Nationalism

Canadian Literature is proud to present Reading and Writing Canada: A Classroom Guide to Nationalism, our first completed TLEF-supported learning resource. Reading and Writing Canada is part of the CanLit Guides project, which takes full advantage of Canadian Literature’s online archives to introduce students to academic discourse on Canadian literature.

This guide was developed by a team at Canadian Literature to introduce Canadian culture, writing, and criticism with a focus on the fluctuating concept of nationalism. We would like to thank all of the scholars who donated their time to making a useful and engaging resource for university instructors and students.

Reading and Writing Canada follows currents in nationalism throughout Canadian history, introduces scholarly criticism and commentary, and engages students with academic discourse in their own reading and writing.

Some highlights of the guide include:
History and Culture
Students are encouraged to think about the historical and cultural contexts that inform literature. Reading and Writing Canada introduces students to scholarly criticism by giving a condensed overview of the development of nationalism in Canada, examining issues such as colonialism, war, immigration, discrimination, and multiculturalism.
Case Studies
Students are given a chance to apply close reading strategies with literary Case Studies on Timothy Findley’s The Wars, Wayson Choy’s The Jade Peony, and Dionne Brand’s What We All Long For. With reading questions and connections to articles published in Canadian Literature, students are introduced to in-depth reading strategies in conjunction with literary criticism.
Poems
To enrich students’ experience with Reading and Writing Canada, we have interspersed the guide with poems originally published in Canadian Literature. These poems reflect on some of the issues surrounding nationalism introduced throughout the guide, and encourage students to think about connections between literature and the contexts introduced in other chapters.

Thank you for visiting. We hope you enjoy Reading and Writing Canada: A Classroom Guide to Nationalism.

Roughing It in the Bush by Susanna Moodie

Roughing It in the Bush by Susanna Moodie

This popular account of emigration from England and settlement in Upper Canada has become a classic in the history of Canadian literature. First published in 1852, Roughing It in the Bush describes Susanna Moodie’s impressions of the people, places, and processes of settlement in the first seven years after she arrived in Upper Canada in 1832.

Poetry and Racialization

Poetry and Racialization

This chapter stages an imaginary conversation between Duncan Campbell Scott (born 1862), the Canadian Deputy Superintendent of Indian Affairs from 1913 to 1932, and E. Pauline Johnson (Tekahionwake; born 1861), the daughter of a Mohawk Chief and an Englishwoman. Scott and Johnson were distinctively different poets who addressed Indigenous issues from very different racialized and gendered perspectives.

Nationalism, 1800s: Loyalism and Nation-building

Nationalism, 1800s: Loyalism and Nation-building

Loyalism, still strongly colonial rather than national at this time, helped develop a problematic and still pervasive collective concept of Canada as a white, Christian, primarily Anglophone, civil society.

Narratives of Empire: Hearne and Mackenzie

Narratives of Empire: Hearne and Mackenzie

The stereotype of the explorer is a single European man, often pictured standing at the bow of a ship looking off to the horizon, or planting a flag on some new territory to claim it for the empire.

Nationalism, 1500–1700s: Exploration and Settlement

Nationalism, 1500–1700s: Exploration and Settlement

The development of cultures and nation states is characterized by migration (see Diamond and Wolf). With the advent of new technologies to connect people all over the world, such as airplanes and the Internet, this slow migration accelerated in the twentieth century, and continues to gather speed. This phenomena, also known as globalization, reflects the shift toward the colonial expansion of empires, starting in Canadian history with English and French colonization and continuing as well as in more contemporary forms of international immigration and trade.

Introduction to Nationalism

Introduction to Nationalism

A nation is a group of people who regard themselves as sharing the same culture; a state is a group of people governed by the same laws and political institutions. Groups of people connected through history settled within a geographical region, building customs and forming dialects. Modern nations emerged from the desire of such groups to claim and defend land for hunting, gathering, agriculture, and other economic activities. The borders on contemporary maps resulted from long histories of negotiations and wars among nations and nation-states to control particular territories.

What is Canadian Literature?

What is Canadian Literature?

It may seem strange to open a guide to Canadian literature by describing it as a shifting wilderness and a bewildering whirlwind. However, M. G. Vassanji’s comment serves as a warning to stay away from rigid, categorical thinking. There is no central idea, no easy essence, that binds Canadian literatures together.