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Letter from Canada

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

George Feaver
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Extract

BRITISH READERS MAY RECOLLECT MARTIN'S POIGNANT expression of regret, in Voltaire's Candide, that the French and English had felt it necessary to go to war in North America over ‘quelques arpents de neige vers le Canada’. Martin captures the sense of an enduring European perception of Canada — an indeterminate expanse of ice and snow held firmly in winter's Arctic grip throughout much of the year. His sardonic utterance reminds us of the overseas rivalries of Canada's European parents out of which were born its historic ‘two solitudes’, its distinct linguistic and cultural communities, one proudly French, the other British in descent, their entwined affairs remaining persistently refractory long after the eventual emergence from its colonial past of present-day Canada.

Type
Articles
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 23 , Issue 4 , 01 October 1988 , pp. 471 - 486
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 1988

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References

1 As indeed it has in the artistic sensibilities of leading Canadian literary figures. Reviewing Margaret Atwood and Robert Weaver (eds), The Oxford Book of Canadian Short Stores in English, London, 1987, in the Times Literary Supplement, 12 June 1987, John Clute found the stories marked by ‘a sense of real solitude’, noting that "Wherever they may live, Canadian writers seem to reside at the edge of a void’.

2 Albinski, Henry S, ‘The Canadian Political Scene’, Current History, 03, 1988, p. 110.Google Scholar

3 See the special issue of Canadian Public Policy, Summer, 1988, ‘The Meech Lake Accord’.

4 A useful survey is John Crispo (ed.), Free Trade: The Real Story, Toronto, 1988.

5 Durham, N.C., Duke University Press, 1986.

6 For an institutional perspective, see Williams, Douglas E (ed.), Constitution, Government and Society in Canada: Selected Essays by Alan C. Cairns, Toronto, 1988.Google Scholar