Highways of Canadian Literature

by J. D. Logan; Donald G. French

Yet on the whole, Parker’s work is fresher. There is more of the clear air of the out-of-doors. There is not the morbidity of tone, nor the feeling of helplessness that is found in the fiction of Hardy, Meredith, Bennett, Galsworthy, Philpotts, Trevena and other leaders of the modern British novelists. We can forgive Parker many lapses because at the end—the total effect is the feeling that the good comes uppermost. Take even Pierre, half-breed gambler, a sort of half-Ishmaelite, yet with a sense of fair-play, a chivalry, a kindness that never leaves him. And so nearly all his characters and most of his books inspire us finally with divine lessons of hope and encouragement.

The historical romances of Charles G. D. Roberts—The Forge in the Forest (1896), A Sister to Evangeline, The Prisoner of Mademoiselle, The Raid From Beauséjour—while they are Canadian in setting and color, do not show the same imaginative reach and the same emotional power as the romances of Parker. The themes and settings of Roberts’ romances are rather narrow. They are concerned chiefly with minor incidents of the early history of Acadia, or we might say rather with a minor treatment of these incidents, for the historical episodes about which these stories are centered were, no doubt, of themselves important enough to the early French colony. The difficulty is that, despite the skill of Roberts in depicting local color and reproducing atmosphere in exquisite smooth flowing prose, he evinces little gift of characterization and the personages of the story are more or less mechanical puppets speaking by the will and with the words of the showman.

Somewhat unique in early romantic fiction is The Forest of Bourg Marie, by S. Frances Harrison (‘Seranus’), first published in 1898. The bygone civilization of the old seigneuries casts its glamor over a newer and more sophisticated Quebec, in its turn influenced by the hectic glitter of great cities of ‘the States,’ to which were attracted restless youth of French-Canada. Thus Mikel Caron, forest-ranger for the county of Yamachiche, links to the present the past grandeur of the Seigniory of Bourg Marie, while Magloire le Caron (Mr. Murray Carson in the States), villain of the piece, is the hybrid product of three civilizations. The writer’s style alters itself to harmonize with the varying spirit and mood of her story—stately and poetic in its descriptions of departed greatness; nervous and gauche in the passages where the turbulent current of a fevered modernity breaks through.

In Marguerite de Roberval (1899), T. G. Marquis turned back to the times of Jacques Cartier and applied his constructive imagination as well as his industry in research to building a story of Old France and the New around a most romantic and dramatic love episode.

In the same year appeared The Span o’ Life written in collaboration by William MacLennan and Jean N. MacIlwraith. Its historical basis is found in the memoirs of a Scottish Chevalier, who shared in the ill-starred rebellion of Prince Charles and afterwards became a soldier of fortune in the army of France, thus being present at the siege of Louisbourg and afterwards escaping to Quebec and joining the French forces there. The plot element of the story is somewhat weak and it is of value chiefly for its inside history of the siege conditions in the two greatest forts of New France.

So far the concern of Canadian historical fiction, as we have seen it, has been chiefly with New France and the conflicts between the French and English in North America. It remained for Agnes C. Laut to realize quite independently the amazing wealth of romantic history that lay back of the opening up and exploiting of the middle and far West of Canada. While yet a schoolgirl and knowing only the formal, conventional, and statistical outlines of Canadian history as then taught, she came accidentally upon a copy of Gunn’s History of Manitoba and sat up all night thrilled with the story of the Selkirk settlers. Thus originated the impulse, fulfilled later (1900), in The Lords of the North and (1902) in Heralds of Empire, to reveal what she felt, to show that Canada’s history was one page of glory. It had never been told in a way that the youth of the land would realize this, and she felt that, lacking this realization, we lacked a truly national spirit.

Lords of the North presents a vivid picture of Canada’s fur trade at the most flourishing period of that industry. It follows the conflict between the rival fur companies—the North-West and the Hudson’s Bay Company. Across its pages flit the voyageur, the trader, Indians, missionaries, settlers, buffalo hunters—all the romantic figures of the Canadian West of the period of 1815 to 1821. Heralds of Empire will be remembered for its characterization of Pierre Radisson, the man of action—the man who dared and who did—the man with the true pioneer spirit. Miss Laut’s style is forcible and direct. Her sentences are brief and crisp. The story runs on without effort. Description never wearies because it is the natural and necessary setting, painted with quick, bold vivid strokes. Of the larger matters of plot structure—the architectonics of fiction, she can hardly be said to have achieved mastery, but she writes with such energy and enthusiasm for her subject that in a measure this defect may be overlooked.

Wilfred Campbell also essayed the historical romance but with indifferent success. His Ian of the Orcades with its historical Scottish setting was more congenial to his genius than A Beautiful Rebel. It has arresting incidents, vigorously drawn characters, and considerable intensity of emotions, but it wins us rather by Campbell’s power to suffuse the text with what Matthew Arnold called ‘natural magic.’ It is more in keeping with the ‘old world imagination’ of Campbell which has been defined in the study of his poetry. A Beautiful Rebel, a story of Canada and the United States in the war of 1812, is lacking in imaginative color, is defective in structure, and the incident is too slight for the significance of the theme. The comment of the author has a way of appearing obtrusively as a digression, or at times in the mouths of the characters. What value A Beautiful Rebel has as historic fiction lies chiefly in its representation of the part played in the war by American sympathizers living as Canadian settlers.

II. The Romancers of Animal Psychology.

In the field of romance of wild and of domestic animal psychology, Canadian writers have shown a distinct and unique inventive genius and a corresponding artistry.