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Bible Encyclopedias
Canadian Literature
1911 Encyclopedia Britannica
or "CANADIAN LITERATURE English-Canadian.-The literary record of Canada in 1910 -21 falls more or less definitely into three sections-pre-war, war and post-war. During the war years the heart of the Canadian people became so completely absorbed in the great conflict, in which they had so much at stake, that, after the first year or so at any rate, there remained little room for any intellectual activity not connected directly or indirectly with the war and its successful prosecution. The new literature of 1910-14 had reflected the characteristic of the Dominion in those yearsa spirit of optimism, of national self-consciousness, of conservatism in the broader sense, and intellectually of wider and more stimulating horizons. And the return to peace conditions, during 1918 -21, was mainly notable in literature for more or less thoughtful reviews of Canada's part in the war, consideration of her problems of reconstruction, and the picking up anew of the somewhat neglected threads of her intellectual life.
Unquestionably the most important achievement of the prewar period was the publication of Canada and its Provinces, a comprehensive survey of the history of the country in 23 volumes, edited by Dr. A. G. Doughty and Dr. Adam Shortt, and counting among its contributors most of the recognized authorities in Canadian history, biography and economics. Another notable essay in Canadian history was the series known as the Chronicles of Canada, in 32 volumes, edited by George M. Wrong and H. H. Langton, a series designed to present in attractive and at the same time authoritative form the outstanding events of Canadian history. The authors of the individual volumes included such well-known writers as Charles W. Colby, of McGill University, Col. William Wood, Stephen Leacock, Dr. Doughty, Oscar D. Skelton, of Queen's University, and Sir Joseph Pope. The publication in 1911 of an Index and Dictionary of Canadian History completed the series of biographies known as The Makers of Canada. The celebration of the tercentenary of the founding of Quebec brought in its train, with a flood of purely ephemeral literature, several books of permanent value, such as The King's Book of Quebec (191t), edited by Dr. Doughty and Col. Wood, James Douglas' New England and New France (1913), Wood's In the Heart of Old Canada (1913), and Prof. Wrong's The Fall of Canada (1914). In 1920 the Hudson's Bay Company celebrated its 250th birthday with elaborate pageants in Winnipeg and elsewhere throughout the West. The occasion was also marked by the publication of a very completely illustrated history of the Company. In 1921 McGill University celebrated the tooth anniversary of its charter.
This period also witnessed a succession of biographies and autobiographies of famous Canadians, including Beckles Willson's Lord Strathcona (1914) and W. T. R. Preston's pungent life of the same many-sided character, Sir Richard Cartwright's Reminiscences (1912), Sir George W. Ross' Getting into Parliament and After (1913), L. J. Burpee's Sir Sandford Fleming (1915), John Boyd's Sir George Etienne Cartier (1914), Sir Charles Tupper's Recollections of Sixty Years in Canada (1914), and Goldwin Smith's posthumous Reminiscences (1910), Life and Opinions (1913) and Correspondence (1913), all three edited by his literary executor, Arnold Haultain.
Other noteworthy books of this period are W. H. Atherton's Montreal 1535-1914 (1914), John Ross Robertson's Landmarks of Toronto (1914), E. H. Oliver's The Canadian North-West (1914), and Doughty and McArthur's Documents relating to the Constitutional History of Canada, 1791-1818 (1914); and in books of description and travel, A. P. Coleman's The Canadian Rockies (1911), Ernest Thompson Seton's Arctic Prairies (1911), Dr. Campbell's Canadian Lake Region (1910), and Charles Sheldon's Wilderness of the Upper Yukon (1911). Among a host of political and economic essays may be mentioned John S. Ewart's The Kingdom Papers (1914), Sir William Peterson's Canadian Essays and Addresses (1915), Sir George Foster's Canadian Addresses (1914), Sir Andrew Macphail's Essays in Politics (1910), Maj.-Gen. C. W. Robinson's Canada and Canadian Defence (1910), and Edward Porritt's Revolt in Canada against the New Feudalism (1911). In 1913 a new edition also appeared of Col. George T. Denison's History of Cavalry, written as early as 1876, and awarded in the following year the prize offered by the Tsar of Russia for the best essay on the subject.
In imaginative literature, the only books of verse that need be noted here are Bliss Carman's Echoes from Vagabondia (1912), William Wilfrid Campbell's Sagas of Vaster Britain (1914), William Henry Drummond's Poetical Works (1912), Marjorie Pickthall's Drift of Pinions (1913), Frederick George Scott's Poems (1912), and Arthur J. Stringer's Open Water (1914). In 1913 Dr. Campbell brought out his excellent anthology, the Oxford Book of Canadian Verse. In fiction, the most noteworthy names are those of Miss L. M. Montgomery, Charles G. D. Roberts, Norman Duncan, C. W. Gordon (" Ralph Connor "), Theodore Roberts, Alan Sullivan and Arthur Stringer.
With regard to the literature of the war, or of Canada's part in it, many volumes of personal experiences had already been published by 1921. A really notable book is Winged Warfare (1918) by Col. William A. Bishop, V.C. Others that may be named here are Col. George G. Naismith's On the Fringe of the Great Fight (1917), F. C. Curry's From the St. Lawrence to the Yser (1917), F. McKelvey Bell's First Canadians in France (1917), and Captured by Lieut. J. Harvey Douglas (1918). In 1917 appeared the first of six volumes of Canada in the Great World War (completed in 1921), an authoritative account of Canada's part in the conflict, by a number of competent writers. An official history of the war, from a Canadian viewpoint, under the title of Canada in Flanders, the first two volumes of which were prepared by Lord Beaverbrook and the third by Maj. Charles G. D. Roberts, appeared in 1916-8. Other war books of interest are Col. J. G. Adami's Official War Story of the C.A.
M.C. (1919), Dr. Herbert A. Bruce's Politics and the C.A.M.C. (1919), J. F. B. Livesay's Canada's Hundred Days (1910), Hon. Henri S. Beland's Three Years in a German Prison (1919), Alan Sullivan's Aviation in Canada (1919), Capt. Harwood Steele's Canadians in France (1920), John W. Dafoe's Over the Canadian Battlefields (1919), and Sir Robert Borden's The War and the Future (1917). Through the foresight of Lord Beaverbrook and Dr. Doughty, Canada acquired an exceptionally complete collection of war records, paintings, and trophies.
Among the more significant of the post-war books are Sir Robert Falconer's Idealism in National Character (1920), J. L. Morison's British Supremacy and Canadian Self -Government (1919), Hon. W. L. Mackenzie King's Industry and Humanity (1918), R. M. Maclver's Labour in the Changing World (1919), W. C. Good's Production and Taxation in Canada (1919), A. H. Reginald Buller's Essays on Wheat (1919), Prof. Wrong's The United States and Canada (1921), W. G. Smith's Study in Canadian Immigration (1920), and two books discussing the relations between Englishspeaking and French-speaking Canada-O. W. H. Moore's The Clash (1918) and P. F. Morley's Bridging the Chasm (1919).
In history and biography there were such important works as J. S. McLennan's Louisbourg (1918), Chester Martin's Lord Selkirk's Work in Canada (1916), G. C. Davidson's North West Company (1919), William Smith's History of the Post Office 1639-1870 (1920), W. R. Riddell's Old Province Tales (1920), Prof. Skelton's The Canadian Dominion (1919), Sir John Willison's Reminiscences (1919), W. T. Grenfell's A Labrador Doctor (1919), E. M. Saunder's Life of Sir Charles Tupper (1916), Skelton's Sir Alexander Galt (1920), and Sir Wilfrid Laurier (1921), Sir Joseph Pope's Correspondence of Sir John MacDonald (1921) and Walter Vaughan's Sir William Van Horne (1920). The Historical Section of the Canadian General Staff issued the first three volumes of an official History of the Military and Naval Forces of Canada from 1763 (1920-21).
Of agencies which, each in its own way, were making in these later years for the development of intellectual life and scholar ship in Canada, none was more important than the Dominion Archives, the Royal Society of Canada, the Champlain Society, and two important Canadian periodicals, the University Magazine and the Canadian Historical Review. The Archives perform a triple service, in collecting and safeguarding the manuscript treasures of Canada, in affording facilities for research to students, and in publishing selected documents from its collections. The Champlain Society, with headquarters in Toronto, devotes itself to the publication of important works bearing upon Canadian history, and the reprinting of old works in the same field. J. B. Tyrell's editions of Hearne's Journey (1911) and David Thompson's Journals (1916), Dr. Doughty's edition of Knox's Historical Journal (1914-16), Grant and Bigger's edition of Lescarbot's New France (1911) and Col. Wood's Select British Documents of the Canadian War of 1812 (1920), are admirable examples of Canadian scholarship. The establishment of the University Magazine under the control of three of the principal Canadian universities, and the transformation of the annual Review of Historical Publications Relating to Canada into a quarterly Canadian Historical Review widened the opportunities for the intellectual discussion of Canadian questions by Canadian writers in a Canadian periodical.
In imaginative literature during this later period, there are found several arresting books, such as Clive Phillipps-Wolley's Songs from a Young Man's Land (1917), John McCrae's In Flanders Fields (1918), Lloyd Roberts' Poems (1919), Norah Holland's Spun Yarn and Spindrift (1918), Marjorie Pickthall's The Lamp of Poor Souls (1916), Bliss Carman's April Airs (1916), Duncan Campbell Scott's Lundy's Lane and Other Poems (1916) and Beauty of Life (1921), Arthur S. Bourinot's Poems (1921), and Bernard F. Trotter's Canadian Twilight (1917). In fiction, the principal names were Sir Gilbert Parker, C. G. D. Roberts, Arthur Stringer, Theodore Roberts, W. A. Fraser, L. M. Montgomery, C. W. Gordon, Basil King and Norman Duncan. Among Canadian humorists Stephen Leacock (b. 1869 in England; on the staff of Upper Canada College, 1891-9; and later head of the department of political economy at McGill University) during 1911-21 had gradually established a widespread popularity, and his volumes of humorous essays and sketches gave him an international reputation as a writer, somewhat eclipsing his professional position as an economist. In this connexion also may be mentioned the Goblin, a really excellent comic monthly published by undergraduates of Toronto University. Two delightful books for children are Isabel Ecclestone MacKay's The Shining Ship (1918) and Cyrus MacMillan's Canadian Wonder Tales (1918). R. P. Baker has written a History of English Canadian Literature to Confederation (1920).
(L. J. B.) French-Canadian. - During 1910-21 there was a very natural desire among French-Canadian writers to do all that could be done toward keeping their compatriots true to type in race, religion, speech, thought, aspiration, letters and whatever else might encourage a distinctive form of life to persist unchanged by contact with the English-speaking world. Among the extreme Nationalists this unfortunately led to a self-conscious particularism, tending rather to weaken both ideas and expression by confining them within a narrow pale than to win an assured position in the intellectual world at large. The best written, however, of all the French-Canadian papers was Le Devoir, edited by Henri Bourassa, the Nationalist chief, who had kept it easily first in literary excellence, with the able assistance of Omer Heroux, Georges Pelletier, Ernest Bilodeau, Madame E. P. Benoit (" Monique "), and Madame H. St. Jacques (" Fadette "). Another Ultra, the Abbe Lionel Groulx, edited L' Action Francaise, a monthly numbering among its contributors that excellent stylist, Pere Beaude, whose nom de plume is Henri d'Arles. A wider outlook was taken by Le Canada Francais, successor to La Nouvelle-France, once led by the scholarly pen of the Rev. Camille Roy. The widest and most diverse views were to be found in La Revue Moderne, edited by Madame Huguenin. La Revue Trimestrielle also took broad views, and had done good service to literature.
Three types of French-Canadian history were represented by (1) the Histoire du Canada, a big school-book written by the Christian Brothers from their own point of view, and without any reference to archives; (2) the five volumes of the Cours d'Histoire, ardently written by the Abbe Groulx in admirable French, and based on original sources, but carefully dividing the sheep of his own party from the goats of all others; and (3) the Cours d'Histoire du Canada by Thomas Chapais, whose scholarly taste, deep reverence for original research, and wide experience of public life preeminently fitted him for his distinguished role as professor of the Universit y Laval. Montreal was highly favoured in possessing that indefatigable archivist, E. Z. Massicotte. But Quebec was the headquarters of the new Provincial Archives, established in 1920 under the direction of Pierre Georges Roy, whose name had become famous for all that concerns the discovery, study, classification, and enlightened cataloguing of original documents, as well as for archival work at large.
Folklore was more and more studied by C. Marius Barbeau (Dominion Anthropologist), E. Z. Massicotte, C. Tremblay, Dr. Cloutier, Gustave Lanctot, and others. The Journal of American Folklore devotes one number a year to the work of French-Canadians.
Pure literature made a very real advance in the decade. The great French-Canadian drama was still to seek; but in poetry Jean Nolin's Les Cailloux showed good achievement and still greater promise, while power was the predominant note of Charles Gill's Le Cap Eternite. Two women who emerged as poets had already done well and seemed likely to do better: Marie Le Franc's Les Voix au Coeur et l'Ame is both psychology and art; while Blanche Lamontagne's Visions Gaspesiennes, Par Nos Champs et Nos Rives, and La Vieille Maison showed a continual advance from merely tuneful and rather diffuse description to something like creation. Jules Fournier and Olivar Asselin, both most competent critics, had edited the Anthologie des Poetes Canadiens (1920). Fiction was well represented by Damase Potvin's L' Appel de la Terre. The late Louis Hemon, a Frenchman who lived and worked with the French-Canadian habitants, had, in his Maria Chapdelaine (1916), written a novel which was a true work of art and racy of the soil.
In other literature Laure Conan produced the best of introspective sketches in L'Obscure Souffrance, which is a kind of journal imaginaire. Her terse and finely chosen style greatly helped her penetrating vision to reach the very heart of her subject in everything she wrote, as, for instance, in her Silhouettes Canadiennes. Edouard Montpetit was both reminiscent and " previsionist " in his Au Service de la Tradition Francaise. And Adjutor Rivard, whose Chez nos Gens gives moving glimpses of habitant life, has placed all students of French under a deep debt of gratitude in his magnificent Etudes sur les Parlers de France au Canada. (W. Wo.)
These files are public domain.
Chisholm, Hugh, General Editor. Entry for 'Canadian Literature'. 1911 Encyclopedia Britanica. https://www.studylight.org/encyclopedias/eng/bri/c/canadian-literature.html. 1910.
