Nationalism and Origins: In Search of Canadian Folklore and Its Scholarship

Reviews Nationalism and Origins: In Search of Canadian Folklore and Its Scholarship LUMBERING SONGS FROM THE NORTHERN WOODS. Ed. Edith Fowke. Toronto: NC Press, 1985. (First published Austin: University of Texas Press for the American Folklore Society, 1970.) EXPLORA TJONS IN CANADIAN FOLKLORE. Ed. Edith Fowke and Carole H. Carpenter. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1985. COME AND I WILL SING YOU: A NEWFOUNDLAND SONGBOOK. Ed. Genevieve Lehr. Toronto: Universif) of Toronto Press, 1985. A patchwork quilt is a social document created from what might otherwise seem to be a collation of unrelated bits and pieces. It is the social, collectively composed product of cultural odds and ends. Firmly stitched together over a unifying , usually solid backing, it is functional because of its warm batting interior . A quilt looks quite different when it is seen from the underside instead of the pieced side, and one's perception of it changes again when it is pulled apart and its interior examined. Such is also the case with Canadian folklore and its scholarship, as the above collections indicate . They tend to foreground the patchwork side, but the batting and backing are also quite evident in them. The most immediate contribution of these works is to belie the supposition that Canadians have no national folk culture. This assumption has survived the publication of countless previous works - several theoretical studies, a history, and numerous collections - on the topic of Canadian folklore. However, many Journal of Canadian Studies Vol. 22. No. I (Pri111e111ps 1987 Spring) Canadians seem to feel that only material 'found exclusively in Canada and/or considered the cultural property of eve1y Canadian can be our folklore. They might even suggest that because many of Edith Fowke's lumbering songs are as well known in Maine as they are in Ontario , or because the colourful ritual and ceremonial practices of Old-Order Mennonites described by Allan M. Buehler in the Fowke and Carpenter collection originate in immigrant culture, we can't really call these things "Canadian." At best, they might argue, Canada has a very rudimentary indigenous heritage, an echo of the truism that "we are a young country." This fallacious view was championed by the distinguished American folklorist Richard Dorson, who asserted the distinctiveness, unique in North America, of American folklore. He maintained that Canadian culture - in contrast to its American counterpart was not indigenously developed. He claimed that it is a fusion of distinct transplanted European cultures and inheritance from the native peoples.' This argument displays not only a weak· knowledge of Canadian culture but also a limited understanding of cultural dynamics in general. In the first place, the influence of native culture on Anglo-Canada has been extensively filtered through European notions of the noble savage; actual aboriginal societies have had infinitely less effect than have archetypes from popular culture. For example, a sign on the gate entrance to the property of Ontario folk artist Lawrence McGuire names it "Laughing Waters," and his spectacular outdoor tableau of an "Indian village" reflects Longfellow more than the actual cultural history of the native peoples who once inhabited his region.2 Even recent European immigrant traditions have been significantly transformed in both form and meaning despite relatively brief histories in Canada. The erection of tile (a~ulejos) pictures of popular saints on Portuguese houses. 141 seen in the Kensington Market area of Toronto, is noticeably distinct from the use of such tiles in the home country. The introduction of images of the Holy Family. an unlikely subject for such representations in the old country. is part of an attempt to remedy the negative effect of new social situations on the traditional concept of the family. The Holy Family as a symbolic entity serves to mediate the modern Canadian and traditional Portuguese views of childrearing and the place of children in the family :1 The Lehr, Fowke, and Fowke and Carpenter works demonstrate other aspects of Canada's distinctive folk culture. They also make it quite clear that our unique culture has developed despite the fact that throughout the country's history it has been subject to domination first by Great Britain and later by the United States. As Lehr's contemporary collection in particular...