Abstract
Introduction
In 2010 Canada lost several of its most gifted and famous literary authors. The playwright David French was an expatriate Newfoundlander who lived and worked in Toronto where he died on 4 December. His most famous play, Leaving Home (1972), was the first in a cycle of plays about the generational conflict and cultural estrangement amongst members of the Mercer family who are forced to move from Newfoundland to Toronto to find work. French’s humorous and powerful dramas established him as Canada’s most prominent stage realist and won him many awards and honours, including an appointment to the Order of Canada. P. K. (Patricia Kathleen) Page, one of Canada’s greatest poets, passed away at her home in Victoria, British Columbia on 14 January. Born in England in 1916, she moved with her family to Canada and began her distinguished career as a poet in the 1940s. She was also an award-winning writer of fiction, prose and children’s books, as well as a gifted painter and a librettist for opera. Praised for the wit, wisdom and moral sensibility in her literary work, Page received numerous honours, including a Governor General’s Award, the Order of Canada and the Lieutenant Governor’s Award. The novelist and playwright Paul Quarrington, who died in Toronto on 21 January, was also a musician and scriptwriter. His novels, which often focused on the world of sports and entertainment, won several honours, including the 1989 Governor General’s Literary Award and the Stephen Leacock Award for Humor. Helen Weinzweig, an award-winning Toronto author and Polish émigré, died in February. Her highly literary and surreal style distinguished her as one of Canada’s most inventive fiction writers. Her works were among the first to address the unique experiences of women in the 1960s-70s. Georges Laberge, a publishing innovator in the Québec and Canadian book industries, died in Montréal on 13 February. He crafted and launched the Book Publishing Industry Development Program, the largest government programme for Canadian books.
Several impressive works of fiction appeared this year by both established authors and emerging talents. The Governor General’s Award was won by Dianne Warren’s novel, Sweet Water, which describes the lives of many inhabitants of the small prairie town of Juliet, Saskatchewan, over the course of a single day. The author’s witty and laconic style was lauded as an essential element in the dramatization of her characters’ struggles to maintain their dignity in the face of crushing adversity. Through a story that is apt for today’s hard economic times, Sandra Birdsell’s Waiting for Joe (2009), another award runner-up, describes a couple’s hopeless confrontation of economic and emotional bankruptcy as they run on the lam from creditors and an elderly, dependent parent. The novelist’s technique of using alternate points of view was praised as superbly effective in this critique of heartland values. Another finalist, Emma Donoghue’s Room, is a brilliant and terrifying work about a mother and her five-year-old son who are kept captive in a secret room by a psychopath who had kidnapped the woman and fathered the child. The novel, which is narrated from the child’s perspective, was singled out as an original and potent celebration of the resilient bond between parent and child.
The First Nations author Drew Hayden Taylor uses the Ojibway mythological trickster Nanabush as the focus for his novel, Motorcycles & Sweetgrass, an award runner-up. Taylor’s story of how a contemporary version of this culture hero transforms the pain of an aboriginal community has been praised as a masterful and soulful mythic comedy. Kathleen Winter’s Annabel, another finalist, tells the story of the conflicted identity of Wayne Blake, born a hermaphrodite in late 1960s Labrador. The novelist’s spare treatment of the complex and sensitive subject matter was singled out for its sensitivity, rich description and sheer honesty.
Johanna Skibsrud’s The Sentimentalists (2009) won the Scotiabank Giller Prize for fiction. The novel deals with a daughter’s exploration of the horrific memories of the Vietnam War as experienced by her father, who is slipping into senility in the twilight of his life. The work was singled out as poetically elegant and the debut of an impressive new voice in Canadian fiction. A runner-up for the prize, David Bergen’s The Matter with Morris portrays the emotional disintegration of a man who plummets into mid-life crisis after a painful divorce and the death of his son in Afghanistan. The author was praised for his wise and deftly ironic characterization of the novel’s complex protagonist. Alexander MacLeod’s Light Lifting, another finalist, is a debut collection of seven short stories that focus on the dark and light moments in the real world of work and families who inhabit cities and communities that are on the brink of disintegration. Critics lauded various literary qualities of the work such as its vivid, concrete language and skilful combination of lyric and narrative in the structure of the stories. Runner-up Sarah Selcky’s This Cake Is for the Party is a collection of tales that track the foibles of a young generation led astray by consumerism and questionable cultural ideals. The author was praised for the wit and economy of expression in her subtle characterizations in the stories. Kathleen Winter’s novel Annabel was also a finalist for the prize.
In the field of poetry there were numerous publications that presented a wide range of subject matter and impressive mastery of technique. The Governor General’s Award was won by Richard Greene’s Boxing the Compass (2009), a collection that uses a Maritime context to present poems that are mid-life contemplations, eloquent narratives and political explorations. The work was praised for its intellectual richness and spiritual depth which were particularly evident in the collection’s one long poem, “Over the Border”. Runner-up Michael Harris’ Circus, is a collection that uses the glitzy drama and colourful personalities of the Big Top to illuminate the uncertainty and anarchy that lie behind the false glamour of life. The work was extolled for its distinctive originality of concept and for its brilliant technique. The poems in Darryl Hine’s &: A Serial Poem, an award finalist, are autobiographical reflections on civilization, particularly on the interconnectedness of life in the modern age. The author was lauded for the wit and learning expressed through his poetry as well as his use of rich, robust language. Another runner-up, Sandy Pool’s Exploding into Night, is an erotic narrative prose poem that explores the depths of a gruesome murder which occurred one night in downtown Toronto. The emotional intensity, lush imagery and daring subject matter evoked in this work were highly commended. Finalist Melanie Siebert’s Deepwater Vee is an impressive debut collection that focuses on the narratives springing from the landscapes and inhabitants connected to two of Canada’s most threatened rivers, the Athabasca and the North Saskatchewan. The poet’s transformative language and powerful historical contemplations were extolled for recreating a stunning vision of place in her work.
Dionne Brand’s Ossuaries won the year’s Griffin Poetry Prize. The book is a novel-length poem about Yasmine, an activist who leads a solitary underground existence on many continents and offers reflections on the many crises of the modern world. The work was singled out as a unique and remarkable achievement of both poetry and narrative, full of deep engagement and superb craft. A prize finalist, Suzanne Buffam’s The Irrationalist is a collection that explores the witty musings of a literary “irrationalist” who pursues her own poetic reasoning as she re-defines the world both in historical terms and within larger questions that broach upon philosophy, time and space. The work was praised as a dazzling portrayal of a mind at work, particularly in its use of soaring language and skilful rhythms. Runner-up John Steffler’s Lookout is an unusual collection of stories and lyrical poetry that includes photographs from Newfoundland’s archives. The poet’s meditations on specific landscapes and on compelling personal relationships were extolled as insightful explorations on the intricate conflicts between mankind and Nature.
In the realm of drama there were several excellent works that dealt with intriguing, complex subject matter. Robert Chafe’s Afterimage, which won the Governor General’s Award, is set in Newfoundland and focuses on the clairvoyant family of Lise Lacoeur and her children, shunned by their community because of their strange talent. The play, based on a short story by Canadian author Michael Crummey, was extolled by critics as an innovative and very moving treatment of the two universal themes of connection and otherness. Award finalist Charlotte Corbeil-Coleman’s Scratch is a comic and touching play about a teenager’s frustrations in dealing with a persistent case of head lice and with the vastly greater tragedy of her mother’s impending death from cancer. The presentation of young Anna’s crumbling life, dramatized through the perspectives of multiple characters, was praised as bold and fresh. The runner-up Courageous, by Michael Healey, is a two-act play which presents a humorous and thought-provoking illumination about social injustice in Canada. The first part focuses on issues of gay marriage and religion; the second act explores how problems connected with immigration and competing civil rights can destroy relationships and families. Healey’s comedy was extolled for its boldly unconventional structure and its fearless questioning of social issues. Another finalist, Judith Thompson’s Such Creatures, is a work consisting of two monologues. The first voices the fears of an urban Aboriginal teen preparing for the rite of passage of her first fist fight and a second explores the memories of an elderly Polish Jew who recalls her adolescent struggle for survival in a concentration camp. The stories are linked through the mutual strength and inspiration that the characters derive from their love of Shakespeare. The work was praised as a brilliant meditation on cruelty that nonetheless offers deeply-felt hope and empathy. The award runner-up Lady in the Red Dress by David Yee is another work which focuses on issues of redress of historical wrongs, specifically Canada’s oppression of its Chinese community through the nation’s Head Tax and Exclusion Act of 1923. The drama focuses on the story of how a lawyer for the Canadian Department of justice becomes dangerously enmeshed in the Chinese-Canadian struggle for justice and reparation from the national government. Critics lauded the play as a fascinating mixture of comedy, realist fantasy and hard-boiled mystery.
There were several major publications in the area of critical research on Canadian literature. These include works with regional overviews such as Jenny Kerber’s Writing in Dust: Reading the Prairie Environmentally, the first substantial ecocritical study of Canadian prairie literature. National Plots: Historical Fiction and Changing Ideas of Canada, edited by Andrea Cabajsky and Brett Josef Grubisic, is an essay collection that positions a specific literary genre within a sweeping thematic perspective; it explores the significance of the various roles that historical fiction has played within Canadian culture for nearly two centuries. Some excellent critical works about prominent Canadian authors that appeared this year include collections such as Janice Kulyk Keefer: Essays on Her Works, edited by Deborah Saidero, and Anne’s World: A New Century of Anne of Green Gables, edited by Irene Gammel and Benjamin Lefebvre. The Cambridge Introduction to Margaret Atwood by Heidi Slettedahl Macpherson provides a thorough overview of the major works of an icon of Canadian literature. With the publication of “Collecting Stamps Would Have Been More Fun”: Canadian Publishing and the Correspondence of Sinclair Ross, 1933–1986, editors Jordan and David Stouck offer Canadian researchers a valuable critical resource that not only reveals much about the writing process of a venerable author but also lays bare the difficult conditions of cultural work in twentieth-century Canada.
Two excellent reference resources that appeared this year were The Essentials: 150 Great BC Books & Authors by Alan Twigg and the second edition of The Concise Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature, edited by William Toye. Both critical guides will be invaluable to scholars and readers of Canadian literature.