The "Great" Canaddian Novel?

I am currently reading The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood and part of the book is set in the 1940's around the depression ear, and I was really surprised to discover, at least as portrayed within the book that Canada went through a lot of the same struggles, hardships, and experiences as America around the time of the depression.

It is just never really occurred to me before, though in a way it certainly does make sense, just the sort of thing I had not contemplated prior to this, as within The Blind Assassin it portrays the same fight against the rising unions, and communists scare and other similar elements so often found in America literature about American culture during this time.

This had got me curious, and I would love to read more books along the same lines, are there any good Canadian books that are sort of similar to what The Great Gatsby (as one example) is to America?

Basically books that deal with aspects of Canadian culture and society, and while it does not exclusively have to be set in depression era, I am more interested just now in things which are set within the past I would say anything from between 1800's-early 1900's

While the books themselves could be contemporary if they are about roughly the time period I am looking for, I would be highly interested in books that were actually published within the time frame of my interest.

Gabrielle Roy's The Tin Flute (Bonheur D'Occasion) is a seminal piece of French Canadian literature that is about the working class French Canadian during WW2. The depression was still going on in Quebec at the time.

wiki:

"The Tin Flute (original French title Bonheur d'occasion, "secondhand happiness"), Gabrielle Roy’s first novel, is a classic of Canadian fiction. Imbued with Roy’s unique brand of compassion and compelling understanding, this moving story focuses on a family in the Saint-Henri slums of Montreal, its struggles to overcome poverty and ignorance, and its search for love.

An affecting story of familial tenderness, sacrifice, and survival during World War II, The Tin Flute won both the Governor General's Award and the Prix Femina of France. The novel was made into a critically acclaimed motion picture in 1983. Originally published in the French language as Bonheur d'occasion literally translated as 'secondhand happiness', which represent her sense of rebound love in the novel.

Roy's first novel, Bonheur d'occasion (1945), gave a starkly realistic portrait of the lives of people in Saint-Henri, a working-class neighbourhood of Montreal. The novel caused many Quebeckers to take a hard look at themselves and is regarded as the novel that helped lay the foundation for Quebec's Quiet Revolution of the 1960s. The original French version won her the prestigious Prix Femina in 1947. Published in English as The Tin Flute (1947), the book won the 1947 Governor General's Award for fiction as well as the Royal Society of Canada's Lorne Pierce Medal. Distributed in the United States, where it sold more than three-quarters of a million copies, the Literary Guild of America made The Tin Flute a feature book of the month in 1947. The book garnered so much attention that Roy returned to Manitoba to escape the publicity."

It is almost impossible for such a novel to exist, given the regional and ethnic divides of Canada (as well as linguistic), but I could give you some popular ones. The Stone Angel is a good one, as well as The Diviners by Margaret Lawrence, who sort of stood as a literary godmother to Atwood, Munro and a few others. The Tin Flute is a decent one in French that gets a good hold of much of Canada, as does Gabrielle Roy's other novel Street of Riches.

Buckler's The Mountain and the Valley seems to have the wilderness imagination covered, and Watson's The Double Hook is a good representation of the duality of British Columbia. As for French Canadian novelists with Quebec affiliations, Prochain Episode (Next Episode) by Hubert Aquin is the best example I can think of, and for Ontario, Ondaatje's In the Skin of a Lion seems to work best, though some find it a boring read.

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Originally Posted by JBI

It is almost impossible for such a novel to exist, given the regional and ethnic divides of Canada (as well as linguistic), but I could give you some popular ones. The Stone Angel is a good one, as well as The Diviners by Margaret Lawrence, who sort of stood as a literary godmother to Atwood, Munro and a few others. The Tin Flute is a decent one in French that gets a good hold of much of Canada, as does Gabrielle Roy's other novel Street of Riches.

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Ah yes, I do understand that there may not or cannot be anything exactly comparable, but mostly I am just interested in reading about various different aspects of Canadian culture and society historically speaking. Because I do think that it is interesting to learn about the backgrounds of other places and to widen my own reading horizons for I do read a great deal of American lit. Which I thoroughly enjoy, but would enjoy going beyond that as well.

And I suppose in part because of my reading of Atwood I am growing increasingly more interested in Canadian literature in general and would like to read more of it.

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Originally Posted by Dark Muse

Ah yes, I do understand that there may not or cannot be anything exactly comparable, but mostly I am just interested in reading about various different aspects of Canadian culture and society historically speaking. Because I do think that it is interesting to learn about the backgrounds of other places and to widen my own reading horizons for I do read a great deal of American lit. Which I thoroughly enjoy, but would enjoy going beyond that as well.

And I suppose in part because of my reading of Atwood I am growing increasingly more interested in Canadian literature in general and would like to read more of it.

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There is a collection of essays by Northrop Frye entitled The Bush Garden which has his Conclusion to the Literary History of Canada which is the fundamental work that Atwood frames herself on, so if you are interested that is a good starting point. Though I must say, up until the 1980s, the scene is very poetry-dominated, and even today I think is poetry dominated, and short story dominated, rather than novel-heavy.

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Originally Posted by JBI

There is a collection of essays by Northrop Frye entitled The Bush Garden which has his Conclusion to the Literary History of Canada which is the fundamental work that Atwood frames herself on, so if you are interested that is a good starting point. Though I must say, up until the 1980s, the scene is very poetry-dominated, and even today I think is poetry dominated, and short story dominated, rather than novel-heavy.

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Very interesting, and I will definitely have to look into that.

Thanks for the recommendations and information.

I've always enjoyed Mordecai Richler's collection of short stories, The Street. It is mainly concerned with growing up in a Montreal Jewish neighborhood during the 1940s-50s.

One thing JBI's post seems to, rightly, point out is that most modern criticism will reject the idea of the "Great Canadian Novel" as much as the "Great US Novel", but that doesn't mean that those novels lauded as such do not fulfill a certain role important to the concept.

What I mean is that, though "Moby-Dick" and "Huckleberry Finn" are not perfect or even representative of a consensual national identity, that they were claimed by so many individuals to hold this place says something about the country. We can learn as much about a country by a novel's content as we can from the public's reaction to it.

In cases Dante's "Divine Comedy" didn't provide enough evidence of Italian mores and hypocrisy, the subsequent banishing of the author is proof enough.

I have tried other Atwood novels and did finish them, but they made little impression on me as The Blind did. I would like to try some more Canadian novels, but with about a three-year to read backlog, I don't know when it will be.

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Originally Posted by Modest Proposal

One thing JBI's post seems to, rightly, point out is that most modern criticism will reject the idea of the "Great Canadian Novel" as much as the "Great US Novel", but that doesn't mean that those novels lauded as such do not fulfill a certain role important to the concept.

What I mean is that, though "Moby-Dick" and "Huckleberry Finn" are not perfect or even representative of a consensual national identity, that they were claimed by so many individuals to hold this place says something about the country. We can learn as much about a country by a novel's content as we can from the public's reaction to it.

In cases Dante's "Divine Comedy" didn't provide enough evidence of Italian mores and hypocrisy, the subsequent banishing of the author is proof enough.

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Sorry, I guess you misunderstood me. In truth, many from the 70s through the 80s were looking for the Great Canadian Novel - there is actually still a large faction of critics looking for something like that. The problem is though that no voice is able to really speak for Canada, and no single concept really ever holds out over the whole geography.

In truth, Melville, and Twain and whomever else function more closely than anything in Canada - the fact that I write in English, for instance, separates my writing from a little less than 1/3 of the population. The fact that I write in Ontario separates me further. The question of Canadian voice is by necessity controversial, as government policy and scholarly opinion are both of the mind that our government should not promote a single Canadian identity, and that a single Canadian identity should be challenged every time it is professed.

In that sense, every time any anthology is published, it is automatically controversial. Any time anybody makes a statement about Canadian literature, it is automatically suspect.

Spain have different idioms also and Dom Quixote is the "National novel" of Spain. Goethe cared about international literature and it is the national author of german.
The concepts of National Literature with the variations like Great Novel or National Author is often a dominating generalization, many of what is national left minorities out of their universe, so, it would not matter if 30% of the Canadians are speaking french, if a english novel could do it, they would...
now why not? It seems more like to do that national novels are american dreams to replace the national epics, but forgot epics are not just the grandeur, but the capacity to represent (to the point of propaganda) certain aspects that a country adopt. Right now, Canada and US are too stabilished to need those cultural movements of representation, foundation or change to produce such concept.

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Originally Posted by JBI

Sorry, I guess you misunderstood me. In truth, many from the 70s through the 80s were looking for the Great Canadian Novel - there is actually still a large faction of critics looking for something like that. The problem is though that no voice is able to really speak for Canada, and no single concept really ever holds out over the whole geography.

In truth, Melville, and Twain and whomever else function more closely than anything in Canada - the fact that I write in English, for instance, separates my writing from a little less than 1/3 of the population. The fact that I write in Ontario separates me further. The question of Canadian voice is by necessity controversial, as government policy and scholarly opinion are both of the mind that our government should not promote a single Canadian identity, and that a single Canadian identity should be challenged every time it is professed.

In that sense, every time any anthology is published, it is automatically controversial. Any time anybody makes a statement about Canadian literature, it is automatically suspect.

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That's interesting. For all of the US's talking about its diversity, terms like the American dream (though often specious) and national identity are probably a little easier to use here with a huge majority language.

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Originally Posted by JCamilo

Spain have different idioms also and Dom Quixote is the "National novel" of Spain. Goethe cared about international literature and it is the national author of german.
The concepts of National Literature with the variations like Great Novel or National Author is often a dominating generalization, many of what is national left minorities out of their universe, so, it would not matter if 30% of the Canadians are speaking french, if a english novel could do it, they would...
now why not? It seems more like to do that national novels are american dreams to replace the national epics, but forgot epics are not just the grandeur, but the capacity to represent (to the point of propaganda) certain aspects that a country adopt. Right now, Canada and US are too stabilished to need those cultural movements of representation, foundation or change to produce such concept.

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Canada has gone through many periods of conflict between the French and English Canadians that deeply polarized the country for centuries.

In Quebec I wouldn't be afraid to say that most of the population's loyalty is to their identity as Quebecers foremost and Canadian second, if at all. This is a place where we've had repeated votes in the past 30 years where as much as 49% of the population voted to separate. Quebec is the only province not to have endorsed the Canadian constitution. It is a place where 30 years ago, bombings were common place and a paramilitary coup was imminent. Most of the population of Quebec would reject a Canadian identity completely outright.

I think outsiders fail to understand how important provincial identity is within Canada. To be "Albertan", "Quebecois" or a "Marintimer" means more than being "Canadian" to many people, or at the least it is much easier to explain what it means to be those things. We're a nation drawn together practically out of necessity of defending ourselves against the USA.

How that is different from Basque or Catalan divisions in Spain? Many of them are not even part of Spain all the time, they had a civil war there, they still have a different language,etc. Or even America, with all struggles in Canada, had them a civil war? Would anyone claim that Melville writing was equally touching to the african population there (not to forget Melville was bordeline racist reggarding them) or the indians?
You can certainly identify several "national" works who would end in a culture that was full of diversity, with several idioms, internal conflicts...
And you can easily pinpoint Brazil, considerable cultural diversity here, much more than Canada, and we never had a full scale separatist movement and never had a national romance, albeit, once or while, it happened to people believe it could be fabricated.

The cultural diversity isn't the point. The point is that there is no unifying cultural idea or raison-d'etre within Canada. Don Quixote could make a claim to being a "national" book, although I don't think anything about it represents any sort of Spanish national idea, by virtue of just being old and influential. No one work could ever make a claim to representing any sort of Canadian national idea, the way so many works in the USA have addressed the American dream.

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Originally Posted by OrphanPip

The cultural diversity isn't the point. The point is that there is no unifying cultural idea or raison-d'etre within Canada. Don Quixote could make a claim to being a "national" book, although I don't think anything about it represents any sort of Spanish national idea, by virtue of just being old and influential. No one work could ever make a claim to representing any sort of Canadian national idea, the way so many works in the USA have addressed the American dream.

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It's not even that though - history itself is very strange; where does one start? Do we say Canadian identity begins with Aboriginals who were essentially excluded from it, and still are for the most part? Or does it begin with the French, or the British - in the Maritimes, or Ontario, or somewhere else. With the US there is the early idea of the shot that sets off the revolution, then the beginning of the mass expansion, then the civil war, then the culmination of the expansion, essentially getting rid of Native identity altogether.

We can go further in Canada - does it start from Europe, or from Asia, does it start from Confederation or from the War of Vimy Ridge? What about the new arrivals, and the not so new ethnic arrivals - what of the mass flood of Eastern Europeans, notably Ukranians into the Prairies?

The truth is, the bulk of the best texts of Canadian literature function to undermine ideas of Canadian identity and tradition as ethnically biased - there is no one voice that has ever managed to sustain itself. The only reason for the prevalence of Atwood is because in the 90s she sold out and became a "World author" abandoning most of her Canadian affiliations. And even then, she never even came close to representing anything other than Ontario.


The US is different, but as the above poster said, the one defining thing about Canada is that we don't want to be like the people to the south of us. Atwood once wrote something along the lines of "The difference between Americans and Canadians is that Americans think they are above of Mexico, and we know Americans are bellow us." And I think that holds rather well within the literary discourse.

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It is a place where 30 years ago, bombings were common place and a paramilitary coup was imminent.

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What? Are you kidding? a paramilitary coup? (and imminent too?)

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Originally Posted by Etienne

What? Are you kidding? a paramilitary coup? (and imminent too?)

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Not a likely successful one, but that was the FLQs longterm goal.

Edit: Although, I should amend my post to say 40 years ago. Imminent is a bit too strong a word too.

American novels deal with American Dream? You mean Steinbeck Mice, Melville Whale, Hawthorne Letter... One could say Mark Twain was such, but how come Moby Dick represents the american dream is beyond me.
And c'mom, the story is confuse? What about USA history? It does not starts with Hawai, you know.

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Originally Posted by OrphanPip

Not a likely successful one, but that was the FLQs longterm goal.

Edit: Although, I should amend my post to say 40 years ago. Imminent is a bit too strong a word too.

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I think the movement though, with an exception of a very, very small fringe was more diplomatic and artistic, as it still is today. Think about all the Quebec writers that emerged at the time, and the tradition that was able to solidify.

Quite simply put, French Canadian literature was able to emerge far more strongly than Anglo-literature in that era, especially in prose. And now, with post-modernism, it is still, on a book by book basis, arguably much stronger. The sort of creativity that came out of France that made it to Quebec works much better, I would argue, than the American concepts that move up here.

So for instance, all the strange political ties of each movement in the US as a fringe make it to here, so you have mediocre poets from 3rd generation Hong Kong families reading Frank Chin, and thinking that somehow Canadian letters has excluded them, and horribly stereotyped them, and aught to pay them more attention.

That's a problem of course - when race becomes a literature. It's really an American concept, but during the 90s there was a tendency to try and put out all these mediocre anthologies of any categorical poet available.

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Originally Posted by JBI

I think the movement though, with an exception of a very, very small fringe was more diplomatic and artistic, as it still is today. Think about all the Quebec writers that emerged at the time, and the tradition that was able to solidify.

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People would like to remember it as a small fringe. However, when the FLQ kidnapped the British trade envoy, there were mass protest in Montreal in support of the FLQ.

It was the assassination of Pierre LaPorte, the enactment of the War Measures Act, and the PQ's subsequent public rejection of violent tactics that put the nail into the coffin of the FLQ's desire for a violent revolution. Today, at least, "FLQ" is reduced to an edgy tag for angsty teens who like to vandalize war memorials and statues of prime ministers.

Quebec nationalism has certainly had a positive effect on the artistic output of the province.

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Originally Posted by JCamilo

American novels deal with American Dream? You mean Steinbeck Mice, Melville Whale, Hawthorne Letter... One could say Mark Twain was such, but how come Moby Dick represents the american dream is beyond me.
And c'mom, the story is confuse? What about USA history? It does not starts with Hawai, you know.

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I wrote, "so many deal with." Clearly I did not imply that all American novels deal with the American dream. I was talking about the presence and abundance of national ideas within the USA.

The Great Gretzky

Not sure if its what your looking for but Fifth Business by Robertson Davies is my favorite Canadian novel first of a trilogy also the cunning man by him is good.

I am acutally on the 3rd book of the Deptford Trilogy, World of Wonders and so far I have enjoyed all three of the book and find they are quite witty and interesting.

I also have The Rebel Angel from the Cornish trilogy but haven't read that one yet.