Crossing Borders: Sharon Pollock's Revisitation of Canadian Frontiers

Crossing Borders: Sharon Pollock's Revisitation of Canadian Frontiers ANNE NOTHOF Sharon Pollock's "history plays" are essentially iconoclastic, deconstructing comfortable assumptions about the growth of the Canadian nation and the peaceful integration of "others" from across the borders. In two of her early plays - Walsh, which premiered at Theatre Calgary in 1973, and The Komagala Maru Incident, which was first produced at the Vancouver Playhouse in 1976 - she demonstrated how the politics of exclusion determined the characteristics of a "white man's country." In Fair Liberty's Call/ which opened at the Patterson Theatre in Stratford, Ontario in July, 1993, she deconstructs the "Loyalist myth" which assumes that Canada's democratic freedoms owe a great deal to the courageous, independent exiles from America , who crossed the border to begin a more egalitarian society. The title of Pollock's play is shown, in fact, to be ironic: there is little difference between the policy or actions of rebel and loyalist, Patriot and Tory. The contentious issues which fuelled the War of Independence are replicated in Canada. In all three plays, borders are imposed - between countries, between -' individuals - in the interests of securing or protecting property. Political or ethical principles are modified to serve basically acquisitive impulses, and government policy expresses the entrenched bigotry and greed of an established population, all immigrants or the descendants of immigrants. In the "Playwright's Note" to the published version of The Komagata Maru Incident (1978), Sharon Pollock demonstrates the importance of a revisionist view of Canadian history: "As a Canadian, I feel that much of our history has been mis-represented and even hidden from us. Until we recognize our past, we cannot change our future...1 "History" is a mythology. a narrative constructed by those in power to sustain and justify their power. More recently, however, historiography has engaged in a de-mythologizing process, revisiting the past in an attempt to ascertain cultural ideology: Modern Drama, 38 (1995) 475 ANNE NOTHOF Historiographers and literary theorists in recent years have concerned themselves with the writing of history less as the uncovering of an objective body of material actually existing in the past than as the invention of a narrative that exists as a function of the society and culture that produces it in the present. Post-modem historiography recognizes that the past, insofar as it is external and objective, can only exist as fragments, "facts" and documents that are, in their own cultural tenns, impenetrable. Historiography , then, becomes the ongoing process of remaking history,.of "making it new," as fiction and myth.3 Sharon Pollock's plays are less concerned with history as a "record of past activity" than with the "intellectual climate in which it was composed,"4 insidious assumptions and attitudes which may still affect public and private policy - "upholding compromise over compassion, legality over justice."5 They reflect a "progressive" view of history, which is "cynical about ideas, theories and ideologies',{i that may be convenient camouflage or rationalization. One of these ideologies is that of Canada's growth as a democratic nation, which freely welcomed immigrants from around the world across its borders, and balanced conflicting regional, racial, and economic pressures, in contrast to the violent revolutions and wars bred by intolerance in the United States. In Walsh, The Komagata Maru Incident, and Fair Liberty's Call, Pollock shatters this myth of Canadian moral superiority; there is little difference between the public and private policy of the two countries. As Canadian historian Frank Underhill has maintained, in many ways the United States is simply Canada writ large. Moreover, Sharon Pollock shows that public policy is predicated on, and effected through, individual choices: although her protagonists are subject to large historical or political forces, they still have a degree of freedom of choice - 'whether to compromise justice, whether to subvert compassion. Borders may be psychological and philosophical as well as political. In each play, choices are made as to which side of the border to occupy or defend, and whether it is possible to cross borders with integrity. Pollock believes that her preoccupatio~ with conflict between personal integrity and political expediency is a very Canadian phenomenon, conditioned by geographic, economic, and...