Teaching the Canadian mythology: A poet’s view

54. Ibid., p. 90. 55. Ibid., p. 101. 56. Ibid., p. 21. 57. Ibid., p. 193. 58. Ibid., p. 287. 59. Fruits of the Earth, p. 266. 60. Ibid., p. 134. 61. Two Generations, p. 258. Teaching the Canadian mythology: a poet's view DON GUTTERIDGE After ten years of writing poems, mainly on Canadian historical subjects, I discovered that, like all serious poets, I had been a maker of myths. This should have come as no surprise to me, and yet it did. Perhaps I was just too busy writing the poems to worry about such larger critical and affective aspects of the literature to which I was annually contributing. But events in this country during the past five years have compelled me (and many others) to think more carefully about the significance of our literature in relation to Canada as an emergent "nation." Myth, of course, is an elusive word, one that has been used, willy-nilly, to bolster the arguments and underpin the hypotheses of critics, psychologists, sociologists, historians, poly-sci enthusiasts, ad-men, and politicians of every blush and hue - each in his own way, perhaps, questing for the golden key to our lost identity. In fact, this quest has become the national pastime, the Canadian quiz-game with myth as the secret word. I have no intention of reviewing or commenting upon the many-splendoured meanings of myth nor the dreary uses to which they have been put. I wish merely to define, as precisely as I can, the way in which myth operates for me as a poet, and mention some of the significant ways in which, I feel, it 28 62. In Search of Myself, pp. 217-18; Search tor America, pp. 435, 436n. 63. Lewis 0. Saum, "The Success Theme in Great Plains Realism," American Quarterly, XVI 11 (Winter, 1966), pp. 57998 ; Cole Harris, "The Myth of the Land in Canadian Nationalism" in University League for Social Reform, Nationalism in Canada, ed. by P. Russell (Toronto, 1966), pp. 27-43. bears upon the question of our identity, both personal and public. One "myth" (to use the word in its most common and least fortunate sense) which shouId be swept aside at the outset is the mistaken notion that we have no identity, or at best a very nebulous one, and therefore , instead of discovering it or bringing it to consciousness, we must somehow create one - and fast, before the nasty Americans or the upstart Quebecois overwhelm us with their own clearly delineated cultures. It is this silly notion which has diluted our collective energies and distorted our national goals for the past two decades. To put the record straight, and quite simply, we have an identity because we are, and have been. \Ne are and have been occupying this space called Canada for three centuries; for over a hundred years we have referred to ourselves as a nation, and have, more or less, behaved as if we were one. \Nhat kind of nation, what sort of people, what forms underlying our national purpose, our common pursuits, our destiny - these are legitimate questions, even yet, one hundred and four years after the official natal rites. However, as I suggested, this country, at least its English-speaking portion (and I suspect, despite the ruder noises, the French-speaking section as well) - seems gripped with an anxiety approaching hysteria and manifesting not a little paranoidschizophrenia , a blind and self-defeating fear that maybe, after all, we don't exist. Our Revue d'etudes canadiennes mirror is a window. Well, it just isn't so. We have existed, and we do. To argue this point fully would require a separate (and longer) paper, but let me just mention· several pertinent points at this stage. Northrop Frye has noted that this kind of anxiety over identity leads to the creation of a social mythblogy. And much of our identityhunting in Canada has been of this variety - with all its inherent dangers: self-delusion, commercialization, and ultimate loss of true identity. For our true identity can only be realized, as it has been in each of us as individuals , by questing within, not without, by moving below the...