with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
The liveliest thing about Canada is its culture. It is the one thing that is really respected all over the world. Culture is a product of articulateness. And it is also indirectly a product of education.
“Love of Learning” (1987), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
I keep finding that there are parallels between Biblical history and Canadian history, which would be of no importance if Canadian poets themselves were not aware of it.
“Introduction to Canadian Literature: Moscow Talk” (1988), 34, Northrop Frye’s Fiction and Miscellaneous Writings (2007), CW, 25.
I cannot think of any society in history that has disintegrated simply through a lack of will to survive. Consequently I do not believe what I so often hear from the news media today, that Canada is about to blunder and bungle its way out of history into oblivion, leaving only a faint echo of ridicule behind it.
The Double Vision (1991), Northrop Frye on Religion (2000), CW, 4.
Canada, with four million square miles and only four centuries of documented history, has naturally been a country more preoccupied with space than with time, with environment rather than tradition.
“Canada: New World Without Revolution” (1975), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
Here we are: not an obstacle on the route to Cathay, not on the edge of the earth, not on the sidelines, but ringed by the world’s great powers: Japan and China here; the USSR here; the European Common Market here, and the United States here. And here is Canada, in the middle.
“View of Canada” (1976), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
But now Canada has become a kind of global Switzerland, surrounded by the United States on the south, the European common market on the east, the Soviet Union on the north, China and Japan on the west.
“Conclusion to Literary History of Canada” (1965), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
One of the derivations proposed for the word Canada is a Portuguese phrase meaning “nobody here.” The etymology of the word Utopia is very similar, and perhaps the real Canada is an ideal with nobody in it. The Canada to which we really do owe loyalty is the Canada that we have failed to create.… It is expressed in our culture, but not attained in our life, just as Blake’s new Jerusalem to be built in England’s green and pleasant land is no less a genuine ideal for not having been built there … the uncreated identity of Canada may be after all not so bad a heritage to take with us.
The Modern Century (1967), Northrop Frye on Modern Culture (2003), CW, 11.
Canada seems to impress non-Canadians as a moderate and reasonable country, potentially as happy a country to live in as the world affords.
“The Cultural Development of Canada” (1990), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
It is only now emerging from its beginning as a shambling, awkward, absurd country, groping and thrusting its way through incredible distances into the West and North, plundered by profiteers, interrupted by European wars, divided by language, and bedevilled by climate, yet slowly and inexorably bringing a culture to life.
“Preface and Introduction to Pratt’s Poetry” (1958), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
Canada, with its empty spaces, its largely unknown lakes and rivers and islands, its division of language, its dependence on immense railways to hold it physically together, has had this peculiar problem of an obliterated environment throughout most of its history. The effects of this are clear in the curiously abortive cultural developments of Canada.… They are shown even more clearly in its present lack of will to resist its own disintegration, in the fact that it is practically the only country left in the world which is a pure colony, colonial in psychology as well as in mercantile economics.
Preface, The Bush Garden (1971), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
A century ago Canada was a nation in the world, but not wholly of it: the major cultural and political developments of Western Europe, still the main centre of the historical stage, were little known or understood in Canada.… Today, Canada is too much a part of the world to be thought of as a nation in it.
The Modern Century (1967), Northrop Frye on Modern Culture (2003), CW, 11.
“Canada” is a political entity; the cultural counterpart that we call “Canada” is really a federation not of provinces but of regions and communities.
“From Nationalism to Regionalism: The Maturing of Canadian Culture” (1980), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
Canada is not “new” or “young”: it is exactly the same age as any other country under a system of industrial capitalism; and even if it were, a reluctance to write poetry is not a sign of youth but of decadence.
“Canada and Its Poetry” (1943), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
The essential element in the national sense of unity is the east-west feeling, developed historically along the St. Lawrence-Great Lakes axis, and expressed in the national motto, a mare usque ad mare. The tension between this political sense of unity and the imaginative sense of locality is the essence of whatever the word “Canadian” means.
Preface, The Bush Garden (1971), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
Some years ago I first saw Herbert Marcuse’s One Dimensional Man in a bookshop, and what came into my mind was a quite irrelevant reflection: “I wonder what he’d say if he had to live in a one-dimensional country?” For Canada, through most of its history, has been a strip of territory as narrow as Chile, besides being longer and more broken up.
“Canadian Culture Today” (1977), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
Canada & the United States
But Canada has, for all practical purposes, no Atlantic seaboard.… To enter the United States is a matter of crossing an ocean; to enter Canada is a matter of being silently swallowed by an alien continent.
“Conclusion to Literary History of Canada” (1965), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
Similarly, our undefended border is very effectively defended on one side, the United States being a highly protectionist country in culture as in other aspects of life, and the Canadian instinct for compromise has to make the best of it.
“National Consciousness in Canadian Culture” (1976), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
There is an aged and now somewhat infirm joke to the effect that the United States has passed from barbarism to decadence without an intervening period of civilization. A parallel and possibly more accurate statement might be made of Canada: that it has passed from a pre-national to a post–national phase without ever having become a nation.
“Culture as Interpenetration” (1982), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
An independent Canada would be much more useful to the United States itself than a dependent or annexed one would be, and it is of great importance to the United States to have a critical view of it centred in Canada, a view which is not hostile but is simply another view.
“Conclusion
