maintain its distinctness
• Well known saying: “As American as apple pie, as Canadian as possible under the circumstances.”
• The idea of the north has been central to how Canadians have defined themselves as a nation, very consciously in opposition to the United States
• I want to illustrate certain contradictions within Canadian nationalism, and Canada’s relationship to its north
• Examine how these contradictions have played out in literature, film and art
• The topic is far too broad to cover in a single lecture
• Will therefore confine myself to a few key topics
• I want to follow a guide, the famous Canadian novelist
•  Margaret Atwood, the Canadian novelist, who wrote a book on this topic entitled Strange Things
• She looked at the image of the north in Canada by examining three topics: the lost Franklin expedition of 1845, and how it has been depicted in literature; the windigo, a cannibal spirit in Canadian folk-belief, a topic that I have also done work on; and the depiction of women in Canadian literature
• I want to update her work by drawing on more recent literature, as well as film and art
• The key point is too show how there are contradictions in how Canadians imagine the north
• And these contradictions and tensions shape the choices that are made about life in the north
• Look at the reality of the north, as well as efforts to develop the north
• Show how something that seems quite ephemeral –a cultural idea- can have a profound impact.

This Hour has 22 Minutes

• I will begin this exploration in a very different way than Margaret Atwood
• not with great literature or film, but with a comedy program from nearly two decades ago called “this Hour has 22 minutes.”
• This show was the creation of the comedian Rick Mercer
• Here is his picture: he looks harmless enough
• I can assure you that he is a dangerous man
• Has a talent for getting people to do idiotic things
• The premise of the show was quite simple
• Rick Mercer traveled across the United States and talks with Americans about Canada
• He managed to have them say the most ridiculous things
• A U.S. governor congratulated Canada on its 200^th mile of paved road
• People signed a petition to stop the polar bear hunt in downtown Toronto
• Ludicrous: Toronto is Canada’s biggest city with nearly 5 million people
• One of the people who signed the petition was a Harvard faculty member
• In other shows, Americans congratulate Canadians for the arrival of FM radio, fax machines, power steering and a second area code
• The shows made the point that Americans know far less about Canada than their Canadian counterparts know about the U.S.
• Aside: I always wondered if you couldn’t find equally responses by Canadians to absurd statements that touched on the biased vision that Canadians had of the United States
• I have shared this idea with students in my Canadian history class
• They have little empathy for this idea
• It’s hard not to be overwhelmed by the ridiculous things that people say
• They suggest that Canada should abandon the 20 hour clock
• You might not believe that people would say these things
• But I suggest that you watch the program on YouTube
• But if you watch the show enough, you start to notice a theme in what the Americans are told is true, and what Canadians then laugh at them for
• It’s about the north
• And I would suggest that the show reveals a fundamental contradiction in Canadian’s perception of the North

Contradictions within the image of the North

• The North has long been central to how Canada has been perceived
• Voltaire had two famous quotes about Canada
• The first: “”Shakespeare is a drunken savage with some imagination whose plays please only in London and Canada.””
• Then there is his definition of Canada: “a few acres of snow”
• This image has long been contradicted by Canada’s settlement patterns
• The population has been strung along the border, on an East West axis
• It is a truism to say that most of Canada’s population lives within a 100 miles of the U.S. border
• So in some respects, most of Canada’s population is relatively southern
• As Canadians have sought to define a separate identity, they have turned to the north
• There are a number of contradictions in this
• One is that at the same time they choose symbols for Canada that are northern, they resent it when others perceive Canadians as living in a northern wilderness
• This is what I think you perceive in the humor of “This Hour has 22 minutes.”
• The jokes about Toronto restarting the polar bear hunt, or Canadians adopting a policy of abandoning the elderly on ice floes in the north, suggest that Canadians resent the fact that their nation is equated with the north
• Another challenges is that many Canadians know remarkably little about the north
• Images of the north tend to be abstractions, as we will discuss when I talk about the most famous Canadian art movement, the Group of Seven
• Moreover, the north is a region in which a large proportion of the population is Indigenous
• Knowing the north, therefore, should entail a sustained engagement with First Nations issues
• As I will discuss, the north is replete with discussions of First Nations peoples, but they are often tokens
• This is only changing now
• Moreover, there is another reason why the image of the north is a difficult one for Canadian nationalists
• Insecurities around Canada’s identity tend to focus on its relationship with the United States, which Canadian nationalists describe as an “Empire,” not only in a military and economic sense, but also in a cultural one
• The “North,” could be a potent cultural symbol for a distinct identity
• Except that any honest discussion of the north entails discussing a history characterized by imperialism
• To claim the north, Canadians resettled Inuit peoples hundreds of miles north, to help establish Canada’s claim to northern islands
• To integrate First Nations into Canada’s cultural fabric, children were taken from their parents and placed in residential schools
• There they were alienated from their traditions, and often suffered both physical and sexual abuse
• recently more than a thousand Indigenous graves have been found, where children were buried at a few residential schools. Similar surveys are now taking place at many other schools now.
• The point that I am making is that the North is both a powerful symbol for Canadian identity, and a problematic one
• One can certainly see that in Canadian literature

Madness and the idea of the north: Robert Service

• If there is one common theme in literature about the north it is that of madness
• The north is a place that drives people to insanity
• You can read this as a common theme in the poetry of Robert Service
• Service’s works are still popular in Canada, even though you are unlikely to read them in universities
• To be frank, they are not great literature
• Jingoistic, simplistic depictions of women, and language that is more energetic than sophisticated
• But it still has a strong popular following
• Part of the reason for this: power of a theme: man against the elements
• Many of his poems dealt with this theme
• Stories of survival
• One part of this theme was the struggle to maintain sanity in this environment
• Certain common themes in national literature
• Once took a course on Russian literature, and I ended it wondering why the horses always died in Russian novels
• Something rather similar in Canadian literature
• If you read a Canadian novel in which a small group or family spend time in the north: someone will go insane
• Some of the most famous tales of the north are those that focus around madness
• You can see this reflected in what stories English Canadians have appropriated from the First Nations

Windigo

• You can see this in the stories of the windigo, a cannibal spirit in the belief systems of the Algonquians
• The windigo is the spirit of winter, which can enter a person and transform them into an a-social being, a cannibal with a heart of ice
• I have written a book on this topic called Dangerous spirits
• Looks at numerous cases of people who were believed to be windigos, the majority of whom were murdered
• I looked at how the European fur traders perceived these cases
• What was interesting was how absolutely uninterested they were in them
• People would bring in family members who were turning into windigos
• Leave them at the post
• Imagine: someone brings someone to you and says: I’m worried that this person is turning into a cannibal. Will you take them?
• And you do.
• Didn’t always work out so well: one missionary account
• Another case in Eastern Quebec: actual cannibalism
• Fur traders only interested in regaining the furs
• Kept the young murderer on as an employee
• The windigo a real, if mysterious, cultural and religious belief
• Can talk a great deal about it
• But what I want to note is that it was seized upon as a common theme in Canadian literature
• You can find windigo tales in 19^th century poetry, multiple Canadian novels, even video games
• My conversation with a colleague at an education conference
• He was reading a gay historical novel that featured a windigo, called Firelands
• The theme has now been seized upon by Indigenous authors
• They try to turn the motif on its head
• The windigo is the spirit of selfishness
• And they associate this spirit with white, European culture, and particular the priests in the residential schools who abused native children
• See, for example, the novel Hanaway
• This motif is powerful, I think, because it associates the north with madness
• Most Canadians love the north, but fear it at the same time
• This is why you see windigos appearing at the most unexpected places in Canadian novels

The Mad Trapper

• I want to make this point that madness is a common way to depict the north by talking about the work of Rudy Wiebe
• He is a well-known Canadian novelist, celebrated for his novel called Big Bear, which dealt with the 1885 uprising in Western Canada
• Also has written many other well-respected novels, most of which have a historical theme
• One of his most popular was called The Mad Trapper
• This story was a fictionalized account of an actual historical event from the early twentieth century
• In 1931 a man who called himself Albert Johnson was questioned by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in Canada’s remote NorthWest Territories
• Then went into a remote area of the Canadian north where he built a small cabin
• Entered into a dispute with the local native peoples over trapping lines
• These lines are very important in the north, because access to furs is essential to Northern peoples’ livelihoods
• This brought the police to Johnson’s cabin
• He refused to answer the door
• The police traveled five days to get a search warrant and to return
• When they tried to open the door, Johnson shot RCMP officer King
• The police fled with King, who later recovered
• This sparked the greatest manhunt in the north’s history
• It is this story that Wiebe tells in his work
• This story has been a subject of fascination, because people have been awed by Albert Johnson’s achievements
• How did he survive?
• When the police returned, he shot at them
• They dynamited his tiny cabin
• The pictures of this survived, and are included in Wiebe’s book
• The cabin was completely destroyed
• Somehow Albert escaped
• Tried to flee on foot to Alaska
• Would have succeeded if not for the use of airplanes
• This story of an epic manhunt in the Canadian north was picked up by radio reporters
• Quickly received global news coverage
• This is not the place to tell the incredible story of that hunt
• Seven weeks through the north
• The pursuers had dog sleds, but could hardly keep up with Johnson who only had his feet
• Many clever tricks that Johnson played: his trail split in two.
• The pursuers divided and followed both trails for hours, only to find that they had gone in a giant circle
• Johnson had an almost superhuman ability to travel and survive
• Suffice it to say that Johnson ultimately died
• He has remained a mystery
• During the entire chase, no-one ever heard Johnson say a single word
• Laughed after he shot a police officer
• They never knew who he was
• Clear that he was not actually named Albert Johnson
• Multiple films and books written about him

Wiebe’s Version of the Mad Trapper

• Wiebe’s version of the Mad Trapper takes the viewpoint of the Mounties who are hunting him
• Also the Gwichin trappers who were hired by the government to assist the posse
• The Royal Canadian Mounted Police –or Mounties- are an iconic Canadian institution
• Wiebe’s novel depicts them as heroes, struggling to protect the native peoples from a madman who has succumbed to the north
• But Wiebe’s work suggests that Albert Johnson was not just any man
• As the man-hunt progresses, the Gwichin become increasingly convinced that Albert Johnson is inhuman
• He survived having his cabin dynamited
• Once, when trapped in a fire-fight, he escaped at night by scaling a sheer, ice-covered cliff
• His endurance was super-human
• He was a windigo
• Wiebe has a description of a dialogue between the Gwichin assistant and the lead Mountie, in which the Gwichin tries to persuade the Mountie that they are not hunting a man, and that they should abandon the hunt (p. 108)
• I want to read a section of this dialogue
• Beginning with the Mountie, who is trying to persuade his native tracker that Johnson is just a man: “Listen,” Millen said fiercely, “you saw Johnson on that raft, you talked to him at his cabin. He’s a human being!”
• “He was,” Nerysoo said. “Then. You blew him up and he isn’t dead, he walks through here and fifty dogs don’t smell or hear him.”
• “He’s just taunting us, he knows we. . .”
• “Yeah,” Nerysoo was staring at the cliffs, “that’s what they do. I never thought a white would . . . be careful, now it’s white it could get you too.”
• “He shot King,” Millen said, hard. “He has to be brought in, punished.”
• “He is punished. He’s always alone.”
• Of course, that was not going to happen, because as every Canadian knows, the Mounties always get their man
• But this tapped into a powerful Canadian motif about the north

The Reality of the Mad Trapper

• Of course, there are issues of accuracy with both Wiebe’s account, 
• Not all Canadian native peoples believe in the windigo
• It is an Algonquin belief
• And the Gwichin are an Athabascan people
• They don’t believe in the windigo
• Unlikely that the dialogue that Wiebe constructs could have happened
• Still, the overall mystery is true, and has perhaps grown with time
• In 2007 the corpse’s body was exhumed
• Underwent a forensic review
• Testing found something highly unusual
• The man had extensive gold dental work, of the kind that was only available in the 1920s to someone of high socioeconomic status, in major cities
• Very strange that someone of the background would wind up a fugitive in the north

The Northern Lights

• I will just use one other novel to make this point
• Howard Norman’s, The Northern Lights
• I hesitate to use Norman, as he is an American author
• But he is probably also one of the most successful authors writing books with a Canadian setting
• I want to talk about his first novel, The Northern Lights
• Story set in the far north of Manitoba
• A woman lives in an isolated village
• Her husband gone for most of the year, during which time he is supposedly working as a map maker throughout the north, although the family has its doubts about this
• These doubts are confirmed as the story continues
• Revealed that the man has built an isolated cabin deep in the woods
• There he spends endless days constructing musical instruments
• Strange contrast between the harsh physical environment of the north, and the interior of this man’s cabin, which is filled with one musical instrument after another, the embodiment of culture
• The family ultimately flees the north, and the settles in Toronto
• There they encounter a Cree family, and the protagonist learns key skills from the Cree father, such as how to hunt for ducks for food in the city parks
• Ultimately, the father follows the family to the south, and the story moves to its climax
• In many ways, this novel undermines many of the typical conventions of the north
• I’ll return to this in a moment
• But what is not different is the idea of madness
• Margaret Atwood talks about the North being depicted as a woman, which can seduce a man
• Another sign of the ambivalence that many Canadians have towards the north
• In the Northern Lights, the main character’s father has been seduced by the isolation and remoteness of the north

The Invisibility of Indigenous Peoples

• One other common characteristic of the north in Canadian novels and culture, until recently, was the scarcity of depictions of first peoples
• Many of you may have heard of the Group of Seven, without a doubt the most famous art movement in Canadian history
• The group of seven were famous for their iconic images of the Canadian landscape, and in particular of the north
• The core members met as employees of a design firm in 1914
• All strongly influenced by impressionism
• May seem strange to say, but before this the Canadian north was not thought to be a subject worthy to be painted
• At first the group focused their work on Northern Ontario, Muskoka cottage country
• But in the 1920s the group spread across the country, and deep into the country’s north
• The most famous painter in the group was perhaps Tom Thompson
• He died in mysterious circumstances
• Found in the water after a canoe trip
• Seemed to have had a serious blow to the head
• Some people believed that he had fell from his canoe and struck his head, and then drowned
• Many people believed that he had been murdered
• Margaret Atwood emphasizes how his death in a typical northern environment played into ideals about the north as a dangerous and mysterious environment
• They mystery around his death only increased the mystique around the Group of Seven 
• They have become not only an art movement, but an element of Canadian nationalism
• Their work is used in many different forms, to establish a Canadian context
• At the same time their work has been heavily criticized, because it depicted a north that was a clean slate, with no history, and free of all people
• Their images of mountains, lakes and rivers almost never include people
• one of the most frequent observations that people make about their work is that the native people are invisible
• The only exception to this was the work of the Canadian painter Emily Carr
• She was affiliated with the Group of Seven, but was never one of its core members
• Her work focused heavily on the artistic legacy of the native peoples of the Pacific Northwest
• knew their legends and beliefs well
• I think that it’s significant, however, that her work did not focus on the north as such
• One can see similar patterns in older literature
• Dan Simmons, an American author, recently wrote a book called Terror, about the lost Franklin expedition
• The sole survivor of the expedition is saved by an Inuit woman
• This is a common theme in Canadian literature as well
• When native peoples are included, they are often presented through a single character, usually a woman, who has a relationship with the lead character
• This weaves an Indigenous person into the story, without entailing a sustained engagement with Indigenous social issues

Rethinking the North

• This is a very short list of works that I have covered
• Sherril Grace’s work provides a thorough treatment for anyone who wants to study this more deeply
• But I think that I have made the point that the north is a problematic symbol of Canadian identity, and that the ambivalent relationship that most Canadians have to the north is reflected in many ways in literature
• I also want to say that this image is changing
• Not all works have abandoned the tropes of the past
• More recent works tend to rethink the north
• I think of Rudy Wiebe’s A Discovery of Strangers
• Tells the story of an expedition by John Franklin in 1820, nearly 25 years before he died leading three ships to find the Northwest passage
• This novel consciously tries to undermine almost every standard presentation of the north
• Rather than beginning the story with the Europeans, the opening of the story begins by describing the experiences of caribou, who are being hunted by wolves
• They story then shifts to Indigenous women, who are skeptical about the benefits of the new strangers who have emerged into their land, and who seem quite helpless
• Only then are the strangers themselves introduced
• Wiebe’s work represents a conscious effort to rethink the presentation of the north

Indigenous Authors and Film-makers

• Over the last fifteen years a series of native authors and film-makers have also emerged
• One of the best known has been Joseph Boyden, who wrote Three Day Road
• Tells the story of two Cree friends who join Canadian forces to become snipers during the First World War
• In this context, the north is seen as a place of social responsibility and healing, while Europe is described as place of madness, an inversion of the typical trope
• There is a windigo in the story, but this windigo does not emerge from the frozen north, but rather from experience of contact with the Europeans
• Sadly, Boyden’s work has become controversial as questions have been raised about whether he is truly Indigenous
• But the broader point is that native authors tend to describe the north as a social world
• Very different from southern authors, who focus on the natural world
• Indigenous authors tend to focus on the social problems of the region
• Northern authors also focus on the region’s history, and there is a strong sense of the past
• Some of you may have seen the wonderful film Fast Runner, a film by an Inuit director that recounted an Indigenous myth
• Strong sense of history in that story
• There is currently a major rethinking of the Canadian north in artistic production in multiple formats
• It will be very interesting to see how that changes how the image of the north is used in Canadian nationalism

Northern Development

• These cultural ideals are not abstractions
• They have profound impacts on a nation’s economic life
• I promised a lecture that focused on Canada’s art and literature
• But one cannot separate these ideals from the policies they engender, from the flooded lands of Northern Quebec, to the vast industrial projects of Northern Alberta
• I traveled in the early 2000s to Fort McMurray in Northern Alberta
• Few people in the United States are aware that the nation from which they import the most oil is not Saudi Arabia, but Canada
• The largest single source of that oil lies in the Oil Sands of Northern Alberta and Saskatchewan
• What is unique about that oil is that it is not pumped but mined
• The first three hundred feet of the soil are removed
• Then the sand and oil, which are mixed together, are scooped up by giant bulldozers
• Put into trucks which are the size of houses
• The sand is then taken and processed to release the oil
• This takes a great deal of energy, so more carbon dioxide is released to create this oil
• Also water is used from the MacKenzie river
• It is heated, and the steam removes the oil from the sand
• Afterwards the water is polluted, and pumped into a giant ponds
• No-one knows how to clean this water
• Toxic: two years ago a large flock of birds landed on the ponds and they quickly died
• The scale of the work is huge
• I have stood on the edge of a pit, and looked down to see the trucks driving below me
• They are literally the size of houses, but they looked like children’s toys far below me
• The total amount of land that contains oil and may be mined is roughly the size of the U.S. state of Florida
• It is a huge reserve, which could greatly contribute to the United States’ energy independence, and which has greatly strengthened Canada’s economic position
• Canada is doing well know, despite the current economic difficulties
• Canada is not moving to restrict this development, despite not only the green house gases that it produces, but also the damage it does to the northern environment
• If you look at economic maps of the north, you have a very different idea of the north
• It becomes a region filled with mines, hydro-electric dams, and petroleum development
• There is currently a discussion of building a huge gas pipeline from the extreme north to the United States
• The Canadian province of Quebec built huge dams in the James Bay region to supply the American market with electricity, despite the fact that aboriginal lands that have been used for thousands of years were flooded
• The scale of these development projects are difficult to describe
• I believe that they are permitted to go forward in part because the ambivalence that many Canadians have to the north
• The fact that people are not intimately aware with the experience of Canada’s northern peoples
• I believe, however, that these images are changing now
• It will be interesting to see if these new attitudes towards the north shape government policy
• In the last fifteen years, the environmental movement in Canada has truly challenged unrestricted development in the tar sands
• Part of the reason for this, is a change in Canadian’s relationship with the north
• You can see this in many ways: the creation of Nunavut, a self-governing region in the Canadian Arctic, which has nearly 39,000 people living in an area the size of Western Europe

• In this sense, I think that not only is artistic production changing how people think about the north, but also the political and cultural rise of northern peoples is changing art
• It’s a very exciting time to examine the depiction of the north

If you are interested in Canadian folklore or Indigenous religion, please see my own work:

Smallman, S. (2015). Dangerous spirits: The windigo in myth and history. Heritage House Publishing Co.