Editorial Board / Comité de rédaction
Editor-in-Chief Rédacteur en chef
Claude Couture, University of Alberta, Canada
Associate Editors Rédacteurs adjoints
Teresa Gutiérrez-Haces, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México Milena Santoro, Georgetown University, United States Daiva Stasiulis, Carleton University, Canada
Managing Editor Secrétaire de rédaction
Guy Leclair, ICCS/CIEC, Ottawa, Canada
Advisory Board / Comité consultatif
Malcolm Alexander, Griffith University, Australia Rubén Alvaréz, Universidad Central de Venezuela, Venezuela Shuli Barzilai, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israël Raymond B. Blake, University of Regina, Canada Nancy Burke, University of Warsaw, Poland Francisco Colom, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Spain Beatriz Diaz, Universidad de La Habana, Cuba Giovanni Dotoli, Université de Bari, Italie Eurídice Figueiredo, Universidade Federal Fluminense, Brésil Madeleine Frédéric, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgique Naoharu Fujita, Meiji University, Japan Gudrun Björk Gudsteinsdottir, University of Iceland, Iceland Leen d’Haenens, University of Nijmegen, Les Pays-Bas Vadim Koleneko, Russian Academy of Sciences, Russia Jacques Leclaire, Université de Rouen, France Laura López Morales, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico Jane Moss, Romance Languages, Colby College, U.S. Elke Nowak, Technische Universität Berlin, Germany Helen O’Neill, University College Dublin, Ireland Christopher Rolfe, The University of Leicester, U.K. Myungsoon Shin, Yonsei University, Korea Jiaheng Song, Université de Shantong, Chine Coomi Vevaina, University of Bombay, India Robert K. Whelan, University of New Orleans, U.S.A. The International Journal of Canadian Paraissant deux fois l’an, la Revue Studies (IJCS) is published twice a year internationale d’études canadiennes by the International Council for (RIÉC) est publiée par le Conseil Canadian Studies. Multidisciplinary in international d’études canadiennes. scope, the IJCS is intended for people Revue multidisciplinaire, elle rejoint les around the world who are interested in the lecteurs de divers pays intéressés à l’étude du study of Canada. The IJCS publishes Canada. La RIÉC publie des numéros thematic issues containing articles (20-30 thématiques composés d’articles (20-30 pages double-spaced), research notes pages, double interligne), de notes de (10-15 pages double-spaced) and review recherche (10-15 pages, double interligne) et essays. It favours analyses that have a d’essais critiques, et privilégie les études aux broad perspective and essays that will perspectives larges et les essais de synthèse interestareadershipfromawidevarietyof aptes à intéresser un vaste éventail de disciplines. Articles must deal with lecteurs. Les textes doivent porter sur le Canada, not excluding comparisons Canada ou sur une comparaison entre le between Canada and other countries. The Canada et d’autres pays. La RIÉC est une IJCS is a bilingual journal. Authors may revue bilingue. Les auteurs peuvent rédiger submit articles in either English or French. leurs textes en français ou en anglais. Toute Individuals interested in contributing to the personne intéressée à collaborer à la RIÉC IJCS should forward their papers to the doit faire parvenir son texte accompagné IJCSSecretariat,alongwithaone-hundred d’un résumé de cent (100) mots maximum au word abstract. Beyond papers dealing secrétariat de la RIÉC. 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Cover / Couverture (photo): Copyright © Texture Farm (1996) International Council for Canadian Studies / Conseil international d’études canadiennes (and its licensors / et les concédants de licence). All rights reserved / Toute reproduction interdite. International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes
Canada and Asia Le Canada et l’Asie
31, 2005
Table of Contents / Table des matières
Claude Couture & Daiva Stasiulis Introduction / Présentation ...... 5 Vijay Agnew Finding India in the Diaspora ...... 13 Subha Xavier Exiled Metaphors: Woman and Nation in Three Novels by Ying Chen ...... 37 Katie Cholette The Limits on Cultural Expression at Canada’s National Cultural Institutions...... 57 Heather A. Smith Concentrated Immigrant Settlement and Concentrated Neighbourhood Disadvantage in Three Canadian Cities ...... 81 Janusz Przychodzen et Vijaya Rao Écrire l’Inde au Québec : Mythes et réalités de l’Ailleurs. Suivi de la Table ronde : Écrire l’Inde au Québec ...... 129
Research Note / Note de recherche Serge Granger La recherche historique sur les relations entre l’Asie et le Canada d’avant 1850 ...... 167
International Journal of Canadian Studies / Revue internationale d’études canadiennes 31, 2005 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes
Open-Topic Articles / Articles hors-thème Daniel Chartier « Au-delà, il n’y a plus rien, plus rien que l’immensité désolée. » Problématiques de l’histoire de la représentation des Inuits, des récits des premiers explorateurs aux œuvres cinématographiques ...... 177 Daniel McNeil Finding a Home while Crossing Boundaries: Black Identities in Halifax and Liverpool ...... 197 David Palmieri Stuffing the Scarecrow: The Anti-Americanism of George Grant and Pierre Vadeboncœur...... 237
Review Essay / Essai critique Leslie Alm and Ross Burkhart Canada and the United States: Approaches to Global Environmental Policy-making ...... 261 Authors / Auteurs ...... 281
Canadian Studies Journals Around the World Revues d’études canadiennes dans le monde ...... 283
Calls for papers / Demandes de textes ...... 287
4 Introduction Présentation
The massive tsunamis triggered by Lors du gigantesque tsunami produit the earthquake that hit Southeast par le tremblement de terre qui a and South Asia on December 26, frappé l’Asie du Sud-Est et l’Asie du 2004, provided Canadians with Sud le 26 décembre 2004, les horrifying images of physical Canadiens ont vu des images destruction and a deep and lasting effrayantes de la destruction loss for individuals, families, matérielle et des pertes considérables communities and entire countries. et durables subies par des particuliers, An outpouring of compassion des familles, des collectivités et des swept Canada, as in many other pays entiers. Un élan de compassion a countries, and “Asian tsunami lancé le Canada et de nombreux relief” entered our lexicon not only autres pays, et le secours aux victimes through the donations pouring in du tsunami en Asie s’est traduit non from tens of thousands of seulement par les dons de dizaines de individuals, but also through the milliers de personnes, mais aussi par fund-raising activism among des campagnes de collecte de fonds school children, community organisées par des écoles, des groupes groups, and businesses. These communautaires et des entreprises. actions of ordinary Canadians Ces actions de Canadiens ordinaires provoked a lagging federal ont incité le gouvernement fédéral, government to step up its initially qui tardait à réagir, à intensifier ses meager response to the crisis in efforts pour aider les pays de l’Asie South and South East Asia. As du Sud-Est et de l’Asie du Sud à faire suggested by those who run NGOs face à la crise. Comme l’ont indiqué responding to “man-made,” “silent les dirigeants des ONG qui luttent tsunamis” in Africa, the massive contre les « tsunamis » attribuables à support for the Asian natural l’homme ou les « tsunamis disaster raises questions as to why silencieux » en Afrique, l’aide the devastation in this part of the massive accordée aux victimes de world has provoked such cette catastrophe naturelle en Asie unprecedented Canadian public amène à se demander pourquoi la concern. dévastation de cette partie de la planète a provoqué une réaction d’une The historical and contemporary ampleur sans précédent chez les ties between Canada and Asia are Canadiens. complex and manifold. Migration to Canada from Asia has occurred Les liens historiques et contemporains within a historical context where entre le Canada et l’Asie sont Canada defined itself as a white complexes et multiples. La migration settler colony, and where Asians d’Asiatiques au Canada s’est produite were subjected to severe racially dans un contexte historique où le discriminatory restrictions. In Canada s’est défini comme une contrast, the top four source colonie de pionniers blancs et où les countries of immigration to Canada Asiatiques ont fait l’objet in 2003 and 2004 were China, d’importantes restrictions India, the Philippines, and discriminatoires fondées sur la race.
International Journal of Canadian Studies / Revue internationale d’études canadiennes 31, 2005 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes
Pakistan, and current immigration Par contre, les quatre principaux pays policy aggressively recruits wealthy d’origine des immigrants au Canada Asian immigrants, yet continues to en 2003 et 2004 étaient la Chine, impose restrictions on poorer Asian l’Inde, les Philippines et le Pakistan. migrants. The Canadian government La politique d’immigration actuelle has vigorously promoted foreign vise à recruter des immigrants direct investment ties in and from asiatiques fortunés et elle continue Asia, with mixed results (e.g. poor d’imposer des restrictions aux performance of Canadian firms in immigrants asiatiques pauvres. Le China), while defining its security gouvernement canadien a fait interests in terms of stemming Asian vigoureusement la promotion des “terrorist” threats that undermine investissements étrangers directs en global security, in ways that Asie et en provenance d’Asie, avec nonetheless show some sensitivity to des résultats inégaux (p. ex. les politicized Asian-Canadian entreprises canadiennes ont enregistré communities. Asian-Canadians have une piètre performance en Chine) tout changed Canadian, and especially en définissant ses intérêts en matière urban literary, cultural, architectural, de sécurité, c.-à-d. juguler les and artistic landscapes. For example, menaces « terroristes » asiatiques qui while Canadian literature has long minent la sécurité mondiale, de absorbed South and Southeast manière à montrer néanmoins une Asian-Canadian writers such as certaine sensibilité aux collectivités Michael Ondaatje and Joy Kogawa, asiatiques-canadiennes politisées. Les more recently writers, such as Canadiens asiatiques ont transformé Wayson Choy, Rohinton Mistry and le Canada, en particulier sur le plan de M.G. Vassanji or Sui Sin Far in la littérature, de la culture, de Québec, reflect the interest of l’architecture et des arts en milieu Canadian readers in Asian-Canadian urbain. Par exemple, alors que la writers and novels set in diverse littérature canadienne a absorbé Asian countries, and the Asian depuis longtemps les écrivains immigrant experience in Canada. canadiens originaires de l’Asie du Sud-Est et l’Asie du Sud comme In this issue, the contributions reflect Michael Ondaatje et Joy Kogawa, les the richness and diversity of the écrivains plus récents comme Wayson relationship between Canada and Choy, Rohinton Mistry et M.G. Asia. For example, Vijay Agnew Vassanji ou Sui Sin Far au Québec, writes a deeply personal account of traduisent l’intérêt des lecteurs the fierce hold that India exercises canadiens à l’égard des écrivains on her, as an immigrant who canadiens asiatiques et de leurs migrated to Canada 30 years ago. romans qui se déroulent dans divers Informed by postcolonial and pays d’Asie et de l’expérience des feminist perspectives on diasporic immigrants asiatiques au Canada. narratives, Agnew explores the significance of plural imagined Dans le présent numéro, les textes Indias that provide deep chasms of reflètent la richesse et la diversité des misunderstanding but also bridges of relations entre le Canada et l’Asie. interest and delight, among Indian Par exemple, Vijay Agnew présente immigrants, their second generation une description très personnelle de
6 Introduction Présentation children, and non-Indian Canadians. l’emprise considérable que l’Inde Particularly notable have been the exerce sur elle à titre d’immigrante role of reductive and negative qui s’est installée au Canada ilya30 neo-colonial media depictions — ans. À partir de points de vue that regard India only in terms of postcoloniaux et féministes sur des poverty, arranged marriages and récits de la diaspora, elle examine dowry deaths — in marginalizing l’importance dans son imaginaire des and alienating Indian immigrants. multiples portraits de l’Inde qui Agnew draws upon a storehouse of creusent un immense abîme personal and cultural memories of d’incompréhension, mais qui suscitent India to illuminate the empowering aussi de l’intérêt et de la joie chez les effect such memories, and their immigrants indiens, leurs enfants de reproduction in Indian diasporic la deuxième génération et les writing, can have in providing Canadiens non indiens. Elle fait emotional sustenance and in ressortir en particulier le rôle des constructing diasporic citizens. descriptions réductrices et négatives des médias néo-coloniaux – qui In the field of literature, Subha s’arrêtent seulement à la pauvreté, aux Xavier invites us to join a quest mariages arrangés et aux morts en about constructed collective l’absence de dot en Inde – dans la identities, where “nationalist marginalisation et l’aliénation des rhetoric often relies on metaphors to immigrants de l’Inde. Agnew puise bind individuals to geographic dans une mine de souvenirs spaces.” By looking at recent fiction personnels et culturels de l’Inde pour by Chinese-Canadian migrant writer illustrer l’effet stimulant que ces Ying Chen, Xavier stipulates that in souvenirs et leur reproduction dans the process of “transcending les écrits de la diaspora indienne boundaries and peoples, the shadow peuvent avoir sur le soutien affectif et of ‘home’ is thus far-reaching and l’avènement d’un sentiment ever-extending.” In this article, three d’appartenance dans la diaspora. novels by Chen are explored: The Memory of Water (1992), Chinese Dans le domaine de la littérature, Letters (1993) and Ingratitude Subha Xavier nous invite à nous (1995). Xavier examines Chen’s use joindre à son interrogation sur les of poetic language in these three identités collectives construites, où la novels and “each can be read as a rhétorique nationaliste repose souvent story of disruption and displacement sur des métaphores visant à lier les within the national narrative that individus aux espaces géographiques. serves to unhinge the metaphors En examinant l’œuvre récente de created to give meaning to the l’écrivaine canadienne chinoise Ying nation.” In so doing, the author Chen, Xavier signale que dans le proposes that Chen’s writing processus de transcendance des engages provocatively with limites et des peuples, l’ombre du nationalism and its feminist « pays natal » est omniprésente et critiques. s’étend sans cesse. Dans cet article, trois romans de Chen font l’objet In another contribution, Katie d’une analyse : La Mémoire de l’eau Cholette explores the treatment of (1992), Les Lettres chinoises (1993)
7 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes
Jamelie Hassan, a multi-media artist et L’Ingratitude (1995). Xavier and activist of Lebanese origins by examine l’usage que fait Chen du two of Canada’s national cultural langage poétique dans ces trois institutions — the Canadian romans et chacun peut être lu comme Museum of Civilization (CMC) and une histoire de la perturbation et du the Canada Council for the Arts déplacement dans le récit national qui (CCA). In her supple analysis, sert à dévoiler les métaphores créées Cholette documents and accounts for pour donner un sens à la nation. Ce the contrasting reception by these faisant, l’auteur indique que les écrits two institutions of this de Chen répondent de manière internationally acclaimed artist. provocante au nationalisme et à ses While the CCA awarded Jamelie critiques féministes. Hassan the high honor of a Governor General’s Visual and Media Arts Dans un autre texte, Katie Cholette Award, the CMC responded with examine le traitement réservé à suspicion and delay to the “Lands Jamelie Hassan, artiste multimédia et Within Me” exhibit, a collective activiste d’origine libanaise, par deux show of artists of Arab origins, of des institutions culturelles nationales which Hassan was a participant. du Canada – le Musée canadien des The culturally essentializing civilisations (MCC) et le Conseil des response of the CMC’s management arts du Canada (CAC). Dans son to the exhibit in the over-securitized analyse subtile, Cholette présente un climate following “9-11” also meant compte rendu de la réception très that Hassan’s work became folded différente accordée par ces deux into a Manichean dualist framework institutions à cette artiste acclamée à that constructed the work of Arabs l’échelle internationale. Alors que le and Muslims in the idiom of political CAC a octroyé à Jamelie Hassan extremism. The response of the l’insigne honneur d’un Prix du CMC was to reconstruct such work Gouverneur général en arts visuels et in the framework of the more benign en arts médiatiques, le MCC a “immigrant experience.” In contrast, répondu tardivement et avec suspicion Hassan’s recognition by the CCA à l’exposition « Ces pays qui prior to the September 11th terrorist m’habitent », expressions collectives attacks on the US was informed by a d’artistes canadiens d’origine arabe, framework of individual merit and dont Hassan faisait partie. La réponse supported, Cholette argues, by essentiellement culturelle de la neo-liberalism’s emphasis on direction du MCC à l’exposition dans individual achievement. Rather than le climat de psychose de sécurité qui being subjected to the homogenizing faisait suite au 11 septembre 2001 and depoliticizing impulses of the signifiait également que les travaux CMC, the Canada Council did not de Hassan s’inscrivaient dans un eviscerate Hassan’s work of its cadre dualiste manichéen où les political activism and gave travaux des Arabes et des musulmans recognition to her distinctive cultural étaient assimilés à l’extrémisme and social voice. politique. La réponse du MCC a consisté à repenser les travaux de ce Heather Smith draws upon census genre dans le cadre de l’expérience tract data from Statistics Canada to plus inoffensive de l’immigrant. Par
8 Introduction Présentation map and analyze the changing ailleurs, la reconnaissance de Hassan configuration of immigrant par le CAC avant les attentats settlement, poverty and terroristes du 11 septembre aux neighborhood deprivation in États-Unis reposait sur le mérite Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal in individuel, appuyé, selon Cholette, 1991 and 2001. Importantly, Smith par l’accent mis par le néolibéralisme conceptualizes disadvantage not sur la réalisation individuelle. Au lieu only in terms of low income, but de succomber aux impulsions also in terms of inadequate d’homogénéisation et de education, public assistance, dépolitisation du MCC, le Conseil des fractured families, inability to arts du Canada n’a pas vidé les communicate in an official language, travaux de Hassan de leur activisme cultural isolation and discrimination. politique et il a reconnu l’expression Her nuanced analysis yields the culturelle et sociale distincte de cette rather alarming result that in 2001, dernière. in all three cities, high percentages of immigrant settlement were far Heather Smith s’inspire des données more strongly correlated with des secteurs de recensement de poverty concentration compared to Statistique Canada pour établir la 1991. But as reflected in the diverse cartographie et procéder à l’analyse patterns of immigrant dispersion and de l’évolution de la configuration de poverty among housing tracts in the l’installation, de la pauvreté et de la three cities, it is misleading to speak dépossession des immigrants dans les of an immigrant “underclass” (a quartiers de Toronto, de Vancouver et popular concept in US analysis). de Montréal en 1991 et 2001. Fait Some larger groups of recent important, Smith conceptualise les immigrants, such as Chinese, come inconvénients non seulement sur le to Canada with quite diverse plan des faibles revenus, mais socioeconomic statuses and amounts également de l’instruction of capital, mitigating the effects of insuffisante, de l’aide publique, des the downturn in the labour market in familles disloquées, de l’incapacité de the early 1990s. Moreover, Smith communiquer dans une langue cautions that, in explicating the officielle, de l’isolement culturel et de relationship between immigrant la discrimination. Son analyse settlement and poverty, attention nuancée révèle des résultats must be paid also to the cultural alarmants : en 2001, il y avait dans les practices and strategies of trois villes une corrélation beaucoup immigrants themselves, e.g., pooling plus forte entre les pourcentages financial resources so that élevés de quartiers d’immigrants et la income-poor immigrants may in fact concentration de la pauvreté qu’en be “house rich.” 1991. Mais comme en témoignent les divers modèles de dispersion et de The dossier on Asia in this issue pauvreté des immigrants dans les includes a critical review by Janusz lotissements des trois villes, il est Przychodzen and Vijaya Rao of the trompeur de parler d’une sous-classe proceedings of the round table d’immigrants (un concept populaire “Écrire l’Inde au Québec” (2004). dans l’analyse américaine). Certains For these authors, the construction of groupes importants d’immigrants
9 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes modern identity in Quebec has been récents, qui arrivent au Canada, shaped by orientalism, and the comme les Chinois, ont des statuts authors go on to examine the manner socioéconomiques et des niveaux de in which Quebeckers have richesse très différents, ce qui atténue represented India. Thus, the image l’effet du repli observé sur le marché of India is characterized by the du travail au début des années 90. De “temporal dimension outside of plus, Smith fait une mise en garde : time,” which is at once a reflection pour expliquer les relations entre les of cultural shock and of escape into quartiers d’immigrants et la pauvreté, myth. This has culminated il faut accorder une attention aux “astonishingly and paradoxically in pratiques et aux stratégies culturelles the emergence of a more des immigrants eux-mêmes, p. ex. la contemporary awareness, indeed one mise en commun des ressources that is at the very root of identitary financières pour que les immigrants syncretism.” pauvres en revenu puissent en fait être riches en immobilisations. The issue also offers a research note by Serge Granger about the state of Le dossier sur l’Asie dans le présent historical research on Canada and numéro comprend une critique de Asia in the 19th century. Granger Janusz Przychodzen et de Vijaya Rao underscores the lack of historical sur les actes de la table ronde « Écrire research on the relationship between l’Inde au Québec » [2004]. Pour ces Asia and Canada prior to 1850, in auteurs, la construction d’une identité spite of the ties formed by Anglo- moderne au Québec a été modelée par French colonialism. Because of l’orientalisme, et les auteurs these historical links, many spheres examinent la façon dont les of human activity are now Québécois ont représenté l’Inde. Par influenced by a globalized culture conséquent, l’image de l’Inde se that has drawn Asia closer to caractérise par la « dimension Canada. However, few historical temporelle à l’extérieur du temps », studies, particularly in French, have qui est à la fois un reflet du choc dealt with Canada-Asia relations culturel et de l’évasion dans un with regard to religion, trade, mythe. Fait étonnant et paradoxal, le politics and/or literature. The point culminant est l’émergence d’une research note explores the various sensibilisation plus contemporaine, aspects of Canada-Asia relations and qui est à la base même du syncrétisme the extent to which this vast field of identitaire. enquiry has, to date, remained largely untapped. Le numéro présente aussi une note de recherche de Serge Granger sur l’état The Open-Topic section contains des recherches historiques sur le three articles. In the first one, Daniel Canada et l’Asie au XIXe siècle. Chartier traces the historical Granger souligne le manque de evolution of the cultural recherche historique sur les relations representation of the Inuit through entre l’Asie et le Canada avant 1850 the first narratives of the early malgré les liens établis par le explorers to more recent colonialisme anglo-français. En raison documentary movies. Daniel McNeil de ces liens historiques, beaucoup de
10 Introduction Présentation focuses on the “politics of blackness sphères de l’activité humaine sont in Nova Scotia after the provincial maintenant influencées par une government bulldozed Africville and culture mondiale qui a rapproché its Baptist church.” He documents l’Asie du Canada. Toutefois, peu how “Black intellectuals inspired by d’études historiques, notamment en the memory of Africville have français, ont porté sur les relations fashioned an Africadia and entre le Canada et l’Asie concernant attempted to offer individuals in la religion, le commerce, la politique urban areas access to mythic, et (ou) la littérature. La note de revolutionary heroes.” He concludes recherche examine les divers aspects by comparing the narratives of Black des relations entre le Canada et l’Asie Scotians with those of Liverpool- et la mesure dans laquelle ce vaste born Blacks. Finally, to complete the domaine d’étude est demeuré, jusqu’à Open-Topic section, David Palmieri maintenant, largement inexploité. draws a parallel between George Grant’s anti-Americanism and Pierre La rubrique hors-thème contient trois Vadebonceur’s anti-américanisme. articles. Dans le premier, Daniel The intense discussion on Chartier retrace l’évolution historique l’américanité in Quebec through the de la représentation culturelle des work of Gérard Bouchard and Inuits dans les récits des premiers Joseph Yvon Thériault offers an explorateurs jusqu’à des films interesting prism through which to documentaires plus récents. Daniel read his account of a long tradition, McNeil met l’accent sur la politique in both French- and de la négritude en Nouvelle-Écosse English-speaking Canada. après que le gouvernement provincial eut rasé au bouldozeur Africville et In their review essay, Leslie Alm son église baptiste. Il montre, and Ross Buckhart highlight documents à l’appui, comment les common themes in three books that intellectuels noirs inspirés par le outline the Canada–United States souvenir d’Africville ont conçu un relationship as it pertains to Africadia et tenté d’offrir aux international environmental policy personnes des zones urbaines l’accès making: Environmental Politics and à des héros révolutionnaires Policy by Walter Rosenbaum mythiques. En guise de conclusion, il (2005), Canadian Environmental compare les écrits des Noirs de Policy: Context and Cases edited by Nouvelle-Écosse et ceux des Noirs Debora VanNijnatten and Robert nés à Liverpool. Enfin, pour terminer Boardman (2002), and la rubrique, David Palmieri établit un Environmental Policy: New parallèle entre l’anti-américanisme de Directions for the Twenty-first George Grant et l’anti-américanisme Century edited by Norman Vig and de Pierre Vadeboncoeur. La Michael E. Kraft (2006). According discussion intense sur l’américanité to them, these works illuminate the au Québec dans l’œuvre de Gérard vast similarities and differences that Bouchard et de Joseph Yvon characterize the way each of these Thériault permet de lire sous un angle nations views its place in bringing intéressant son compte rendu d’une about environmental globalization. longue tradition, au Canada français They also look at how globalization et au Canada anglais.
11 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes
(especially economic globalization) Dans leur essai critique, Leslie Alm et affects the salience of the Ross Buckhart font ressortir des environment as a policy. They thèmes communs dans trois ouvrages conclude with an examination of sur les relations entre le Canada et les policymaking in the environmental États-Unis qui portent sur arena as a way of comparing and l’élaboration de la politique contrasting the two countries. internationale en matière d’environnement : Environmental Daiva Stasiulis Politics and Policy de Walter Associate Editor Rosenbaum (2005), Canadian Environmental Policy: Context and Claude Couture Cases sous la direction de Debora Editor-in-Chief VanNijnatten et de Robert Boardman (2002), et Environmental Policy: New Directions for the Twenty-first Century sous la direction de Norman Vig et de Michael E. Kraft (2006). Selon ces derniers, ces travaux illustrent les grandes ressemblances et différences qui caractérisent la façon dont chacun de ces pays envisage sa place dans la mondialisation environnementale. Ils examinent aussi comment la mondialisation (en particulier la mondialisation économique) influe sur l’importance de l’environnement en tant que politique. En conclusion, ils comparent les deux pays en fonction des politiques qu’ils élaborent dans le domaine de l’environnement.
Daiva Stasiulis Rédactrice adjointe
Claude Couture Rédacteur en chef
12 Vijay Agnew
Finding India in the Diaspora
Abstract This paper analyzes Indian immigrant’s quest to forge a “home” in Canada. Their emotional and psychological struggles to feel “at home” have much to do with the biased representations of India that frequently highlight its poverty and related problems of illiteracy, superstition, gender oppression, and religious conflict. There is not one imagined India but many and it is the differences in the imagined that alienate and make immigrants feel that they do no belong here in Canada. This heightens the immigrant’s nostalgia for their cultures and lost “homes” in India.
Résumé Les immigrants indiens cherchent à se constituer un « chez-soi » au Canada, ce qu’analyse le présent article. Leurs combats affectifs et psychologiques pour s’y sentir à l’aise ont beaucoup à voir avec les représentations tendancieuses de l’Inde qui mettent souvent en relief la pauvreté de ce pays et les problèmes connexes : l’analphabétisme, la superstition, l’oppression fondée sur le sexe et les conflits religieux. Il n’existe pas une seule et unique Inde imaginaire mais de nombreuses, et ce sont les différences dans l’imaginaire qui aliènent les immigrants et les amènent à ne pas se sentir chez eux au Canada. Ce phénomène intensifie la nostalgie des immigrants pour les cultures et la terre natale qu’ils ont laissées derrière eux, en Inde.
India clings to me. Perhaps it might be closer to the truth to say I cling to India, the country that was once my home. I am an Indian who lives in the Diaspora and works as a professor. I left India some 30 years ago, yet the country continues to haunt my dreams, and its history and politics, myths and fables shadow me wherever I go. The fact and fiction of India, as many Canadians know it, contextualize and explain to them who I am, where I come from and the cultural baggage I have brought with me. My dijins are the perceptions and stories, real and imagined, that float around me and with whom I am always shadowboxing.
India is not merely a space on the map but the place of my childhood. As such, it is the locus of memory, nostalgia, anxiety and home. My memories of India are fluid, and they change with time and social context. Memories of India provide solace and comfort when I am homesick, sad and lonely or when my present becomes problematic and traps me in an apologetic,
International Journal of Canadian Studies / Revue internationale d’études canadiennes 31, 2005 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes defensive or confrontational mode. Memories create a safe sanctuary for the immigrant psyche, bruised by racism, and they build self-esteem by heightening pride in the cultures practised “back home” and in the Diaspora. Immigrants, like me, share nostalgic memories of childhood, youth and community with their children, hoping to recreate a history, a lineage for them that encompasses not only their present selves but also theirpast.Althoughwerecallmemoriesforourchildren,friendsandothers, and although these memories serve personal and emotional needs, collectively they construct communities of interests and beliefs.
In the Diaspora, immigrants create identities for themselves in many different ways. Immigrants, their second-generation children (whether born in Canada or elsewhere) and white Canadians have different interpretations of and perspectives on India. These imagined Indias are a product of their socially constructed identities that are constituted by race, gender, ethnicity, class and nation. Although the identities of immigrants and their second-generation children differ, they often share ambivalence toward the geographical, physical, emotional and intellectual home.
Chandra Mohanty, an immigrant from India who is a feminist professor in the United States, asks: What is home? The place I was born? Where I grew up? Where my parents live? Where I live and work as an adult? Where I locate my community, my people? Who are my people? Is home a geographical space, a historical space, an emotional, sensory space? Home is always so crucial to immigrants and migrants … I am convinced that this question — how one understands and defines home — is a profoundly political one. (2003, 126) In this paper I analyze Indian immigrants’ quest to find a “home” in Canada. Their emotional and psychological struggles to feel “at home” have much to do with the biased representations of India that frequently highlight its poverty and related problems of illiteracy, superstition, gender oppression and religious conflict. Immigrants tell stories of “home” to their second-generationchildrenhopingtoevokepositiveimagesoftheirculture and heritage, and counterbalance the negative portrayal of India circulated in the media. Other Canadians have limited knowledge of India and it is derived primarily from mass media but also, in some cases, from travel, books, friends and acquaintances. Consequently, there is not one imagined India but many, and it is the differences in these imagined worlds that alienate and make immigrants feel that they do not belong here in Canada. Such feelings heighten their nostalgia for their cultures and lost “homes” in India.
14 Finding India in the Diaspora
Storytelling: A Feminist Methodology Storytelling and narratives are at the heart of feminist methodology and pedagogy (Razack 1998; Giles 2002; Ristock 1996). Biographical and personal accounts, such as those of bell hooks (1984) and Audre Lorde (1982), were highly influential in the development of feminist theories in the 1980s. These accounts of the everyday lives of women, whether at home in the family or elsewhere, revealed how race, class and gender oppression constructed their identities. Consequently, feminists value the discovery of submerged knowledge that helps to deconstruct power relations. Christina Sommers (1994), a philosopher, is sceptical of the feminist method of storytelling that is intended to create solidarity and heighten consciousness of oppression. She argues that storytelling sessions are nothing more than therapy groups that allow participants to whine; they thus generate little serious discussion and analysis.
An immigrant’s past is sutured to the present by stories about family, home and community as they had once known it. Their stories take the raw materials of everyday life to construct a coherent narrative that engages the reader and listener. Storytelling is personal, and although it can be nostalgic and sentimental, it yet speaks of truths that are local and particular in contrast to those that are empirical, universal and objective. In her seminal writings, Dorothy Smith has argued that our everyday lives are embedded in the power relations of society, but these relations remain invisible to us because the world around us seems to be so normal, natural and routine (1987; 1990).
The social location of the storytellers is important to our understanding of their perspectives. Caren Kaplan argues that “a politics of location” is most useful when it is used to “deconstruct dominant hierarchy or hegemonic use of the term gender. Apolitics of location is not useful when it is construed to be the reflection of authentic, primordial identities that are to be established and reaffirmed” (qtd. in Mankekar 2003, 63). The “politics of location” require that we interrogate our privileges and blind spots and reflect upon how gender, race, class and sexuality inflected the experiences that constructed our identities and shaped us into our present selves. However, we all have multiple positionings that are sometimes contra- dictory and internally inconsistent. Thus, the individual’s perception is also fluid and shifts and changes over time and place. These shifting positions and perspectives are a matter of constant negotiation. Over the course of a lifetime, immigrants may evolve into insiders within their new countries, but find themselves outsiders in the places where they were born (Assayag and Benei 2003). Such an evolution requires an emotional realigning and understanding of self and of home.
For example, some South Asian academics living in the Diaspora confront the problem of identifying their perspective as that of insiders or
15 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes outsiders when they research South Asia. Yet it is partly the experience of encountering racism in its many guises in their personal and professional lives that created the desire to study their cultural origins, history and society (Assayag and Benei 2003; Agnew 2003). Clifford argues that Diasporas generate a “double consciousness” that enables individuals to transcend disappointments by emphasizing the strengths of self and community. He states: Experience of loss, marginality, and exile (differently cushioned by class) are often reinforced by systematic exploitation and blocked advancement. This constitutive suffering coexists with the skills of survival: strength in adaptive distinction, discrepant cosmopolitanism, and stubborn visions of renewal. Diaspora consciousness lives loss and hope as a defining tension. (1994, 312) In contemporary feminist debates about the Diaspora, the terms hybridity and hybrid identities are favoured for defining identity and perspective. A hybrid perspective is neither indigenous nor exogenous (Code 2000, 260). Bhabha (2000) views hybridity favourably because it provides a space in which the individuals can engage in an ongoing negotiation with the culture in which they find themselves and thereby gain a better understanding of self and society. But others, like Grewal and Caplan (1997), are more critical of hybridity because not all facets of such an identity are equal and symmetrical; rather, they are uneven because they stem from histories that transcend individual intentionality. Radhakrishnan notes that production and representation of the self as a subject in the post- colonial era can be a laborious process that involves taking an inventory of the many facets of gender, race, class and other socially significant criteria embedded and encoded in one’s identity. Although a hybrid identity can be an “intransitive and immanent sense of jouissance,” for the post-colonial subject it can often also be an expression of extreme pain and dislocation (1996, 158–59).
Acultural memory that is communicated through stories is an “act in the present by which individuals and groups constitute their identities by recalling a shared past on the basis of common, and therefore often contested, norms, conventions, and practices” (Hirsch and Smith 2002, 5). The collective memories, documented in stories, bear testimony to the immigrants’pasts and demonstrate how subjectivities are negotiated within and adapted to the historical and social circumstances in which women and other subordinate individuals — transsexuals, for example — find themselves (Giles 2002, 39). Such knowledge is empowering because it transforms “disabling fictions into enabling fictions altering our relation to the present and the past” (McDermott 2002, 291). This activity is significant since those in power can, and often do, dominate and manipulate memory to serve their own ends. Thus, women, ethnic minorities,
16 Finding India in the Diaspora racialized individuals and other marginalized groups need to assert their presence in masculinist hegemonic memory and history.
When Indians or those of Indian descent get together socially or to participateinactivitiesorganizedforimmigrants,theyfindaspaceinwhich they can tell stories about their past (Agnew 1998). Immigrants and their second-generation children tell stories that speak to alternative and suppressed truths, and challenge homogenizing and universalizing discourses that attest to their resistance to varied and intersecting oppressions (Handa 2003; Dunlop 2004). Sharing stories and identifying with others who share common roots and similar dilemmas can help overcome feelings of victimization, eliminate personal blame, avoid sense of failure, generate critical consciousness and encourage self-reflection.
Such conversations and stories, writes Bhabha, can create a “third space” that “displaces histories that constitute it, and sets up new structures of authority, new political initiatives, which are inadequately understood through received wisdom” (qtd. in Maira 2002, 87). Maira argues that the “thirdspace”isnotnecessarilyliberating;rather,thepositionsandwisdoms that emerge from it are “complex, contradictory, and are enmeshed in the relations of power that are also part of the everyday experience” (Maira 2002, 87).
Racism, Memory and the Social Construction of Identity Memories of the past resonate in the hearts of immigrants and shadow their present. Cultural memories emerge out of a complex dynamic between the past and the present, the individual and the collective, the public and the private; between remembrance and omission, power and powerlessness, history and myth. Memories are “acts of performance, representation, and interpretation” that require “agents of transfer” and specific contexts (Hirsch and Smith 2002, 8). Immigrants from India in Canada transfer stories of the home and homeland to their listeners and readers, but they do so within a historical and social context that is imbued with race, class and gender hierarchies.
I remember a lecture I gave as part of the Later Life Learning Program at the University of Toronto. The program’s theme in 2001–2002 was India, and I was invited to lecture on women in India. When I walked into New College at the University of Toronto, the venue for the talk, I found the entrance hallway full of senior citizens sitting or standing, talking or reading, looking relaxed and happy. Right across from the doorway, two women sat at a table, ticking off the names of the attendees on a sheet. When I walked toward them, they smiled genially and before I could say a word they handed me my name tag.
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Since I was a few minutes early, I moved to the side. Looking around casually, I noticed that I was the only Indian in that exclusively white gathering. When I caught the eyes of men or women, they smiled pleasantly and kindly at me. My skin colour was a sure giveaway that I was the guest speaker. I stood behind a podium at the front and noticed that there were approximately two hundred men and women in the audience. I was amused to note that, despite being in my mid-50s, I was the youngest person there. The audience listened attentively and seemed to find the talk interesting enough. After my lecture, a man asked, “Is it not true that Indian women are slaves to their husbands?” He went on to elaborate that Indian women were required to “serve” their husbands and families.
The question posed a dilemma: how was I to perform my ethnicity to this white audience? The answer that immediately came to mind was that all cultures and religions are patriarchal but they differ from each other in the degree and extent of oppressiveness. Yet where to locate Indian gender norms in this continuum? I wondered which ideal society this man had in mind as a norm. Besides, it was not clear whether the question referred to women in India, in Canada, or in the Diaspora. I had the options of celebrating the achievements of some exceptional Indian women, adopting a critical stance toward the oppressiveness of gender norms in India, or copping out completely by giving a vague and general answer. The man’s question had also evoked a whole set of associated memories of women — my grandmother, aunts, cousins, and maids — who had been part of my everyday family living in India. Nostalgic for the past, I wanted to protest and say that Indian women were happy and led fulfilling, joyous lives.
I imagined, however, that over the years the audience had read accounts in Canadian and American newspapers or watched television programs on the Indian cultural practice of arranged marriages and dowry. The stories portray these cultural practices as uniquely (read also bizarrely, outdatedly and oppressively) Indian. These accounts describe such practices in an ahistorical way and without distinguishing between traditional and current norms, cities and villages, or India and the Diaspora. Arranged marriages are contrasted to “our” practices of freely entered heterosexual relationships between consenting adults. (Recently, as a result of a specific case involving one individual, arranged marriages were dubbed erroneously but revealingly as forced marriages in Denmark.) Newspaper reports on what is termed “dowry deaths” — that is, when a young woman is killed by greedy in-laws for insufficient dowry — reinforce images of a traditional and oppressive culture (Williams 2004; Lakshmi 2001; Stackhouse n.d). The stories are accounts of exceptional and sensation- alized cases, yet they become the imagined norm, defining Indian culture as a homogenous whole without any consideration given to region, religion, caste, class and myriad other factors. These stories etch pre-existing images
18 Finding India in the Diaspora of the victimized womanhood of India more deeply in the minds of white Canadians.
Experiences like mine reveal the subtle and invisible (because they seem so natural and normal) nature of everyday racism. Everyday racism, writes Essed in her seminal study Understanding Everyday Racism, involves “systematic, recurrent and familiar practices” that can be generalized and which involve “socialized attitudes and behavior.” Reconstructions of events like mine, whether verbal or written, provide “the best basis for the analysis of the simultaneous impact of racism in different sites and in different social relations … [for] these accounts locate the narrators as well as their experiences in the social context of their everyday lives, give specificity and detail to events and invite the narrator to carefully qualify subtle experiences of racism” (Essed 1991, 3–4).
Immigrants are deeply sensitive to negative images that construct them as the Other in relation to that which is defined “Canadian.” Such representations, Stuart Hall notes, produce meanings that are central to the “construction of identity and the marking of difference, in production and consumption, as well as the regulation of social conduct” (qtd. in Henry and Tator 2002, 28). Such representations further alienate immigrants and add to their feelings of marginalization and exclusion. Immigrants experience a range of emotions in these encounters — outrage, anger, disbelief, disgruntlement and even the wish to deny the presence of racism — and ponder and fret over the meanings of them and their implications for their lives and that of their children in Canada. They wonder how best to communicate the nature of such encounters to their children. Should they deny and ignore the implied racism? Or, alternatively, should they challenge and dispute their hidden meanings? Encounters that deny equal respect to racialized immigrants rob them of their right to social citizenship in Canada (Creese, forthcoming). They come to feel they are not at home in Canada.
Immigrants are not passive recipients or audience for these negative representations. They respond by creating alternative images of their groups and therefore themselves. Memories that tell the stories of immigrants from their own perspectives are less widely known. Immigrants look back to recall a happy and joyous past in order to move forward in their lives. In “My Mother’s Lost Places,” Rishma Dunlop (2004), a second-generation South Asian poet and a professor, notes that her family’s white French-Canadian neighbours in Quebec could not possibly imagine her mother’s childhood and youth:
I know they could never imagine, as I have only just begun to imagine my mother’s lost places, her girlhood, the
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laughter in summer houses, wild monkeys at the hill stations of her youth, peacocks, the heady profusions of flower and fruit, jasmine and roses and custard-apples and guavas. They could not imagine her with braids and proper Catholic uniform at the convent school under the stern eyes of nuns who taught them all their subjects including domestic skills such as the tatting of lace and embroidery stitching. They could not taste the sweetness of Sanskrit poetry, or the star-flung nights of Persian ghazals.
Memory is interactive. It involves recognizing that those who tell a story can be understood by their audience as they struggle to represent an identity and consciousness of themselves (Giles 2002, 25). As an immigrant, I am haunted by perceptions of women in India; they make me feel vulnerable to the judgements of others about my nationality, culture and therefore me. India is an integral part of me, and my skin colouring defines me in Canada as Indian or being of Indian descent. (By way of contrast, in India it is my residence in Canada that defines me and not my skin colour.) When I explain some aspect of India to white Canadians, I am not just talking about acountrybutalsoofmyoriginsandculturalheritage.Forme,conversations about India are not just about people “there”; they have implications for Indians“here.”WhatwhiteCanadiansknowaboutIndiaintersectswithand influences how they view Indians “there” as well as “here” in the Diaspora. The personal thus becomes very political.
The question that had been posed to me was difficult to answer anyway. The diversity of India’s population — factors such as caste, class, sexuality, region, religion, education, urbanization and their many intersections — make it hard to come to any meaningful generalizations about women in India. Similarly, Indian women in the Diaspora have various social, sexual and other identities. Besides, in answering the question, I wanted to raise issues of how power constructs knowledge and influences what we know and how we know it (Code 1991). Would it be polite to speak about ethnocentrism to this group of interested senior citizens and ask them to reflect on why they believed Indian women were victimized? Did they also think white Canadian women were victimized? Could I, in a few seconds, compel them to think about what was common and different among women living in varied circumstances and locations? I wondered if the audience thought that compared to victimized Indian women I was emancipated and liberated, or perhaps they just thought my freedom was a beneficence and privilege accorded to me by my residence in Canada.
Stuart Hall notes that cultural identity is an “act of production not an artifact waiting to be unearthed” (qtd. in Maira 2002, 113). Identity is a
20 Finding India in the Diaspora social construction that “is a matter of ‘becoming’ as well as ‘being.’ It belongs to the future as much as to the past. It is not something that already exists, transcending place, time, history, and culture. Cultural identities come from somewhere, have histories. But like everything which is historical, they undergo constant transformation. Far from being eternally fixed in some essentialized past, they are subject to the continuous ‘play’ of history, culture, and power” (Lowe 2003, 136).
The lecture and the questions had made me, in the words of Homi Bhabha, a “vernacular cosmopolitan” who was translating between cultures, “renegotiating traditions from a position where ‘locality’ insists on its own terms, while entering into the larger national and societal conversations” (2000, 138). Cosmopolitanism can mean accepting the possibility that one’s own culture is “inadequate” or “fallible” or has not developed particular types of skills or human creativity. An acknowled- gment of these shortcomings can prepare the individual to draw upon other cultures for a more “satisfactory intellectual life.” Such cosmopolitanism, however, is complicated because it can involve Orientalism, political correctness, and perspectives and interpretations that imply that there are “insiders” and “outsiders” (Kaviraj 2003, 149).
Cultural translation is a process that requires those who perform it to revise and rethink their knowledge, beliefs and points of reference. Bhaba states: Ambivalence and antagonism accompanies any act of cultural translation, because negotiating with the “difference of the other” reveals the radical insufficiency of sedimented, settled systems of meaning, and signification; it demonstrates, as well, the inadequacy of those “structures of feeling” … through which we experience our cultural authenticity and authority as being somehow “natural” to us and part of a national landscape. (2000, 141) Given the time constraints of the lecture, I did not engage the audience in a prolonged conversation. I grinned and responded glibly by saying that women all over the world served their husbands, and that comment drew delighted laughter from the women in the room. They had obviously drawn on their own experiences, preoccupations, desires and cultural understanding to make themselves at home in my response.
As I walked toward the subway after the lecture amid jean-clad students chattering into cell phones, I was flooded with memories of the time when I attended college in Mumbai (formerly Bombay). I nostalgically recalled the happy times spent with grandmothers and aunts, and the maids whose work had freed me from all household tasks. As a young girl, I had paid scant attention to the care and nurturing that I received from the women in my family, accepting it all as normal and routine. Memory had connected
21 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes my past and present, but it had drawn me into a reflective mode that compelled me to rethink the past. Was the situation of the women in my family as idyllic as I thought? In rethinking the past, I learned about my genealogy and gained some additional insights into being an Indian living in the Diaspora.
Remembering, notes Judy Giles, is a process that helps individuals put the past into a framework that gives it a set of meanings that makes sense to them in the present. Thus, individual psyches intersect with historically specific ideologies. The past is not constructed in some “pure” unmediated way but in the context of prevailing values and norms and the cultural repertoire available to the individual at a specific historical moment (2002, 25).
My experiences have partially helped to construct my identity. It is from such a location, sometimes defined as marginal, that I imagine India and tell the story of immigrants in the Diaspora. But marginality is not necessarily disempowering; rather, it is a space from which a new understanding can emerge. Bhabha notes: No name is yours until you speak it; somebody returns your call and suddenly, the circuit of signs, gestures, gesticulations, is established. You are part of a dialogue that may not be heard or heralded at first, but your person cannot be denied. The voices of the crossing, once drawn by the siren’s song, may lead you astray, but strangely you find yourself the long way around. In another’s country that is also your own, your person divides, and in following the forked path, you encounter yourself in a double movement … once as stranger, and then as friend. (2000, 142)
The Plurality of the Imagined India Imagination, writes Appadurai, has become a collective fact. It is a social practice by which we construct new ways of knowing and understanding and thus imagination has entered the logic of everyday life and is no longer the preserve of the intellectual elites. In contemporary times, writes Appadurai, imagination is not just fantasy, escape, elite pastime or contemplation; it is an “organized field of social practices, a form of work (bothinthesenseoflaborandofculturallyorganizedpractice)andaformof negotiation between sites of agency (‘individuals’) and globally defined fields of possibility” (2003, 30). He has coined the terms ethnoscapes, mediascapes, technoscapes, financescapes, and ideoscapes to characterize cultural flow across the borders and boundaries of nation-states. The suffix scapes is meant to indicate “that these are not objective given relations which look the same from every angle of vision, but rather that they are deeply perspectival constructs, inflected by the historical linguistic, and political situatedness of different sorts of actors; nation states, … [and] diasporic communities … and even face to face groups, such as villages,
22 Finding India in the Diaspora neighborhoods, and families” (31). These landscapes are the building blocks, Appadurai says, of “imagined worlds.”
Leaving home and arriving in new worlds has been made easier throughout the twentieth century with developments in transportation, media and communication technologies. Ordinary people stimulated by print and electronic media have begun to deploy the imagination in constructing worlds that are both near and far from their own physical and mental locations. Theoretically, it could be said that immigrants never have to leave their “homes” for they are always accessible to them through reading, watching movies and videos and listening to music in regional and national languages. When individuals travel or migrate they leave behind their families and friends in the hope of making a better life in the new land, but feelings of cultural alienation and racism keeps them from being “at home.” They hanker for emotional and psychological homes as they struggle to adapt themselves to their new neighbourhoods, work environments, and school routines that are different from the social world of their past. Intense involvement with original cultures and racialized and ethnic communities in their new and adopted “homes” is itself symptomatic of the alienation experienced by immigrants and the social distance they sometimes find difficult to traverse.
Perspective and imagination are not stable and constant; rather, they are fluid and change with time and place. Collectively, immigrants imagine an India, and although it differs in shade and nuance nevertheless these varied “communities of sentiment” provide them with emotional and psychological anchors. But the existence of different communities of sentiment and the diverse ways in which those communities imagine India differ substantially from those of the immigrants. Immigrants’ imagined India is imbued with nostalgia, longing and desire, and they resist the biased interpretations of their culture and therefore of themselves that are sometimes depicted in print and electronic media. This differs from “Canadians” who read media accounts of India, watch movies made by Indian immigrants or read books by immigrant authors. Similarly, the imagined India of the second-generation children of immigrants differs from “Canadians” and their parents, although they may be indulgent of the latter’s nostalgia and predilection of storytelling about “home.” These plural imagined Indias stem from differences of experiences, sentiment, perspectives, and social and political locations. These Indias, generated within communities of sentiment, create feelings of belonging and not belonging, friend and stranger, and neighbourhood and nationhood.
My imagined India is chaotic and full of contradictions. I bring back to Toronto, from visits to India, images that vividly portray the ruthlessness of poverty and the degradation that it wreaks on the individual. India’s prospects are somewhat better than those of neighbouring Bangladesh or
23 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes some nations in Africa, such as Ethiopia and Sudan, yet it is a poor country that has needed foreign aid from prosperous Western nations. Academics and the larger public, inside and outside of India, view its population of approximately 1 billion as contributing to its poverty. But here is the conundrum: Is population the cause of the country’s poverty or its consequence? Scholars do not agree among themselves as to which criteria would determine the ideal size of a country’s population, and there is no consensus even about an appropriate size.
Marxist friends at the university harangue me when I mention the population dilemma, and they talk of imperialism and its consequences for colonies. Amartya Sen, a Nobel Prize-winning economist, does not view the size of the population as a problem per se. He argues that population is a resource for India. He believes government ought to focus its policies on developing human capabilities through education, nutrition and by ensuring an equitable social context (Sen 2000). Well-meaning and optimistic journalists do not harp on the pervasive nature of India’s poverty since it is so well known that stories about it are hardly newsworthy. Rather, they talk of India’s population as overwhelming, difficult to understand, or as lending the country a charm through its mix of caste, region, religion, class and their myriad intersections.
Romanticized pictures of colourfully dressed peasants performing folk dances and playing the sitar, which are intended to inveigle tourists, fly from my mind when I am in the country amid the bustling crowds that are on every street corner in Mumbai, Delhi, Chenai and Kolkata. Street scenes in Bollywood movies, which I view in my home in a quiet residential neighbourhood in Toronto, portray a sea of humanity that reinforces the emotional argument that population is the cause of India’s poverty. But I do not necessarily make the connection between the poverty “there” and the affluence “here” that enables me to watch movies in comfort. I do not probe too deeply how I, individually, or “us,” undefined and unknown, are collectively implicated in the poverty experienced by large segments of the world’s population. I shy away from assuming any responsibility for the misery of other people.
I put aside moral and ethical questions that confound and perplex, and replace them, in my classroom, with abstract and academic explanations of caste and class, family and community, rural and urban environments. I talk easily about justice and equality for women, Dalits (untouchables), peasants, and the poor while maintaining an emotional distance between the subjects of my rhetoric and me. Slowly, as days, weeks and months go by, these bold and stark images of my homeland — whether from visits, movies, or books — dissipate and their blurring brings relief from guilt and self-questioning.
24 Finding India in the Diaspora
The news from India, reported by the media in Canada, is with some exceptions usually critical. In 1984, the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards was widely reported in Toronto’s newspapers as it was elsewhere around the globe. The coverage was followed by accounts of the ensuing violence between Hindus and Sikhs, and these accounts noted that the police, who were largely Hindu, refused to act, thus implicitly sanctioning the killing of Sikhs by the enraged population. More recently, in 2002, there were violent clashes between Hindus and Muslims in Gujarat in which hundreds of Muslims died. There were also accounts of poor, untouchable villagers who were massacred by their upper-caste and upper-class landlords, and of poor women being brutally raped by the police.
Stories such as these raise the consciousness of friends and students of all ethnicities, who begin to query me about my religion and caste. Their comments have an undertone that asks if I am part of the oppressor or the oppressed group, part of the perpetrating upper-caste-class murderers and rapists or their victims. At times like these I become conscious of my difference and the need to close the social distance that yawns between us. I want to assert militantly, “Hey! Wait a minute. I am a Canadian,” yet in practice I usually keep quiet. Outrageous and inhumane acts perpetrated by some Indians on the other side of the world spread like a stain to engulf me here in Toronto. The practical effect is to silence me or at least lessen my volubility about gender and ethnic inequalities in Canada.
My reactions to racism and biased media stories about India compel me to question where and with whom I belong, and the location of my “home.” Is it here or there? Do I have to choose, or could I, like Rushdie, refuse to choose between emotional and physical home? Rushdie writes: But I, too, have ropes around my neck, I have them to this day, pulling me this way and that, East and West, the nooses tightening, commanding, choose, choose. I buck. I snort, I whinny. I rear. I kick. Ropes, I do not choose between you. Lassoes, lariats, I choose neither of you, and both. Do you hear? I refuse to choose. (1996, 211) The imagination of a resident of Toronto about India may also be fed by media stories such as “Monkey Madness! Surly Simians run amok in Indian Capital,” as an ABC headline noted. Similarly, CNN reported, “In a capital city where cows roam the streets and elephants plod along in the bus lanes, it’s no surprise to find government buildings overrun by monkeys.”1 (The story also ran in the Globe and Mail.) The ABC article stated: Thousands of monkeys are creating havoc in the corridors of power in the Indian capital, barging into government offices, stealing food, threatening bureaucrats, and even ripping apart valuable documents. The increasingly aggressive animals swing
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effortlessly between the offices of the defense, finance, and external affairs ministries, and have even been spotted in the prime minister’s office.2 The article went on to add that the local population felt helpless since the monkey is one of the gods in the Hindu pantheon and it would be sacrilegious to kill or to use violence against them. Instead, the people were feeding them bananas. The monkeys, it seems, were in charge in New Delhi.
Quaint stories from exotic locales entertain, amuse and titillate readers. The media presents images, such as those of monkeys in Delhi, but we breathe life into them by attaching stories and constructing narratives that interpret and give them meaning and significance. One neighbour, a white Canadian teacher, asked, “Is it really true?” Perhaps the story brought to her mind an image of a monkey sitting on a high-backed leather chair with a large desk between him and a cowering human. Or perhaps she imagined monkeys prancing on desks and filing cabinets while trembling bureaucrats peeked meekly from doorways at what were once their offices. Such misrepresentations of India constantly provide new stories to the public that reinforce pre-existing negative images and at the same time undermine a sense of self and culture of immigrants “here” in Canada. India thus functions as a framework and regulates the construction of transplanted identities in the Diaspora.
Reading the story of the monkeys (while sitting in my house in a more or less white neighbourhood in Toronto) evoked a range of associations, emotions and memories. The child in me remembered hearing bedtime stories in Delhi from the Ramayana in which Hanuman, a monkey god, and his army of monkeys helped Lord Rama rescue his wife Sita from the lair of the demon Ravana. As a historian who studies India, I recalled that Indira Gandhi’s first political act was to organize a “monkey brigade” when she was a child. The children delivered messages between congress politicians assembled in her grandfather Motilal Nehru’s sprawling house during the nationalist movement (Frank 2001).
Theimmigrantinme,strugglingfordignityandrespectinhernewhome, interpreted the story about the monkeys as one more example of media racism. Frances Henry and Carol Tator (2002), among many others, have studied media racism extensively and report on its pervasively derogatory coverage of racialized immigrants. Stories convey ideas and norms that are used by some people to construct the social world around them (4–5). Media stories are significant, for they shape our sense of self and others; they mediate our understanding of what it means to be an immigrant and a racialized woman in a predominantly white society. Such stories construct a binary between “us” (rational, objective, scientific and progressive Westerners) and “them” (spiritual, superstitious, natural Indians). I
26 Finding India in the Diaspora wondered whether the Indians referred to were out “there” in India or also “here” in the Diaspora. Did stereotypes stay put within national borders and boundariesordidtheyfloataroundamongcountriesandintheDiaspora?
My anguish in confronting such questions is relational, and is not necessarily about India or Canada. Radhakrishnan says, “The home country is not “real” in its own terms and yet it is real enough to impede [Canadianization],andthe“presenthome”ismateriallyrealandyetnotreal enough to feel authentic” (2003, 123). The imagined India is not stable or authentic; rather, in telling stories about India and in discussing its many aspects, whether favourable or not, immigrants constantly envision and re-imagine India in the changing social and political contexts of their lives and circumstances. Such imagined Indias are one way of resisting the consequences of racism and its threat to one’s dignity and self-respect. Frustrated and disappointed, some immigrants become politicized and ardent and uncritical supporters of their cultures of origin (128).
In his classic account Orientalism (1979) Edward Said argued that scholars have constructed the East through their discourses by implicitly using the practices of the West as a norm. The Orient has thus been depicted as exotic and the “Other,” which is racist. In contrast to the articles by ABC and CNN, Jhumpa Lahiri, a second-generation woman of Indian descent born in America, views monkeys as a natural part of the environment and not as exotic creatures. In “Interpreter of Maladies” (1999), Lahiri describes the experiences of an American-born Indian family in India to visit with parents. While there, the family takes a trip to a hill resort. As the children walk toward the resort, they play with the monkeys they encounter, shouting and screaming with laughter. Meanwhile, the parents attempt to record the moment in a photograph until one of the children is finally bruised by the animals. I interpret the monkeys in the story as a symbol of India. Interwoven with other themes are the young wife and mother’s unresolved issues of identity and her growing doubts about the Indian cultural norms that she has unreflectively adopted in America. She mentally grapples with her inner ghosts about where and with whom she belongs and who she is, but India and its people provide her with no easy answers.
Immigrants use cultural memories to question dominant images, perceptions, myths and fables about who they are and where they come from; in other words, to question their origins, genealogy, and history. Since identities and subjectivities differ, so do the stories that immigrants tell of their experiences in the Diaspora. For example, second-generation students — children of immigrants from India — who come to my courses at the university are drawn to them by a desire to learn about their cultural heritage and about origins that are a world away, but they tell me stories about their families and homes here in Toronto. In these courses, the students and I share origins, history, and skin colour, yet we may differ from each other in
27 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes age, gender, class, sexuality, religion and many other factors that mediate our experiences. The second generation has grown up in the “ever-present shadow” of racism that constitutes their subjectivity differently from that of their immigrant parents (Mohanty 2003, 130). Consequently, the way they imagine India differs significantly from immigrants’ memories of the country.
The India that the students who attend my courses are usually familiar with is the one that pervades their home environment — food, artefacts, norms, beliefs — and inhabits the memories of their parents and grand- parents. The cultural norms the students consider Indian are those that are observed in various regional, linguistic and religious gatherings here in Toronto in temples, mosques and Gurdwaras. Some of the students are avid fans of Bollywood movies and Bhangra music from Britain, and frequent the Indian bazaars located in various parts of Toronto. Others participate in Indian student associations at the university or in the youth clubs of various South Asian organizations. The India that I intend to discuss, however, relates to the geographical one and to its colonial history, contemporary politics and social movements. Since the students’and my imagined Indias differ, our understandings collide in the classroom, and it frequently becomesdifficulttomaintainaboundarybetweentheIndiahereandthere.
Radhakrishnan argues that a significant difference between first-generation immigrants and their children is the emotional investment in India. The children may wish to acquire knowledge about their origins and history but, unlike their parents, they are not psychologically attached to the country or to its regional, linguistic and religious cultures. My second-generation students share information with me about India, but our interpretations often differ. Our conflicting perspectives provide an opportunity for us to learn that there is no one among us who tells the whole “truth” or represents the one “authentic” India. Rather, we discover together that there are multiple representations and interpretations of India and Indian culture that are “products of history and not subjective substitutes for history” (Radhakrishnan 2003, 125).
Culture is not unchanging and transmitted “vertically” from one generation to another. It is also worked out “horizontally” between communities across lines of gender, class, and sexuality (Lowe 2003, 132). When students share stories of India in the classroom, they begin to recognize common patterns of socialization, class and gender hierarchies in the home and in the larger society. They also reflect on the significance of their encounters with racism. Through these stories, the second generation begins to construct and imagine a culture — not as an idealized form that is inherited in some immutable way from “over there” — but as practised and lived in the everyday “here” in Canada.
28 Finding India in the Diaspora
The difference between immigrants and their second-generation children is captured in Diane Mehta’s poem: Countries have no sympathy; only praises amplified like distances for the newer land; the housing gauntlets we had to enter; Stripped but with freedom! Standards change like faith in a foreign country:
Did you pledge allegiance to lawns and fences, better lives for us; the best western education? Neighbors take the place of extended families, freedom expires (qtd in Maira 2002, 1)
Identities, Subjectivities and Community Identities are not a matter of fixed and stable selves; rather, they result from recontextualization and travel. For example, the public’s consciousness of Canada’s ethnic and racial diversity has changed significantly in the last 30 years. Today, for example, few people at university would ask a racialized immigrant, “Where do you come from?” yet this question was common 30 years ago. When I first meet white Canadians today, they usually do not enquire about my origins directly because they are wary of being misunderstood. They think I might interpret their query to mean that the colour of my skin indicates to them that I am not a Canadian. Nevertheless, they might ask questions about the city in which I was born or where I received my early education. Such queries are sometimes instigated by their having travelled to India and wanting to share their memories with me. If such acquaintances happen to be in their mid-50s, they sometimes share nostalgic memories of travelling to Nepal immediately after graduating from university, or living in houseboats in Kashmir, or being beach bums in Goa.
These acquaintances focus on subjects that make me feel good about my origins and birthplace. They may talk of the temple sculptures of Khajuraho that date back to the 10th century or the paintings and frescoes by Buddhist monks in the Ajanta and Ellora caves that were done from 200 BC to 600 AD. They are considerate and do not go on about being emotionally assaulted by the crowds in India, and I, too, am polite and do not talk of hippies, the drug culture that Western visitors contributed to, or the dreams of nirvana that took white Westerners to India. My dilemma, nevertheless, is to find an intellectually satisfactory explanation that would reconcile India’s glorious past with its inglorious present.
Over the years, friends and students in Canada have asked me countless questions about India, though their thrust changes with time and social
29 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes context. For example, when an Indian writer living in Canada or in the Diaspora publishes a novel, friends may enquire whether I have read it and what I thought about it. Such casual conversations can create familiarity, friendship and shared understanding. Novels about India present the individual and family, community and nation in ways that flesh out the dry, abstract, academic arguments of colonialism and poverty by evoking the everyday lives of people, their moral and ethical dilemmas and their joys and sorrows.
Some Indian writers living in the Diaspora, such as Salman Rushdie, Vikram Seth and Rohinton Mistry, and some writers of South Asian origin living in Canada, such as M.G. Vassanji, Anita Rau Badami and Shyam Selvadurai, have become well known to the Canadian reading public. Although Rushdie is better known for The Satanic Verses (1992), which earned him the fatwa, his best novel is thought to be Midnight’s Children (1982), which won the Booker Prize and was later judged to be the best of the Bookers in 25 years. Midnight’sChildren discusses the social, political and economic situation of India since independence, while The Satanic Verses goes back and forth between India and the life of Indian immigrants in Britain. Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy (1993) provides a kaleidoscope view of contemporary India by discussing caste, Hindu-Muslim relations, women, academics and the academy, the pretentiousness of middle-class Westernized Indians and so on. Rohinton Mistry lives in Toronto and has received many accolades nationally and internationally for his writing. Althoughhedoesrefertotheracismencounteredbyimmigrants,hefocuses on India, particularly the Parsees in Mumbai (1987).
Mark Edmundson writes that reading is “nearly boundless in its promise” and is “life’s grand second chance.” He notes: All of us grow up once; we pass through a process of socialization. Welearnaboutrightandwrongandgoodandbadfromourparents, then from our teachers or religious guides. Gradually we are instilled with a common sense … [that] has been infused with all that has been learned over time through trial and error, human frustration, sorrow and joy … People who often become obsessed readers … don’t read for information, and they don’t read for beautiful escape. No, they read to remake themselves. They read to be socialized again, not into the ways of their city or village this time but into another world with different values … They want to adopt values they perceive to be higher or perhaps just better suited to their natures. (2004, 11–12) I was invited to a book club meeting in an upper-class neighbourhood in Toronto by a group of white, middle-aged women who were personally known to me. All of the twelve women present had university educations
30 Finding India in the Diaspora and were well travelled. They had been to resorts in the Caribbean, but they had not ventured much outside them to get a sense of how the local people lived. The group was to discuss Rohinton Mistry’s A Fine Balance (1995) and thought I might help them understand the book. The novel refers to India between 1975 and 1977, when Prime Minister Indira Gandhi temporarily revoked democracy by proclaiming a national emergency. (There are some parallels between what happened in India and what happened in Canada in 1970 when Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau imposed the War Measures Act, which gave sweeping powers to the government and suspended civil liberties.) The plot of the novel revolves around a middle-class single woman in Mumbai who has come down in life and is forced to make a living by becoming a supplier of garments to a local exporter.
The eighteen-month national emergency period in India robbed the people of their democratic rights guaranteed by their constitution. Mistry’s novel condemns dictatorship and critiques the measures instituted during this time by the government. One of the government’s objectives was to eradicate poverty by, for example, reducing the population pressure through a draconian sterilization program. Another of its objectives was to beautify the city by clearing — or rather bulldozing — slums. In doing so, the government destroyed the meagre, makeshift dwellings of the very poor, made them lose their few ragged clothes and cooking utensils and left them completely homeless. Mistry describes the poor who, though illiterate and powerless, nevertheless value democracy and their human rights. In contrast, the novel portrays the middle-classes as being hypocritical, complacent, pretentious and looking down upon the poor by imagining the latter’s concerns to be only for food and survival. Mistry suggests that human empathy can create enduring bonds between people with different class, caste and gender identities. Although individuals encounter horrendous personal tragedies such as the loss of livelihood, home and loved ones, the emotional and moral support they lend to each other enables them to survive.
The book club could have potentially discussed a variety of subjects — the human dilemmas that cross national borders and boundaries, the significance and meaning of human rights, the similarities between Canadian and Indian politics and its leadership — or drawn comparisons between democracy in Canada and India. Rather, the women focused on poverty because they seemed bewildered by its extreme manifestation and unable to comprehend the misery that it brings to people’s lives. They were less interested, however, in the strength of character and dignity that allowed thepoortostruggle withandsurvive their hardships. They were not impressedbythebondsofloveandempathyamongthosewhohadlittleelse to share but whose encouragement of each other enabled them to live. The novel was simply too foreign for them. Unable to overcome the social and
31 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes emotional distance between “us” and “them,” they had little insight into the sharedhumanitythatprovidesacommon,iftenuous,linkbetweenallofus.
I did not have the presence of mind of Anita Desai, an India-born novelist who lives in the Diaspora, to say: My dear[s], true souls do not turn away from humanity or, if they do, it is only to meditate and pray, then come back, fortified, to embrace it — beggars, thieves, lepers, whoever — their sores, their rags. They do not flinch from them, for they know they are only the covering, the concealing robes of the soul, don’t you know? (2000, 13) The Diaspora has created rich possibilities of understanding different histories that could potentially bridge the gap between “us” and “them” but such opportunities are lost in the continuous focus on the negative aspects of India rather than on the ingeniousness and agency of human beings. As a diasporan citizen doing “double duty (with accountability both here and there)” (Radhakrishnan 2003, 128), I want to present an image of India that does not shy away from its poverty and numerous social problems, yet communicate an understanding that is empathetic and honours their sense of self, community and nation. But when an Indian immigrant talks about India their physical self (persona) reinforce the belief that the individual is foreign, immigrant, and not “really” Canadian. This intensifies the individual’sfeelingsofnotbelongingandnotbeingandfeeling“athome.”
Returning Home Those who live in the Diaspora but have their roots in India return home to savour the sights and sounds already imprinted on their hearts, and they feel nurtured and emotionally sustained. Nevertheless, they frequently have conflicting and ambivalent feelings about themselves in relation to their cultural roots in India: Are they insiders or have they, with the passing of time, become outsiders? V.S. Naipaul writes: India is for me a difficult country. It isn’t my home and cannot be home;andyetIcannotrejectitorbeindifferenttoit;Icannottravel for the sights. I am at once too close and too far. (1977, ix) Naipaul’s ancestors left the Gangetic plain in India a “hundred years ago” to immigrate to Trinidad. In Trinidad, the Indians established homogenous communities that sought to replicate the culture of the region from which they had migrated by observing its daily practices, norms and rituals. These communities remained detached from the cultures in which they lived, and there was a social distance between them and the local population. Naipaul’s early novels, like A House for Mr. Biswas (1969), documented how the daily routine of Indians in Trinidad became compartmentalized into the culture of the home versus the larger society. In his acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize, Naipaul explains:
32 Finding India in the Diaspora
It was a remnant of our caste sense, the thing that excluded and shut out. In Trinidad … that excluding idea was a kind of protection; it enabled us — for the time being, and only for the time being — to live in our own way and according to our own rules, to live in our fading India. It made for extraordinary self-centeredness. We looked inwards; we lived out our days; the world existed in a kind of darkness; we enquired about nothing. (2003, 187) Naipaul’s imagined India is a product of his experiences in Trinidad, the rituals and norms observed by his family and kin, his student days at Oxford, and his extensive reading of Indian culture, politics and society. In 1962, Naipaul went to India for the first time and was deeply disillusioned because the country and its people were not what he had imagined. The myriad cultures and religions he encountered in India were unlike the idealized norm that he had read about and the fossilized culture that had been maintained in Trinidad as “Indian.” In retrospect, he became critical of the quaint, peaceful, rural setting described by the eminent novelist R.K. Narayan because it was far from the distressing poverty he actually witnessed.India:AWoundedCivilization(1977),alsopublishedasAnArea ofDarkness,describesNaipaul’stravelsthere.Asaresultofhisverycritical assessment of the country, the book was banned in India. Many years later, Naipaul returned. India: A Million Mutinies Now (1991), which documents his travels, is a more insightful and sympathetic account of its people.
In the introduction to India: A Wounded Civilization, Naipaul writes: It has taken me much time to come to terms with the strangeness of India, to define what separates me from the country; and to understand how far the “Indian” attitudes of someone like myself, a member of a small and remote community in the New World, have diverged from the attitudes of people to whom India is still whole... In India I know I am a stranger; but increasingly I understand that my Indian memories, the memories of that India which lived on into my childhood in Trinidad, are like trapdoors into a bottomless past. (1977, ix–xi) The imagined India thrives in the minds of millions of people within its territory and in the Diaspora despite its poverty, inequities, turbulence and tawdriness. There are innumerable ways to know India and to feel a sense of belonging — or not. But just as individuals have various identities that are contradictory and even internally incompatible, so can a country when viewedfromathousanddifferentlocationsandperspectives.Yetinallthese various and competing perceptions that differ in details and nuances there is an essence — an idea of India — that many within the country can agree upon (Rushdie 2002, 163–64). Such a perception may also find resonance in the Diaspora.
Rushdie describes his feelings about home in “A Dream of a Glorious Return” (2002). He was born in India and left in 1961 when he was thirteen
33 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes to attend a school in England, but he visited at regular intervals. The political controversy over The Satanic Verses led the Indian government to deny Rushdie a visa for twelve years. India, Rushdie writes, was the first country to ban the book, prevent the importation of A Moor’s Last Sigh and refuse to allow the filming of Midnight’s Children in India by the BBC. He feels aggrieved and betrayed by these acts and yet says that “in spite of everything that has happened between India and myself, in spite of the bruises on my heart, the hook of love is in too deeply to pull out” (Rushdie 2002, 183).
Rushdie’s visit to India in 1997, which is documented in “A Dream of Glorious Return,” was made on the occasion of one of his books (whose title is not identified by him) being shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. The ceremonies for the prize were to be held in Delhi. Accompanied by his son, Zafar, Rushdie enthusiastically showed the boy historic monuments such as the Red Fort and the Taj Mahal, and some of the sites in which he has located his fictional characters, so that his son could begin the “process of making his own portrait of it [India], which may unlock in him an as yet unknown other self” (2002, 188). Together, father and son visited the small city of Solan in the Shimla Hills. There, Rushdie’s paternal grandfather had acquired a summer house in the 1930s, which was later gifted to Rushdie by his father on his 21st birthday. In 1986, the state government of Himachal Pradesh peremptorily took over the house and only after several years of litigation did Rushdie reacquire it. In 1997, he had not been to Solan since he was twelve years old, yet when he arrived there he felt, “I’m home.” In an emotional meditative reverie he talks to his father: You see Abba [father], I have reclaimed our house. Four generations of our family, living and dead, can now forgather there.OnedayitwillbelongtoZafar…Inafamilyasuprootedand far flung as ours, this little acre of continuity stands for a very great deal. (2002, 200) That year, the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize went to J.M. Coetzee. Later, at the reception, Rushdie was greeted by friends with “Welcome home.” My heart overflows. I had not really dared to expect this, had been infected by the fears of the police, and had defended my heart against many kinds of disappointment. Now I can feel the defenses falling away one by one, the happiness rising like a tropical dawn, fast and brilliant and hot. There are few such moments in a lifetime … Itisararethingtobegrantedyourheart’sdesire.(2002,207) India is Rushdie’s creative muse. In his novels, the characters are always leaving to go to the West,but Rushdie returns, time and time again, to locate hisstoriesinIndia.“This,perhaps,iswhatitmeanstoloveacountry:thatits
34 Finding India in the Diaspora shape is also yours, the shape of the way you think and feel and dream. That you can never really leave” (2002, 180).
Notes 1. See
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36 Subha Xavier
Exiled Metaphors: Woman and Nation in Three Novels by Ying Chen
Abstract In a quest to construct collective identity, nationalist rhetoric often relies on metaphors to bind individuals to geographic spaces. Transcending boundaries and peoples, the shadow of “home” is thus far-reaching and ever-extending. In many cases, this linguistic process involves a figuration of woman as mother, lover or daughter of the nation. Recent fiction by Chinese-Canadian migrant writer Ying Chen can be read as engaging with this discourse of nationalism, calling into question these metaphoric constructions of womanhood. This paper examines Chen’s use of poetic language in her first three novels: The Memory for Water (1992), Chinese Letters (1993) and Ingratitude (1995). Each can be read as a story of disruption and displacement within the national narrative that serves to unhinge the metaphors created to give meaning to the nation. In so doing, the author proposes that Chen’s writing enters into a provocative dialogue with nationalism and its feminist critiques.
Résumé Dans une tentative de construction de l’identité collective, la rhétorique nationaliste fait souvent appel à des métaphores pour lier les individus à des espaces géographiques. Transcendant les frontières et les peuples, l’ombre du « foyer » a donc une grande portée et elle s’étend toujours. Dans bien des cas, ce processus linguistique suppose une représentation de la femme comme mère, amante ou fille de la nation. Ainsi, il est possible de lire les œuvres de fiction récentes de l’écrivaine migrante sino-canadienne Ying Chen comme des œuvres mobilisatrices comportant ce discours de nationalisme – des œuvres qui remettent en question ces constructions métaphoriques de la féminité. Dans le texte qui suit, nous étudions l’utilisation que fait Chen de la langue poétique dans ses trois premiers romans: La Mémoire de l’eau (1992), Lettres chinoises (1993) et L’Ingratitude (1995). Chacun d’eux peut être compris comme l’histoire d’une perturbation et d’un déplacement à l’intérieur du récit national, une histoire qui sert à démonter les métaphores créées pour donner un sens à la nation. Ce faisant, l’auteure laisse entendre que les écrits de Chen entrent dans un dialogue provocateur avec le nationalisme et ses critiques féministes.
Ying Chen, one of the recent immigrant voices to emerge out of Quebec, is fast becoming a mainstay on the Canadian literary landscape. Born in Shanghai, Ying Chen immigrated to Montreal in 1989 and moved to Vancouver in 2003. Since her arrival in Canada, she has published six
International Journal of Canadian Studies / Revue internationale d’études canadiennes 31, 2005 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes novels as well as several short stories and essays that have competed for illustrious Canadian and French prizes, including the 1995 Governor General’s Award. In 1995, her third novel, Ingratitude (L’Ingratitude, 1995), won both the Prix Fémina and the Quebec-Paris Prize, followed by three more prizes in 1996: the Prix des Lectrices Elle (Quebec), the Canadian Writers Association Award and the Prix Louis-Hémon par l’Académie de Languedoc. A prolific novelist, essayist, short-story writer and poet, Chen’s work can now be found on the shelves of every French-Canadian bookstore under the heading “Québécois literature.”
Yet while we insist on adorning her with a crown of maple leaves or fleurs-de-lis, Chen’s first three novels are repeatedly engaged in the retelling of a story in and about China. The picture Chen paints of her country of origin in these novels, The Memory of Water (La Mémoire de l’eau, 1992), Chinese Letters (Lettres chinoises, 1993) and Ingratitude,isa troubled one wherein a lingering darkness questions the very essence of Chinese nationhood. It is telling, however, that while Chen’s novels have been translated into a host of European languages including Polish and Serbian, they have to date stayed clear of any Asian language versions, as if to emphasize the importance of a Western readership. In fact, Chen has chosen not to translate her French novels into her mother tongue even while she continues to write fiction in Chinese. French Canadians, like the French themselves, are then among the first readers to whom Chen has chosen to expose both the beauty of Chinese culture and the horror of Chinese nationalism. Central to the critique that Chen directs against nationalism in her country of origin is a sympathetic, if not neutral, Western audience. Her celebration of Chinese culture is also designed for those in whom its foreignness resounds. As such, Chen’s evocative French prose captures the Canadian immigrant experience as one that straddles two cultures and nations, where integration involves repeatedly relating to one the story of the other, in search of recognition and acceptance. In her first three novels Chen thus engages with the rhetoric of nationalism in China but also makes her mark in Canada’s national story as a voice from within that explores and unravels the meaning of nationhood.
Definitionsofnationalismaboundincriticaltheory,fromErnestRenan’s “daily plebiscite”1 to Benedict Anderson’s “imagined communities,”2 Richard Handler’s ideology of “individuated being”3 and Michael Hechter’s nationalism as “collective action.”4 These and many other theories of nationalism attempt to explain the rise of the nation and the colossal sacrifices that are made in its name, as well as account for its various forms throughout history. However, each locates the founding premises of nationalism in a will to action that is born of competing paradigms. Renan understood nation as a spiritual principle that was the expression of shared suffering in the past and individual commitment in the present. Anderson, while influenced by Renan, substituted the imagined for
38 Exiled Metaphors: Woman and Nation in Three Novels by Ying Chen the spiritual. Anderson’s definition points not only to the nation’s conceptual underpinnings but also to the creative use of language that ensues. Handler, on the other hand, places possessive individualism at the heart of his theory, whereas Hechter prefers to emphasize the political choices that characterize an entire body of people. Others, like John Breuilly, carefully delineate nationalism’s ties with the oppositional political movements that act on its behalf.5 Finally, Ernest Gellner, whose contribution to the theory of nationalism cannot go unmentioned, constructs a definition based on shared cultural assumptions and voluntary recognition.6
The search for a viable definition of nationalism is fraught with the complexities of language and the contradictions inherent to the nationalist project. While theories of nationalism thus diverge in many respects, most definitions nonetheless revolve around a conceptualization of a collective existence within a national space. Anderson conceives of this space as one conjured up in the name of an “imagined communion”: “It is imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion” (1991, 6).
This very space, theorized by Anderson and others, becomes problematic when taking into account the uprooted, the exiled and the migrant: those who evade its grasp. Though they are included in the imagination of the nation, these are conflicted subjects who may opt to shift their allegiances or even reject their community of origin. In turn, nationalism looks to fill this gap as it beckons its people home, to one land and one community.
Such is the rallying cry of the nation, which, in seeking to recreate what never was, couches that plea in the language of metaphor. Loss is replaced by language and distance bridged by image. Hence, transcending boundaries and peoples, nationalism’s metaphoric reality is more difficult to escape, as the shadow of home reconceptualized is both far-reaching and ever-extending. The nation casts its shadow across political and geographic boundaries to include even its furthest diasporic subject. As Homi K. Bhabha aptly tells us in his critique of nationalism: “Metaphor, as the etymology of the word suggests, transfers the meaning of home and belonging, across the ‘middle passage’, […] those distances and cultural differences, that span the imagined community of the nation-people” (1994, 139).
No longer “land” but “motherland”; no longer “community” but “family”; these metaphors summon back nationalism’s wandering offspring. Woman in turn is asked to assume a metaphoric role as mother to the nation. A lesson in identity, understood not as distinctness but as similarity, pervades this mother’s call to her young, for the fissures between
39 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes the nation and its so-called people now stand as a rhetorical figure for their common past. Bhabha qualifies this non-sequential narrative as the “metaphoricity of the people of imagined communities,” which “moves between cultural formations and social processes without a centred causal logic” (1994, 142). Bhabha’s neologism helps in locating nationalism’s fictive logic in the play of language. Metaphor alters meaning through a transformative leap that crosses many divides to unite people in a gesture reliant upon the poetic propensity of language. The writing of Ying Chen, through its own vivid poetry, can be read as a challenge to this reliance on metaphoric language.
Contrary to nationalism’s call, Chen’s first three novels continually re-enact the scene of a departure rather than a return home, as each of her three female characters—Lie-Fei in The Memory of Water, Sassa in Chinese Letters and Yan-Zi in Ingratitude—resist the roles that are attributed to them by Chinese tradition. Feminist critiques of nationalism are thus a useful lens through which to interpret Chen’s writing; they provide a framework whereby the subversive nature of this prose becomes evident. Like the “fugues” envisioned by Julia Kristeva in her effort to capture the “harrowingotherness”oftheforeigner(1991,3),Chen’sthemesofidentity, origin and exile resurface time and time again, weaving themselves through the stories of her characters. Each of these novels repeatedly recounts a story of Chinese womanhood that is gradually deconstructed to reveal emptiness and brokenness at its core. One after the other, her characters relive the agonizing plight of the migrant told by Chen in a poignant poetry of broken metaphors.
The Memory of Water is the story of Lie-Fei, a Chinese woman born in 1907 under the reign of the last emperor. Her memories, given testimony through her granddaughter, span the end of a dynasty, years of Japanese rule and a puppet government in Southern Manchuria. From civil war to communist rebellion and liberation, Mao’s Cultural Revolution and the fall of the Gang of Four, Lie-Fei remains a foreigner in her own land. As the title of the novel suggests, Lie-Fei’s memories of social and political change are likened to water running by, around her and through but never quite carrying her away in its constant stream. Throughout these many historical changes, Lie-Fei carefully refuses allegiances to all sides. Her life is a strange unhinging of national manifestos of feminine repression, be it the feudal binding of women’s feet under the old Chinese dynasties or the emancipation of women through factory work under communism.
The character of Lie-Fei is a cynical glance at the place of woman in nationalism’s discourse. Nira Yuval-Davis argues that women are required to carry the “burden of representation” in nationalist discourse in that “they are constructed as the symbolic bearers of the collectivity’s honour” (1997, 45). This is the burden that Lie-Fei inherits at the tender age of five when her
40 Exiled Metaphors: Woman and Nation in Three Novels by Ying Chen mother offers her feet as a “beautiful” example of female sacrifice in a feudal China: Un peu plus tard, la mère lui prit les mains et les dirigea vers ses propres pieds. Lie-Fei put enfin caresser ces petits pieds dont l’image la hantait depuis longtemps. Étourdie par le bonheur soudain, ou surprise qu’il lui ait été donné si facilement, elle se reprocha de ne pas avoir vraiment éprouvé ce qu’elle s’était s’attendue à éprouver au contact des pieds de sa mère. En effet, elle n’avait senti que l’os dur comme le bois, et déformés à l’intérieur des très belles chaussures colorées. (A little later, the mother took her child’shands and directed them toward her own feet. Lie-Fei could finally caress those little feet, an image that had haunted her for so long. Overcome with sudden happiness, or surprised that it was so easily granted, she chided herself for not truly feeling what she had expected to feel at the contact of her mother’sfeet. Indeed, she had only felt hard, wooden bones, deformed but hidden inside very colourful shoes.)(MW, 12–13)7 Lie-Fei, obviously unimpressed by these disfigured feet, has to lie to her mother who, only in the sadness of shared sacrifice, shows the first and sole signs of maternal affection. When asked if she finds her mother’s feet beautiful, little Lie-Fei responds with a rather unconvincing “yes.” The practice of foot-binding in the early years of the twentieth century was mostlyprevalentamongtheChinesegentrywherewomenwerecalledupon to safeguard the honour of bloodline by binding their feet to mark their families as nobility. As Kumari Jayawardene points out in her study of feminism and revolutionary struggles in China: “This was supposed to be a sign of beauty, but in effect it prevented the mobility of women and reinforced their subordination” (1986, 178). “Woman” is here the bearer of signs, the custodian of identity, called by metaphor to her greater social purpose. Her physical sacrifice in Chinese feudal society is beautified by language as the practice’s significance is conveyed to the little Lie-Fei in a mysterious trope that she will spend much of her life trying to unravel: -Tout à l’heure, au lit, on va t’enserrer les pieds! annonça maman Ai-Fu d’un ton tout excité. -Pourquoi? -Mais pour les rendre beaux! -Beaux comme quoi? -As-tu vu les pieds de ta mère? -Ils ne sont pas beaux. -Hum! Alors tes pieds seront beaux comme des lotus. -Qu’est-ce que c’est, des lotus? -Ce sont des fleurs.
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- Soon, when you are in bed, we will bandage your feet! announced Mama Ai-Fu enthusiastically. - Why? - To make them beautiful, of course! - Beautiful like what? - Did you see your mother’s feet? - They are not beautiful. - Hum! Then your feet will be as beautiful as the lotuses. - What are lotuses? - They are flowers.) (13) In a later conversation Lie-Fei’s nurse Ai-Fu, who is not a woman of noble blood, suggests a faulty comparison between the bound feet of noble women and the lotus flower. Lie-Fei will have to wait to be married and far from her childhood home before this hidden metaphor comes to life: Maman Ai-Fu s’était donc trompée : On voulait que ses pieds ressemblent aux racines et non aux fleurs de lotus. (Mama Ai-Fu had thus made a mistake: they had wanted her feet to resemble the roots and not the flowers of the lotus.) (59) The tiny feet of Chinese women are not meant to be beautiful lotus flowers, floating frailly on the river. They are the roots of the lotus flower, deeply anchored in the muddy waters of tradition and preventing the national flower from wandering too far. As a grown woman, Lie-Fei makes this discovery as her husband’s doctor recommends lotus roots to cure his severe case of pneumonia. Lie-Fei’s granddaughter and the narrator therefore follows with: “Les raciness de lotus ne sauvèrent pas mon grand-père” (“The lotus roots did not save my grand-father”) (59). Indeed, those lotus roots had not saved anyone or anything: they were a symbol, under the weight of which many women had succumbed in painful obedience. Betty McLane-Iles dissects the role of the recurring motif of the lotus: …both loved and distrusted [the lotus] is the ultimate symbol of sensuous beauty and delicacy while it is also a powerful reminder of the continual unfolding of time, deception and pain. Hidden embedded in the mud […] it both shields and represses a part of the soul.” (1997, 223) WhileMcLane-Ilesperfectlycapturesthedouble-sidednessoftheflowerin TheMemoryofWater,Chengoesonestepfurthertoquestionitsmetaphoric use as a source of female oppression. The protagonist, like the narrator, exhibits a compulsive fascination with the painstakingly embroidered shoes, which paradoxically masked women’s damaged feet.
As Jayawardene’s study of early twentieth-century feminism in China shows, Chen’s condemnation of this ancient practice is not unlike that of many Chinese feminist movements before her (1986, 178). The novelty of
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Chen’s approach lies in her questioning of the linguistic figures used to convince women of the advantage of this practice, which exposes the ways in which reassuring myths were concocted and propagated through language to deceive. The Memory of Water is in this respect an unveiling of the violence that is masked through the use of the symbolic, much like what Kristeva calls the “sacrificial contract into which woman enters at once reluctantly and willingly” (1986, 200). In “Women’s Time,” Kristeva explores the function ascribed to woman in Lacan’s psychoanalytic articulation of the entrance into language, the symbolic code of the father. “Woman” is reticent to enter into the contract because she is aware of its unnaturalness. By the same token, she is eager to enter into it because it carries with it the promise of freedom and power. In nationalism, this power is experienced in the responsibility conferred upon her to keep culture and tradition, which transmit political identity. Of course, Kristeva is more concerned with language than with the physical sacrifice entailed here, but her contribution to Lacan’s thought is valuable to our study because she takes up the role of woman in symbolic discourse and isolates it as one that is ultimately contradictory.
Thus Chen craftily pits Lie-Fei’s mother against her father when it comes time for Lie-Fei’s feet to be bound. Indeed, the operation stops with the return of her father, much to the chagrin of her mother. The narrator tells us that Lie-Fei’s mother is in tears over her husband’s decision, as per their nurse Ai-Fu. Lie-Fei’s fate is sealed in great secrecy when her father overrules his wife’s wish to integrate her daughter into the fold of tradition. With poetic irony, Chen describes Lie-Fei’s disappointment at not being abletoweartheadorablemulticolouredshoesthatherauntshadgivenherin anticipation of her sacrifice. During most of her life, however, Lie-Fie suffers the embarrassment of her two medium-sized feet; although her feet grow, their development is stunted by the first stages of the operation undertaken upon her mother’s orders. Lie-Fei’s “big” feet are blamed for the downfall of her family during the feudal regime, while she is stoned for her “small” feudal feet during Mao’s cultural revolution. In a telling reversal of metaphor, the Red Guards accuse small-footed women of having “feudal mud” (MW, 103) in their heads, something Lie-Fei’s aunt would corroborate in a poetic discussion with the narrator: - Tante, nos anciens poètes disent que les fleurs de lotus sont sorties de la boue en restant pures, est-ce vrai? - […] On pourrait juger qu’elles sont laides ou qu’elles ne le sont pas. Ça n’a rien à voir avec elles. Elles ne se forment pas elles-mêmes. Ce qui les forme, c’est l’eau, ou plutôt le torrent qui va et qui vient, en enlevant une boue qu’une autre remplacera. (- Aunt, our ancient poets say that lotus flowers come out of the mud and remain pure, is that true?
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-[…]Wemay think them ugly or not. That has nothing to do with it. They do not form themselves. What forms them is the water, or rather the constant ebb and flow that removes one mud to replace it with another.) (99) Lotus roots hence become the symbol of the many generations of Chinese women shaped by the changing tides of nationalism. Rooted in strongly evolving traditions, women are called upon not so much to act as to become what Claudia Koontz calls the “national embodiment” (Yuval-Davis 1997, 45). As Deniz Kandiyoti points out in her analysis of contemporary nationalisms, women represented in nationalist projects take many forms; they may be “victims of social backwardness, icons of modernity or privileged bearers of cultural authenticity” (1991, 431). Chen’s protagonist in The Memory of Water takes on all three of Kandiyoti’s representations at different times in the novel, as she is both a begrudging participant and a critical witness of China’s various nationalist projects during the first half of the twentieth century.
The story of Lie-Fei symbolically continues in the unhappy love story between Yuan and Sassa in Chinese Letters. Chen’s second novel is an epistolary one, and recounts the difficult relationship between two young Chinese lovers separated by migration. Yuanimmigrates to Vancouverand then Quebec to pursue an education and forge a better life, all the while awaiting the arrival of his fiancée Sassa who is left behind in Shanghai. Although Sassa’s arrival in Montreal seems imminent at first, it becomes less likely as the novel progresses. Instead, Sassa’s close friend Da Li journeys to Quebec shortly after Yuan. Interspersed through the lovers’ letters are the letters between Da Li, a free-spirited young woman energized by her migration, and Sassa, her wise friend in deteriorating health.
Chinese Letters is a novel about the fading love affair between Yuanand Sassa, which is shown to mirror a greater conflict of political dimensions. Hence the poem that is referred to in Chinese calligraphy on the cover of Chinese Letters and reads: Ballad on Climbing Youzhou Tower I see no ancient faces ahead, and behind me no coming ages. Thinking of the vast eternity of time and space I am sad and shed tears.8 Unbeknownst to the francophone reader of Ying Chen, this poem is the culmination of the lovers’ story. The dying love affair between Sassa and Yuan speaks the emptiness of the national story. Migration creates a distance that cannot be bridged, a vacancy that cannot be filled. Yuan, unhappy in his homeland, embraces adventure and embarks upon his odyssey to Quebec. Sassa, also desirous of change and promising to join her fiancé, cannot quite bring herself to leave the motherland. The parting of the
44 Exiled Metaphors: Woman and Nation in Three Novels by Ying Chen lovers creates a void that their letters desperately seek to fill, evoking their glorious past and looking ahead to a triumphant future, in the construction of a nonexistent national space between them: Oui, mon ange, j’ai pris ces deux photos de toi au printemps pendant la floraison. Que tu paraissais simple, modeste et timide! Tout comme les fleurs sans nom qui épanouissent à l’arrière-plan. […] Quand tu viendras, je t’emmènerai à la plage. Nous nous étendrons l’un contre l’autre sur le tapis de sable, n’ayant devant nos yeux qu’un ciel immense. (Yes, my angel, I took these two photos of you in the Spring as the flowers were blooming. How simple, modest and timid you seemed! Just like the nameless flowers that were blooming in the background. […] When you come, I will take you to the beach. We will lie one against the other on a carpet of sand, with nothing but the vastness of the sky before our eyes.)(CL, 57) Appealing to the comforting images of past and future in its effort to mask the impossible present, this language is reminiscent of Ernest Renan’s definition of a nation as one where there is “sharing, in the past, [of] a glorious heritage and regrets, and of having, in the future, [a shared] programme to put into effect, or the fact of having suffered, enjoyed, and hoped together” (1996, 41). Yet their letters inevitably point to the hopelessness of a language that fails to reconcile the distance between them. Even while Yuanconflates his love and his forsaken country into one, as his fiancée is likened to the flowers that blossom in Shanghai, his abstractions betray the distance that separates the lovers both temporally and spatially. As Yuan dreams of lying one against the other on a carpet of sand, he is reminded, almost despite himself, of a poem that suggests another ending to his romantic reverie: Comme dit un vieux poème : Nos larmes coulent dans la solitude Le ciel est loin et la terre immense Inutile de chercher ici ou là Nous n’aurons plus d’ancêtres, ni d’enfants. (As an old poem goes: Our tears flow in solitude The sky is far and the earth is vast It is needless to search here or there We will have neither ancestors nor children.) (57–58) The poem hints at the reality underlying Yuan’s words of love and desire, and breaks apart the language to reveal what is missing in their relationship and in the story of the nation. First, there is an inherent loneliness to the nation as the communion that is imagined is precisely that, a fiction. Second, it is impossible to define a space for their love; they are confronted by the vast expanse that separates them. And as Handler points out, unless
45 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes its space can be delimited, there can be no nation.9 Finally, the poem evokes the problem of lineage and of temporal continuity, again something Handler considers vital to nationhood: “In principle the nation entity is continuous: in time by virtue of the uninterruptedness of its history” (1988, 6).
Sassa also draws parallels between the lovers’ situation and that of the nation. Upon receiving a red maple leaf from Yuan, she finds herself humming a song praising the heroism of those soldiers sent to war against Vietnam. Rather than a Canadian flag on which the maple leaf is firmly emblazoned, Sassa recalls the crimson flag of the Republic of China and the following poem: Si je tombe sans pouvoir me relever Si je ferme les yeux sans pouvoir les rouvrir, Si c’est ainsi, n’insiste pas pour m’attendre, Si c’est ainsi ne sois pas triste Regarde le drapeau de la République Où est imprégnée la splendeur de notre sang… (If I fall and am unable to stand If I close my eyes and am unable to reopen them If it is thus, don’t insist on waiting for me If it is thus do not be sad Look at the Republic’s flag Which bears the splendour of our blood) (119) The maple leaf is stripped in this way of its symbolic value in one nation and laden with a symbolism that befits another. This transference of national meaning is significant as it points at once to the symbol’s failure across physical boundaries and its arbitrariness. She does not know why she sings the song or why she cries as she does so, only that she senses an implicit death in the redness of the maple leaf, which reminds her of “la splendeur du sang” (“the splendour of blood”). As Chinese blood thus taints the maple leafinthisway,ChencreatesforusapoignantmomentwhereCanada’sleaf must symbolically assume the death of the nationality that is renounced in its favour. In other words, allegiance to one nation involves the sacrifice of the other, which is metaphorically realized in Sassa’s disappearance from the story world at the end of the novel.
Da Li’s character further provides an insightful contrast to Sassa because she integrates, it seems, into Canadian society and falls in love with another Chinese immigrant whose fiancée, much like Sassa, has been left behind. Da Li’s love affair is a rejection of the past and the old ties to China; it is the expression of her new life in Canada. She, like Yuan, partakes in a new national identity but also describes herself as a plant without roots, arguing that it is the stubborn insistence on roots that has led to so much historic violence:
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Je les trouve les unes commes les autres laides, têtues, à l’origine des préjugés, coupables de conflits douloureux, destructeurs et vains. (I find them [roots] all equally ugly, obstinate, the source of prejudice, the cause of painful conflicts, destructive and vain.) (65) She is a wanderer who rejects all nationalisms including that of her home country. Her effortless participation in Canadian life is coupled with a bitter critique of the American way of life she sees around her, just as she remains critical of her native China. At the end of the novel, Da Li announces her departure for Paris, where she is to study history. Her emigration continues regardless of national allegiances and cultural obligations.
Sassa, on the other hand, constantly reminds her friend of her true cultural identity, warning Da Li of the dangers incurred by its loss. At the same time, Sassa admits to a sense of “otherness” within her own country as she explains in a letter to Da Li that her physical ailment is the price she pays for her foreignness to the nation: Au fond, je reste aussi déracinée que toi, même si je reste encore sur cette terre où je suis née. […] Je suis née étrangère dans mon propre pays. Et cela vaudrait une sentence beaucoup plus sévère. Voilà pourquoi je souffre, Da Li. […] J’ai tellement mal au corps que je ne sens plus ma douleur du cœur. (In the end, I am just as uprooted as you are, even though I remain in this land of my birth. […] I was born an outsider in my own country. And that has been a far greater sentence. This is why I suffer,DaLi.Iamnotwell.[…]MybodyisinsomuchpainthatIno longer feel my heartache.) (66) Sassa is unable to get a passport to leave China, and no particular reason is given in the novel to account for this discrepancy in Chinese emigration, given that both Yuan and Da Li leave the country rather easily. The passport appears as a leitmotif through Sassa and Yuan’s letters, as Sassa is continuously refused one or the process of getting one is incessantly delayed. As such, the passport may be construed as a symbolic mark of betrayal to the motherland. The character’s anxiety over the passport mirrors her feelings on exile. Alienated by the very country she cannot abandon and to which she is also enchained, she longs to leave it.
An important parallel remains to be drawn here between Sassa and Lie-Fei from The Memory of Water, since they are both characters that ultimately refuse exile. While Sassa’s fiancé and Lie-Fei’s granddaughter both leave China (Sassa for Canada and Lie-Fei for the United States), Sassa and Lie-Fei stay anchored to their home country. Yet, in many ways these two characters are far more defiant than the latter two: their resistance comes from deep within the nation itself. Both Yuan and Lie-Fei’s
47 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes granddaughter reaffirm their ties to China after they leave: Yuan longs for his fiancée from Montreal and Lie-Fei’s granddaughter feels no sense of emancipation upon arriving in New York. Sassa and Lie-Fei, on the other hand, are physically marred by their reluctant allegiance to the nation. Again Kristeva’s complex female position in the founding of societies is revealing here because woman is both attracted and repulsed by the function she is called to assume (1986, 200). Sassa is eager to pursue her love affair despite all the signs of its failure. (In fact, Da Li’s involvement in Montreal with a betrothed Chinese man has the reader questioning Yuan’s fidelity, because we wonder if Da Li’s young suitor is not in fact Sassa’s migrant fiancé.) It is also Sassa who breaks off the relationship despite pleading letters from Yuan and, perhaps, the imminent death that seems to await her in the post-narrative world.
Sassa’s declining health reflects the deterioration of the relationship so much so that Yuan’s last letters are sent to her in the hospital. Yuan finally proposes the kite as a metaphor for himself, insisting that the strings that determine his flight remain in his lover’s hands. Sassa replies by breaking downthemetaphor:thekitethatcannotflywithoutitsstringsisliketheidiot who, having found a way to make a hole in the wall that imprisons him, thinks himself lost when that same wall is removed. In her last words to Yuan, she simply writes: Un cerf-volant par terre ne vaut plus rien. Et puis, je n’aime pas beaucoup les idiots. Adieu, Yuan. (A kite on the ground is not worth anything. And, I don’tcare much for idiots. Goodbye Yuan.) (140) The heartbreaking end to Sassa and Yuan’s love story can be read as a sad commentary on nationalism’s attempts at the impossible. As Sassa lies in her hospital bed, she writes: “J’ai gardé la feuille pourpre que tu m’as envoyée” (“I kept the purple leaf that you sent me”) (138), referring back once more to that emblematic maple leaf. Migration thus disrupts their shared national story, but it is Sassa who is intent on freeing her lover from Chinese nationhood. After all, it is he who sent her the maple leaf as a sign of his shifting loyalties; he is learning French, dressing in an American suit and enjoying life in Montreal. He describes himself as a “nouveau-né” (“newborn baby”) in Canada, while Sassa grows feeble in Shanghai. Sassa’s letters to Yuan and Da Li point to the unworkable negotiation of values and ideas across cultural and political boundaries and, ultimately, to the futility of one nationalism’s pursuit over another.
Chinese Letters is the only one of Chen’s novels to directly engage with Canadian nationhood. The characters of Yuan and Da Li are Canada’s immigrant voices, struggling to fit in and yet grateful for the opportunities for success that this country promises. Though Yuan complains of the loneliness of immigration, he writes proudly of his single apartment in
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Montreal and the luxury of his private bath. Da Li condemns the loss of family values in Quebec after the Quiet Revolution but is enthused by the solitary journey she has embarked upon in Canada, far from her kin. Just as Yuan sends a dried maple leaf to his lover back in China as a symbol of his newfound life, he brings with him to Canada a sense of loss, having left behind both his love and land. Da Li writes excitedly of new love and then painfully of her sense of exclusion and foreignness in Montreal. Chen paints a picture of Canadian nationhood that is burdened with contradictions. The feelings of doubt, guilt and suffocation that one nationalism sparks are carried into the other. The pull of Canadian nationhood in the mind of the migrant is above all the freedom it affords from another nation despite the nation’s own shortcomings. This is apparent in Yuan’s decision to stay in Montreal even without his lover, and, ultimately, Chen’s decision to make Canada her country of residence even while writing about China and the difficulties of integration in Canada.
The end of the love affair in Chinese Letters exiles Yuanfrom his woman and, by extension, his land, but Sassa in turn is exiled from her body as she grows increasingly sickly as the novel progresses. Without Yuan, Sassa is left almost unprotected and thus succumbs to death, at least in the narrative sense. This is reminiscent of what many feminist critiques of nationalism posit as a relationship of dependency that confers power to the male protector over the protected woman.10 Since it is she who has failed to assume her role within the “imagined community”—it is she who ends the love affair, it is she who relents and destroys the futile hopes of her distant lover—Sassa’s voice is slowly silenced. When Yuanasks, “Est-ce que tu as besoin de moi, Sassa?” (“Do you need me Sassa?”) (137), the reply stubbornly comes back as, “Non, ne viens pas. Ça ne sert à rien” (“No, do not come. There is no use”) (138). Yet Sassa’s illness and perhaps even her death are more than a mere sacrifice to the will of an ideology, more than a decision to rupture the relationship and let go of some metaphoric “kite” of nationalism. For in giving this dying character such defiance in her speech, Ying Chen also resurrects a feminine revolt in the character of Sassa, who, while attached to her land and traditions, is not afraid to expose the artifice behind the metaphor and the power of nationalist discourse. The weakening of her body is the price she pays for her disobedience and her refusal to partake in the language and ultimately the power that is ascribed her as custodian of the nation.
In Chen’s continuing “fugue” of sadness and rebellion in the face of nationalism, Yan-Zi retells Sassa’s story from beyond the grave in the third of Chen’s novels, Ingratitude, a harrowing story of suicide. Yan-Zi is her mother’s only daughter and the only child her parents had had. Her father was once a well-known scholar, who, after a serious truck accident, was reduced to a debilitating silence. Though he had never had much of a role in his daughter’s life, his accident rendered him completely ineffectual. Her
49 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes father’sindifferencegivesfullreigntoamotherYan-Zideemsdespoticand cruel. According to Yan-Zi, her mother had wanted a child in her own image, one who would love, obey and respect her every wish, one who would remain with her and by her, much like the birds she had reared before her daughter’s birth. Stifled, oppressed and rejected by a mother who shows her no real affection, Yan-Zi chooses suicide as her final revenge: Je brûlais d’envie de voir maman souffrir à la vue de mon cadavre. Souffrir jusqu’à vomir son sang. Une douleur inconsolable. La vie coulerait entre ses mains et sa descendance lui échapperait. (I was burning with the desire to see mom suffering at the sight of my corpse. Suffering to the point of vomiting blood. An inconsolable pain. Life would flow out of her hands and her progeny would evade her.)(I, 16) Ingratitude is thus the gripping tale of a frightful relationship between mother and daughter, inscribed in hateful love and doomed to impossible reconciliation. The novel plays out the destructive consequences of woman’s role as biological and cultural reproducer of the nation (Yuval-Davis 1997, 116). Yan-Zi’s life story is a stark expression of the violence inherent to nationalism. What should be a meaningful bond between mother and child is hence drawn out to horrific lengths, where the one solace available to Yan-Zi becomes the tragic loss of her mother’s only child.
In Yan-Zi’s family dynamic, she is described as “fire,” while her mother is “water” and her father “oil.” Three elements incapable of concordance, they are each estranged from the other and condemned to an inescapable solitude. Her father, unresponsive and distant, is cited by Yan-Zi as the reason for the family disharmony and her premature death: Si seulement papa avait pu partager un peu avec moi l’énorme responsabilité de rendre heureuse cette femme qui avait tant fait pour moi et pour lui, j’aurais pu respirer et peut-être vivre plus longtemps. Hélas, papa était fait d’huile et gardait comme elle une frontière avec l’eau, en poussant le feu vers la folie. (If only dad had shared a small part of my enormous responsibility to make this woman happy, this woman who had done so much for me and for him, I could have breathed and perhaps lived longer. Alas, dad was made of oil and maintained, like oil is wont to do, a barrier with water, while pushing fire towards madness.) (30) The figure of her father is developed as a ghostly presence, silently seated in his tomblike office, pretending to read the pages of a book that only gusts of wind turn over from time to time. “Il me regardait comme s’il ne me connaissait pas” (“He looked at me as if he did not know me”) (30), says Yan-Zi of her father’s unrecognizing stare, adding a little later, “le vide danssonregardsurmoineseraitjamaisrempli”(“Theemptinessofhisgaze
50 Exiled Metaphors: Woman and Nation in Three Novels by Ying Chen upon me would never again be filled) (31). The vacancy in his eyes had increased since the accident and, in Yan-Zi’s words, seemed to take over his body like an unhealed wound (31). Her father’s corpse-like existence is a disturbing image of masculine impotency in the face of feminine crisis. In Yan-Zi’s father, the role traditionally ascribed to the masculine and the paternal within nationalism collapses. The land is left unprotected and unguardedagainsttheenemywhonowinfiltratesfromwithin:“C’étaitbien lui qui m’avait créée, en quelque sorte, une ennemie” (“It was indeed he who had created me into an enemy of sorts”) (30). He is able to neither defend nor ensure peace and is the first to experience the foreignness of the home. This character undoes the national story from within; his silence is that of the outsider uncovering the void and slowly succumbing to its ineffable nature. Yan-Zi tells us that at one time he had been a “joueur des mots” (“one who played with words”) (31), a writer and a debater, but concludes, “Hélas, il n’écrivait plus et ne parlait presque plus” (“Alas, he did not write anymore and barely ever spoke”) (32).
The conflict between Yan-Ziand her mother can be interpreted in light of our analysis as that which embodies the broken relationship of the nation to its subjects. Theirs is a story of resistance dating back to Yan-Zi’s very conception in her mother’s womb. The importance attributed to the womb, as we shall see in this novel, is evocative of what Cynthia Enloe terms “nationalist wombs,” thereby calling attention to women’s role as metaphoric mothers of the nation (1990, 54). Tied to her mother by her mother’s sense of ownership rather than her own sense of belonging, Yan-Zi wants a way out, a chance to loosen the restrictive bonds of motherhood, but her mother’s perception of maternity is one tied to destiny and physical obligation: -J’ai envie d’être moi, maman. -Tu ne peux pas être toi sans être ma fille. -Je suis d’abord moi. -Tu as vécu d’abord dans mon ventre. […] Dès qu’on met au monde un enfant, on est condamné à vie. Tu sais, on est condamné à garder cet enfant. Même si notre esprit veut repousser cet enfant, notre corps le demande. (- I long to be me, mom. - You cannot be yourself without being my daughter. - I am me first and foremost. - You lived first and foremost in my stomach. […] As soon as one brings a child into this world, one is condemned for life. You know, one is condemned to keep that child. Even if our spirit wants to reject that child, our body demands that we keep it.) (133–34; emphasis added) Ying Chen thus shatters the metaphor of motherhood in the story of Yan-Zi. Instead of a gentle beckoning, this mother forces her child into sacrificial
51 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes obedience. Much like the birds she was named after, Yan-Zi is caged by the duties forced upon her. Her mother’s body becomes a frightening symbol of incarceration and fatality. The scar across her mother’s stomach reminds her of the violence of her birth, and the maternal womb is marked with the poison of death: “Elle avait sur son ventre une ligne foncée en forme de serpent” (“She had on her stomach a dark line in the form of a serpent) (19). This dark line of maternal sacrifice calls out to Yan-Zi as her inevitable and inexorable destiny: Mais la ligne foncée sur ce ventre étranger me criait en pleine figure : Tu ne peux pas m’échapper, c’est moi qui t’ai formée, ton corps et ton esprit avec ma chair et mon sang—tu es à moi, entièrement à moi! (But the dark line on this stranger’s stomach cried out to me: You cannot escape me, it is I who formed you, your body and your mind withmyfleshandmyblood—youaremine,completelymine!)(19) Yan-Zi wishes she had never been born and even that she had died within the womb that bore her. Instead, she remains ensnared, much like her literary predecessors Lie-Fei and Sassa, by her own otherness to the nation out of which she came forth.
All three of Ying Chen’s female characters reject the possessive gesture that demands subservience of them, but they choose a form of exile that is ultimately metaphorical rather than literal. They do not flee so much as disappear, erasing themselves from discourse: Lie-Fei remains impassive to the political changes that surround her, Sassa ceases her letter writing, and Yan-Zi actually dies an accidental death rather than succeeding at suicide. While these women, especially Sassa and Yan-Zi, are insubordinate in speech, their actions bespeak a quiet retreat that neither villainizes the nation nor sympathizes with its means. Their lives delicately undo the metaphor from within, much like Chen’s prose does with its effortless lucidity.
Yan-Zi’s mother’s sole concern in Ingratitude appears to be her daughter’s education, through the avoidance of scandals, in order to ensure her a decent marriage (21). Yet the transmittal of culture takes on a totalitarian form, transforming motherhood into tyranny because the sameness between the mother and daughter must necessarily override their differences: Je ne vous dois rien, maman, vous qui avez toujours l’ambition de me faire vous ressembler, vous qui vivez partiellement dans mon corps sans que je vous aie invitée et décidez en grande partie mon destin! (I don’towe you anything, mom, you who always intended to make me resemble you, you who partially live in my body without having
52 Exiled Metaphors: Woman and Nation in Three Novels by Ying Chen
been invited do so, and who determines my fate to a great extent.) (23) Such an emphasis on resemblance follows Handler’s explanation of “national being” as defined by homogeneity encompassing diversity: “Howeverindividualmembersofthenationmaydiffer,theyshareessential attributes that constitute their national identity” (1988, 6). As Partha Chaterjee explains, this national identity nonetheless takes on an even greater familial connotation within non-Western societies, where an anti- colonial or anti-imperial nationalism emphasizes the importance of the “inner” domain of the “family” in opposition to the West (1993, 6). The “inner”spiritualcommunityofthefamilymustbearcommonresemblances within itself; that is, the community should be homogeneous so as to better differentiate itself from the West. It is this family sanctum that is then at stake from Yan-Zi’s mother’s perspective, as her greatest fear is that her disobedient daughter will become Westernized by choosing her own husband, engaging in premarital sex and straying from the ways of tradition.
Chaterjee’s model of non-Western nationalisms is helpful in describing Chen’s relationship to Chinese nationalism, since all three of Chen’s female characters in question are somehow ambivalent in their actions because of the lingering threat of Westernization. All three of Chen’s novels, while they critique the oppression caused by an essentially nationalist rhetoric that permeates the characters’ relationships, are careful to ward off any illusions of Western superiority on the reader’s part. In The Memory of Water, Chen dedicates her penultimate chapter to a comparison between women’s high-heeled shoes today and the ancient practice of foot-binding. In Chinese Letters, Sassa reprimands Da Li for not behaving like a Chinese woman; she quotes Confucius and compares her friend to “les Occidentaux” (Westerners) who sacrifice long-term happiness to satisfy their impatience (86). Likewise, Yan-Zi’s soul is condemned by Lord Nilou to hover over the earth in castigation for her cultural treachery toward her mother.
Yan-Zi’s death is a means of breaking the bonds of maternal oppression. Like Lie-Fei and Sassa, Yan-Zi declines allegiance to her mother and thus her nation carries a physical consequence. Yan-Zi’s death not only puts an end to the family lineage and her mother’s cruelty but it also exiles the character from her body and from life. “Tu t’engages dans une voie à sens unique” (“You are embarking on a one-way journey”) (128) says her mother, reminding her dead child of the irreversibility of her act. As the nation grieves the child, lost to its own terror, Yan-Zi contemplates the condition of exile from beyond the grave: “Je suis en exil maintenant. Le retour est impossible” (“I am exiled now. Return is impossible”) (9). Yan-Zi looks on her own funeral as Sassa did on her fading love affair and as Lie-Fei’s granddaughter looks out upon the rank waters that drenched her
53 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes grandmother: each desperately wants to go back “home” for one brief instantofnostalgia,justtoberemindedoncemoreofwhytheyhadtoleave.
Against the backdrop of nationalism’s narrative, Chen’s exiled figure in each of her first three novels stands in defiance of a call she will not answer. Chen opens the void that language sought to fill and exposes the artifice behind the metaphor. Nationalism’s metaphoric move is not only abandoned but also disparaged by the foreignness it bears in the ear of she who is “other.” Repetition, as Homi Bhabha makes clear, is the mechanism that exposes language’s vacancy and nationalism’s fiction (1994, 165). Likewise,wehaveshownhowChenusesrepetitionfromonetexttoanother to reveal the void that underlies metaphors of womanhood as they pervade nationalist rhetoric. One might argue that Chen’s body of texts appeals to a poetry of the “anti-metaphoric” as defined by Abraham and Torok, later taken up by Bhabha: “Similar to what Abraham and Torok describe as a radical anti-metaphoric: ‘the destruction in fantasy’, of the very act that makes metaphor possible— the act of putting the original oral void into words, the act of introjection” (165).
Indeed, Chen’s work engages with theories of nationalism and constitutes a provocative example of feminist and post-colonial critiques of the national. The novelty of Chen’s style nonetheless lies in her ability to unveil the violence that is implicit in the “imagination” of nationalism with a prose that for all its anti-metaphoric work still manages to salvage for itself an insightful sense of poetry.
As beautifully as nationalism creates its many beckoning metaphors, the writing of Ying Chen hence breaks open this language of pretense. The Memory of Water, Chinese Letters and Ingratitude are all stories of disruption and displacement within the national narrative. Writing the migrant and the experience of exodus, giving voice to the foreignness of nationalism’s story, Ying Chen speaks for the woman in exile. Using the many images that Chinese nationalism posits, Chen unveils the reverse side of exemplified womanhood. She takes us through the reality of feminine repression and sacrifice and the violence of a language that repeatedly excludes the voice of the wife, the mother, the lover and the daughter. She disturbs the metaphors of nationalism to point to their vacant centre and the absence of the community they conjure up. Chen’s charge against Chinese nationalism is also relevant for Canada’s sense of nationhood, created and defined by immigrants. The migrant writer finds in Canada a safe haven from whence to speak the trauma of another nation and, in so doing, condemn all such attempts to salvage loyalty through subtle tools of coercion.Lie-Fei,SassaandYan-Zieachembodythe“other”againstwhom the nation’s story writes itself. They are its broken metaphors, exposing the ugly reality of oppression, darkness and violence inherent to nationalism:
54 Exiled Metaphors: Woman and Nation in Three Novels by Ying Chen these women are the muddy roots, the sickly lovers and the murdered children of the “nation.”
Notes 1. Ernest Renan, “What is a Nation?” in Becoming National: A Reader, ed. Geoff Eley and Ronald Grigor Suny (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 41–55. 2. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, revised edition (London and New York: Verso, 1991). 3. Richard Handler, “Nationalism and the Politics of Culture in Quebec,” in New Directions in Anthropological Writing: History, Poetics, Cultural Criticism, ed. E. George and James Clifford Marcus (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1988, 6–8). 4. Michael Hechter, Containing Nationalism (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2000). 5. John Breuilly, Nationalism and the State (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985). 6. Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983). 7. All translations are my own. 8. Poem by Chen Zi-Ang, poet of the Tang dynasty of the late eighth century, translated in Betty McLane-Iles, 228. 9. “In principle a nation is bounded—that is precisely delimited—in space and time: in space, by the inviolability of its borders and the exclusive allegiance of its members” (Handler 1988, 6). 10. See Jan Pettman’s treatment of this question by Judith Steihm and Barbara Roberts in “Women, Nationalism and the State: International Feminist Perspective,” Gender Studies, Occasional Paper 4, 1992, 8.
Works Cited Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. Rev. ed. London and New York: Verso, 1991. Bhabha, Homi K. The Location of Culture. New York: Routledge, 1994. Breuilly, John. Nationalism and the State. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985. Chatterjee, Partha. The Nation and its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993. Chen, Ying. La Mémoire de l’eau. Montréal: Leméac, 1992. ———. Lettres chinoises. Montréal: Leméac, 1993. ———. L’ingratitude. Montréal: Leméac, 1995. Enloe, Cynthia. Bananas, Bases and Beaches: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics. London: Pandora, 1990. Gellner, Ernest. Nations and Nationalism. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983. Handler, Richard. “Nationalism and the Politics of Culture in Quebec.” In New Directions in Anthropological Writing: History, Poetics, Cultural Criticism. Ed. George E. and James Clifford Marcus. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1988, 6–8. Hechter, Michael. Containing Nationalism. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Jayawardene, Kumari. Feminism and Nationalism in the Third World. New Delhi: Kali for Women, 1986. Kristeva, Julia. Strangers to Ourselves. New York: Columbia University, 1991.
55 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes
———. “Women’s Time.” In The Kristeva Reader. Ed. T. Moi. Oxford: Blackwell, 1986, 200. McLane-Iles, Betty. “Memory and Exile in the Writing of Ying Chen.” In Women by Women. Ed. R. Lewis Dufault. London: Associated University Press, 1997, 221–29. Pettman, J. Jan. “Women, Nationalism and the State: International Feminist Perspective.” Gender Studies, Occasional Paper 4, 1992. Renan, Ernest. “What is a Nation?” In Becoming National: A Reader. Ed. Geoff Eley and Ronald Grigor Suny. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996, 41–55. Yuval-Davis, Nira. Gender & Nation. London: Sage, 1997.
56 Katie Cholette*
The Limits on Cultural Expression at Canada’s National Cultural Institutions
The Government believes that Canada’s diversity is a great strength — that our capacity to accept, respect, celebrate and value differences has made us one of the most open, resilient, creative and caring societies on earth.1
Abstract In 2001 the Lebanese-Canadian artist Jamelie Hassan received a Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts. The same year she participated in a controversial group exhibition The Lands within Me: Expressions by Canadian Artists of Arab Origin at the Canadian Museum of Civilisation. Through an examination of the policies of two of Canada’s cultural institutions this article questions the extent to which artists are permitted to express ethnic identity in Canada during times of political uncertainty.
Résumé En 2001, l’artiste libano-canadienne Jamelie Hassan a reçu le Prix du Gouverneur général en arts visuels et en arts médiatiques. La même année, elle participait à une exposition de groupe controversée : « Ces pays qui m’habitent – Expressions d’artistes canadiens d’origine arabe », au Musée canadien des civilisations. L’examen des politiques de deux institutions culturelles du Canada nous amène ici à nous demander dans quelle mesure les artistes sont autorisés à exprimer leur identité ethnique au Canada en des temps d’incertitude politique.
On 14 March 2001, supported by her legion of supporters and admirers,2 Canadian artist Jamelie Hassan was awarded the Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts in recognition of her “distinguished career achievement in fine arts.”3 An internationally acclaimed multidisciplinary artist and activist and the recipient of many previous honours, Hassan expressed both pride and humility at the public honour bestowed upon her by this particular award.4 To celebrate the occasion, the National Gallery of Canada mounted an exhibition of the laureates’ works from its permanent collection.5
Later that same year, Hassan’s artwork was selected to be part of an exhibition given by twenty-six Canadian artists of Arab descent at the
International Journal of Canadian Studies / Revue internationale d’études canadiennes 31, 2005 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes
Canadian Museum of Civilization (CMC) in Hull. The exhibition, The Lands within Me: Expressions by Canadian Artists of Arab Origin, was scheduled to open on 19 October 2001.6 In the wake of 9/11, however, the administration of the museum decided to postpone the exhibition until the following spring, ostensibly to give the organizers time to add more contextual material.7 This decision was publicly criticized,8 and reaction to it reached the highest level of the Canadian government when Prime Minister Chrétien publicly chastised the CMC during a session of Parliament on 26 September.9 Two days later the CMC reversed their decision and the exhibition was reinstated as scheduled.
Although the exhibition opened as originally planned, it became the focus of intense debates over intolerance, cultural freedom of expression and the relationship of politics and art. How was it possible that a well- established Canadian artist like Jamelie Hassan was both celebrated for her individual achievement by one national cultural institution and seen as part of a potentially threatening group by another national institution in the same year?10
Although this paper will briefly discuss the exploration of social and culturalidentityinHassan’sart,itsfocusisnotasurveyofherartisticcareer or subject matter. Instead, the discussion demonstrates the limitations and boundaries of multiculturalism in politically unstable times. Through an examination of the policies and mandates of two of Canada’s national cultural institutions — the CMC and the Canada Council for the Arts (the organization that administers the Governor General’s Awards) — it becomes evident that Hassan’s cultural heritage came into conflict with dominant ideologies and concepts of a national identity during a particular moment of political unrest. This paper, then, discusses how an internationally recognized and recently celebrated artist shifted from being claimed as “Canadian” (and publicly honoured as such) to being of marginalized “Arab-Canadian” status. With museum mandates, writings on multiculturalism and a case study of the two aforementioned episodes, and by interpreting the actions and reactions of two of Canada’s major cultural institutions, I demonstrate that the establishments, while appearing impartial, inclusive and liberal-minded, were in fact concerned with fostering and perpetuating a cohesive national Canadian identity. I also question the degree to which artists are allowed to express their cultural identities before these identities become threatening to ideas of nationhood and an acceptable overarching Canadian identity: this level of permitted cultural expression by artists exploring their individual or a collective identity, as well as the particular culture they are exploring, can be problematic for nationally-funded cultural institutions. While I draw upon theoretical writings and viewpoints of others, the conclusions I make are my own.
58 The Limits on Cultural Expression at Canada’s National Cultural Institutions
A selection of biographical details of Jamelie Hassan and a brief discussion of her art will help to situate her work. The daughter of Lebanese immigrantsAlexandAyshi,Hassanwasborntheseventhofelevenchildren in 1948 in London, Ontario,11 where she continues to work as an artist and a social and cultural activist. An assertive member of the London arts community (she was one of the founding members of the artist-run Forest City Art Gallery), Hassan is interested in investigating not only her own cultural heritage but also related issues that affect displaced, marginalized or persecuted people throughout the world. Through the juxtaposition of imagery and objects from various cultures, Hassan’s work often highlights themes such as colonialism, exodus, exile, diaspora and immigration.12 Mireya Folch-Serra, geography professor at the University of Western Ontario, writes that identity is “constantly contested in [Hassan’s] work: contested in relation to history, to geography, and to one’s position in the world.”13
Having grown up in what she describes as “an environment of systemic racism,” Hassan’s desire to achieve “dialogue, enlightenment, eman- cipation and community”14 among cultures stems from her personal experiences and cultural background: her Lebanese Muslim family was a visible minority in the small, mostly-white, very conservative city. Consequently, Hassan’s work spans a liminal space between her Arab ancestry and her present location both spatially and metaphorically. Folch-SerraacknowledgestheinterdisciplinaryqualitiesinHassan’swork: Whether she thinks of art as a form of departure, or as a bridge between epochs and cultures. [sic] Her work makes known the responsibility inherent in carving one’s own space and mapping one’s own geography, and contributes indeed to the notion of artist as cultural agent and active participant of political art practice. A practice where the concepts of pluralism, dialectics and synthesis, arealwaysproblematizedateachstepoftheprocess,andwherethe meaning of boundaries become the open-ended and unfinalizable circumstance of a polyphonic world where multiple voices have their homecoming.15 InordertounderstandhowHassan’sworkisperceivedwithinthecontext of national cultural institutions, it is useful to step back and examine some ofthespecificgoalsoftheculturalpoliciesthatgoverntheseinstitutions.
A collective Canadian culture and concomitant national identity are notoriouslydifficultconceptstodefine.Theseproblemsarecomplicatedby a number of factors. In addition to its Aboriginal population, Canada claims two European “founding nations”: French and English. Attempts to reconcile differences between the beliefs and practices of these major groups are further compounded by an increasingly large population of immigrants from a multitude of ethnic and cultural backgrounds in a physically immense and geographically diverse country. Throughout the
59 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes course of the twentieth century the Canadian government increasingly realized that no single culture represented all of Canada. As a result, the government strove to find ways of presenting the country to its citizens (and abroad) in a manner that would recognize difference without allowing the country to appear fragmented. One of the strategies that were implemented was the creation of multicultural policies, in particular, official multiculturalism, which is overseen by the Department of Canadian Heritage. Eva Mackey, in “Managing the House of Difference,” discusses the evolution of multiculturalism in Canada. Instead of creating a homogenous “melting pot” nation like the United States, the Canadian government co-opted ethnic and cultural diversity to strengthen national unity. Mackey writes: Rather than trying to erase difference and construct an imagined community based on assimilation to a singular notion of culture, the state attempted to institutionalize various forms of difference, thereby controlling access to power and simultaneously legitimat- ing the power of the state.16 Multiculturalism was not developed simply to placate immigrant minority groups; it was also a response to the growing problems surrounding English-French conflicts and threats of assimilation into a much more powerful neighbouring country. Mackey notes that “‘[m]ulti- culturalism’ was developed as a mode of managing internal differences within the nation and, at the same time, created a form through which the nation could be imagined as distinct and differentiated from external others such as the United States.”17 Multicultural policy has been criticized by other writers, like Dot Tuer, who see multiculturalism as a means of controlling (or managing) minority groups. Tuer pointedly comments that we live “in an age of identity politics where the fetishization of difference often mirrors the neutralization of the ‘Other.’”18
In A Border Within: National Identity, Cultural Plurality, and Wilder- ness, Ian Angus also looks at some of the issues raised by multiculturalism in Canada. Discussing the “social ideal” of multiculturalism (as opposed to the official government policy), Angus points out that there is an inherent tension between the interests of a broadly defined cultural policy (which seeks to unite through emphasizing similarities) and multiculturalism (which privileges difference). Angus writes “that there is an either/or choice between national and multicultural identity. Whichever way one chooses,onereinforcestheunderlyingpresuppositionoftheopposition.”19
In recent years multiculturalism has come under criticism both as a policy and as an ideology.20 Two controversial areas concerning multicul- turalism are directly relevant to this discussion: its “implicit essentialism,” and “the ritualization of ethnicity often associated with it.”21 These criticisms are taking place in numerous countries around the world and in a variety of areas. As Steven Vertovec points out:
60 The Limits on Cultural Expression at Canada’s National Cultural Institutions
Essentialized understandings of culture have been observed, over the past few decades, in multicultural programs and frameworks in areas such as educational curricula, media images, forums of “ethnic community leadership,” public funding mechanisms, and professional training courses and handbooks. Despite challenges to the culturally essentialist policies and ideologies of multiculturalism, Vertovec believes that one important aspect of it remains unchanged: “the expectation of common attachment to the encompassing nation-state.”22
However, national cultural institutions have been slow to embrace ideas of “new” multiculturalism or transnationalism, and continue to operate within the narrow confines of nationally-bounded multiculturalism (what Vertovec calls the “‘container model’ of the nation state”).23 The problematic nature of the container model of the nation-state was highlighted in Britain’s groundbreaking Commission on the Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain, which published The Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain (commonly called the Parekh Report). The Report states: One customary approach, which co-exists with the dominant version of the national story …, is to see them as bounded, homogeneous groupings, each fixedly attached to its ethnicity and traditions. The “majority,” by the same token is imagined to be fixed,unifiedsettled.Thisattitudeunderliesmostpublicpolicy.”24 At around the same time as the Parekh Report was underway in Britain, the Department of Canadian Heritage produced several documents concerning culture in Canada. In 1998 the Department released a report entitled Connecting to the Canadian Experience: Diversity, Creativity and Choice.25 This report was published in response to a study begun the previous year, A Sense of Place, a Sense of Being, in which Sheila Copps, then Minister of Canadian Heritage, asked the government “to ensure, as our Government, as a country, and as a Committee … we have the necessary tools to safeguard our own culture, and to tell our own stories.” The Department of Canadian Heritage’s response to Ms. Copps clearly stated the goal of their policy: “to ensure that Canadians have Canadian choices to connect Canadians to the diverse Canadian experience.” The Department concluded that they were fulfilling this purpose, explaining, “Over the years, the Government has developed a comprehensive series of policies, programs, regulations and institutions to encourage, nurture and support culture in Canada.” The report goes on to state that, as culture is “central to our lives” but “not easily compartmentalized,”26 both the public and private sectors have a responsibility to ensure that these policies and programs are successfully instituted.
Ifweexaminethewordingofthesestatementsitbecomesevidentthatthe role of the Department of Canadian Heritage is to promote Canadianness;
61 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes indeed, in the aforementioned goal, the words “Canadian” and “Canadians” are used repeatedly, reinforcing a sense of inclusion in a national project that is bounded by political boundaries. What is Canadianness, though, and how do our national cultural institutions respond to the diversity of Canada’s population? What happens when artists wish to explore cultural backgrounds or express opinions and beliefs that are not those of the dominant groups? Furthermore, in a time of unprecedented migration between countries, what degree of national loyalty is expected from immigrants, and what constitutes disloyal behaviour? Although governmental policies like that of multiculturalism nominally accord all of Canada’s citizens equal recognition, this recognition continues to be shaped by the ideology of the dominant groups. Official cultural policies, while appearing inclusive, privilege the cultures of the two “founding nations” (and to a lesser extent Aboriginal cultures) over those of other “ethnic” minorities.27
In recent years the government has reacted to demands by minority groups for recognition by placing an increased emphasis on diversity and choice in its policies. In Connecting to the Canadian Experience, the government explicitly states what it saw as its role: The Government of Canada supports a broad range of Canadian cultural activities because they give expression to our values and our way of life. Therefore, it matters that what is supported be about the Canadian experience in some way. It matters that the ideas, books, paintings, music, films, Internet content — the results of creative and innovative thought and endeavour — reflect Canada to Canadians, in all its richness and diversity. Nurturing, enhancing and supporting what we have come to call “Canadian choices” is what the role of the federal government in support of culture is all about.28 Do statements like this mean the government is becoming more accepting of cultural difference, or is difference being co-opted as a defining feature of Canadian identity? Although it clearly makes reference to Canada’s “richness and diversity,” there is an overall emphasis in this report on a unified vision of Canada. It is not a multitude of Canadian experiences (or “Canadian choices”) that are being nurtured, enhanced and supported by Canadian cultural policy but, rather, the Canadian experience.29 Many critics of multiculturalism point out that despite attempts to recognize all citizens equally, multicultural policy is doomed to failure because, at its most basic level, it fails to break free of an entrenched Eurocentric cultural hegemony. Consequently, there is an uneasy coexistence of cultures within Canada. In “Cultures of Conquest, Cultures in Context,” Tuer writes, “Canada becomes a meeting place of cultures, whereraceandhistoryandmyth,frozenintoawhiteWASPsnow,clashand conflict.”30
62 The Limits on Cultural Expression at Canada’s National Cultural Institutions
What is the role of national cultural institutions in all of this, and is the promotion of multiculturalism anything more than a strategy to bolster national unity? Joyce Zemans writes that the concepts of nationhood and identity “have been at the heart of Canadian policies designed to support cultural development, and the national institutions have been Canada’s principal instruments for the creation and delivery of cultural policy.”31 Zemans points out that this nation-building agenda exposes fundamental ideological tensions between artists and national cultural institutions; whereas for artists “the intrinsic value of the arts … is the motivating factor,”32 this is not the case for the governments that fund these cultural institutions.
The CMC is Canada’s largest and most commercially successful museum.33 Billing itself as “one of the premier cultural facilities of the twentieth century,”34 the museum is part of the Canadian Museum of Civilization Corporation (CMCC),35 which in turn is part of the federal Department of Canadian Heritage. The CMCC’s official statement of the CMC’s institutional purpose appears inclusive and innocuous at first glance: As the national museum of human history, the Canadian Museum of Civilization is committed to fostering in all Canadians a sense of their common identity and their shared past. At the same time, it hopes to promote understanding between the various cultural groups that are part of Canadian society.36 The wording of this statement is noteworthy: it emphasizes the collective nature of a common Canadian identity among people with a “shared past” while downplaying the role of “various cultural groups” as merely a “part of Canadian society.” Clearly, there is the desire to promote and reinforce an overarching common identity that takes precedence over any cultural divisions within a larger Canadian society.
The official mandate of the corporation further stresses the importance of promoting a unified sense of Canadian nationalism. The mandate has two main aims: First, it defines its role as “preserving and promoting the heritage of Canada and all its peoples throughout Canada and abroad and in contributing to the collective memory and sense of identity of all Canadians”; second, it “is a source of inspiration, research, learning and entertainment that belongs to all Canadians and provides, in both official languages, a service that is essential to Canadian culture and available to all.”37 The rhetoric of the mandate is strongly pluralistic (as the wording of the “Institutional Purpose” was), and homogenizing: all of the people in Canada will develop a collective memory and common sense of identity through the collecting, curating and exhibiting of materials that belong to, and are freely available to, all Canadians.
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As Canada’s most frequently visited museum, the CMC is the perfect venue to disseminate a nationalistic ideology to a wide audience.38 In discussing attempts by national cultural institutions to mount exhibitions thatconfrontCanada’sgrowingdiversity,Tuercategorizestheirattitudeas a schizophrenic imperialism that infects the Canadian cultural millieu [sic]. On one hand, Canada prides itself on its racial tolerance, its policies of multi-culturalism, its ethnic diversity. On the other hand, its cultural institutions, such as the ROM, are the depositories of deeply entrenched, and uncritical, colonial attitudes.39 Recognizing their ability to bring information to a large public, the CMC has begun to make attempts to broaden its focus to include more exhibitions on specific cultural groups in Canada and elsewhere.
The CMC has been aware for some time that museums of human history face increasing challenges as Canada’s population becomes more diverse. In 1992 George F. MacDonald, former director of the CMC, wrote, “It is vital that they [museums] be responsive to their social environment in order to remain relevant to changing social needs and goals.”40 MacDonald noted the didactic function of museums like the CMC, whose collections of “material remnants of the past — are of value, and are worth preserving, primarily for the information embodied in them.”41 He believes that the information provided by objects in a museum of human history is important because it gives people a greater understanding of their place in society.42 Through exhibitions about various aspects of the many different groups that make up the larger “cultural mosaic” of Canadian society, the national identity of Canada can be strengthened: learning about the multiplicity of cultures that exist in Canada is intended to solidify a sense of unity through tolerance and acceptance.43 MacDonald wrote, “Mutual appreciation and cooperation among the cultural groups that make up Canadian society is seen as a necessary foundation for Canada to remain a single nation”44;he envisioned a “global society in which all peoples can participate while preserving specific cultural heritages and identities.”45
However, allowing individual ethnic and cultural groups to exhibit in the CMC does not necessarily mean that they are being accorded the right to freely express ideas that may conflict with the dominant discourse. Although it appears to be progressive and responsive to change, the CMC’s exhibition policy continues to demonstrate the ethnographic and anthropological focus that the CMC has traditionally held.
In 1989 the CMC moved from its cramped quarters at the Victoria Memorial Museum Building on Metcalfe Street to a sprawling site on the shores of the Ottawa River.46 The new building, designed by Métis architect Douglas Cardinal, occupies a prime location in Hull, Quebec directly across from the Parliament buildings.47 Significantly, one of the most
64 The Limits on Cultural Expression at Canada’s National Cultural Institutions visited sections of the museum is the permanent Canada Hall, which features a walk-through tour of the official European history of Canada from its earliest European activity (ca. 1000 AD) through the periods of early French settlement (1560–1760), the British conquest (1760) and up to the present.48 The museum’s second main permanent installation, the Grand Hall, is situated in a separate section, on the ground floor. The Grand HallportraysthehistoryoftheFirstNationsoftheNorthwestCoastthrough the use of dioramas and site recreations incorporating a mixture of genuine artefacts and replicas.49 In addition to the permanent displays that present Canada’s official histories (and, by inference, officially recognized cultures), the museum has several exhibition spaces that feature a number of exhibitions that change regularly. It is in these temporary spaces that aspects of “other” cultures are exhibited,50 and where the exhibition The Lands within Me: Expressions by Canadian Artists of Arab Origin (in which Jamelie Hassan was a participant) was placed.
The museum’s history and position as a national cultural institution places a considerable ideological burden on any of its exhibitions, as the curator of The Lands within Me found out. Despite Aïda Kaouk’s valiant efforts to convey the idea of “métissage, or cultural intermixing”51 rather than portray a homogeneous portrait of an “exotic” Arab culture, there were several aspects that created the impression that the individual artists in the exhibition were more closely allied than they actually were. There was also a widespread assumption fostered by the CMC’s reaction that the artists in the exhibition not only were of Arab descent but also shared a religious belief in Islam.52 Muslim identity does not stand outside time, however; it is constructed in the present across time and space.53 The events of 9/11 produced a particular vision of Muslim identity that was predicated on “the discourse of an irreconcilable and unbridgeable cultural, if not racial, gulf between ‘Islam’ and ‘the West.’”54
The significant press coverage that was generated by the proposed postponement of the exhibition had a profound effect on the exhibition’s reception. In the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attacks on the United States, the museum was obviously fearful that the public would misinterpret the work of a group of diverse artists not as the work of “Canadian artists of Arab descent” but as the expression of political beliefs by Islamic artists (who by extrapolation might be considered religious extremists). This led the CMC to act in a manner that had unwanted consequences: instead of mitigating any potential problems, it actually focused attention on the political content of the works and the common ancestry of the artists rather than the artistic merit of the works (supposing that politics and art could actually be separated).55 The museum’s precipitous actions highlighted the very thing that it wished to downplay, and indelibly conditioned the public’s reactions to the exhibition. As one critic wrote, “The exhibition is going ahead as originally scheduled, but its
65 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes chances of fostering better understanding among Canadians of all origins are now compromised.”56 Jayce Salloum, one of the artists in The Lands within Me, claims that the museum’s reaction was responsible for creating its own problem; he believes that the CMC’s “need for ‘spin-doctoring’ and repackaging of the artworks backfired, inflaming the sensitive content of the works and bringing the issues into a context of sensationalism, hysteria and managerial hubris.”57
Having been largely responsible for the furore that surrounded the exhibition’s potentially problematic reception, the CMC rapidly took steps to try to mitigate any further controversy by stressing the fact that it was an art exhibition by individuals with common ancestry rather than an exhibition about a particular cultural group. Defending his decision to “add context,” Victor Rabinovitch, director of the CMC, claimed: It was an art show, not the kind of thing we usually do. We’re a social-historical museum, and after Sept. 11, we saw right away that the public would want to do more than look at these paintings. They’d want to know about the countries these artists came from. So we decided to do what a museum should do: Research the countries, have essays written, prepare texts to accompany the works of art.58 It was also misleadingly reported that The Lands within Me was not curated by museum staff.59
Despite last-minute attempts by the CMC to downplay the collective nature of the artists in the exhibition, and despite the curator’s desire that the exhibition “not attempt in any way to emphasize the ‘exoticism’of the work produced by Canadian artists of Arab origin,” there were a number of aspects to the exhibition that strongly reinforced a sense of commonality. One of the problems with a group exhibition organized around a loose theme like “Arab origin” or the “immigrant experience” is that it takes a group of heterogeneous individuals with complex identities who may belong to overlapping communities and creates the false sense that they are more closely allied than they actually are.60 The sense of commonality that was “flagged” in the press coverage before the opening of The Lands within Me was reinforced by the overall exhibition design and installation of the show. An integral component of a successful exhibition is a visually appealing presentation of works, particularly when mounting an exhibition of works of various media by numerous artists; however, there are pitfalls inherent in using a strong overall design. In order to create a sense of coherence among the works in The Lands within Me the exhibition designers at the CMC used several strategies that perpetuated stereotypical images of cultural essentialism and reinforced a false sense of homogeneity among the artists. These strategies are consistent with the CMC’s position as both a site of populist entertainment and with its historical function as an anthropological and ethnographic museum. From the entrance to the end of
66 The Limits on Cultural Expression at Canada’s National Cultural Institutions the exhibition, the idea of “Arabness” was maintained through the use of design elements and organizational strategies.
As mentioned earlier, The Lands within Me featured a selection of works by twenty-six contemporary Arab-Canadian artists who used different media including photography, mixed media, video, textiles, painting, calligraphy, printmaking, installation works, furniture, pottery and jewellery. The exhibition consisted of several adjoining rooms throughout which the various artists’works were displayed. Each artist was situated in his or her own section. Plaques identified the works, and the ethnic origin of the artist (where they were born, countries in which they lived prior to coming to Canada and present place of residence) and a short artist’s state- ment relevant to the pieces accompanied each presentation. Interspersed among the works was an impressive variety of interpretive materials, the format and content of which merits consideration.61
Visitors entered the exhibition space through translucent gauze panels hung from the ceiling, panels that deliberately evoked the symbolism and exoticism (at least to Western viewers) of the veil in Muslim culture.62 Although the visual and material content of the exhibition was disparate, there was a unifying central theme clearly explained in a short text at the entrance to the show. The trilingual text panels (English, French and Arabic) read, “The Lands within Me: Expressions by Canadian Artists of Arab Origin is an exhibition about the immigrant experience and cultural intermixing. The works presented here represent the participating artists’ expressions of their personal experiences and memories.”63
While the works represented the artists’personal experiences, there were other elements in the exhibition that strove to unify them. A continuously- running videotape produced by the CMC and i4design entitled A Look at Canadians of Arab Origin and the Arab World was situated in one of the smaller rooms of the exhibition. Composed of a series of short “maquettes,” the video featured glimpses of various aspects of the Arab world: demographics, art, language, immigration patterns and conflict (both from outside the Arab world and from within) were presented in short segments with titles such as, “A singular and plural world,”64 “A past with a future,” and “A world under stress.” The video emphasized the important contributions that Arab immigrants brought to Canada, especially their cultural heritage(s). It is through their artistic productions that these immigrants are generously sharing their cultures with “all their fellow citizens,”aprocessthattheproducersofthevideocalled“intermingling.”65
Another interesting component of The Lands within Me was an entire wall that featured a series of black and white “portraits” of the artists, ranging from conventionally posed figural photographs of the artists (in their studios or with family members) to less conventional collages of photographs featuring significant locations and items in the artists’
67 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes environments — things such as their studios, landscape outside their homes, and artworks. The portraits, which were commissioned at the request of the organizers of The Lands within Me, were taken by two of the participants in the exhibition who had travelled to visit the other artists “in their home provinces in order to make portraits of them with particular attention given to their surroundings.”66 The organizers noted that “all the artists generously agreed to share facets of themselves and their daily lives —liveswhichareeloquentlyrevealedbytheeyeofthephotographer.”67
The portraits served two obvious purposes: on an immediate level they were informational — providing documentary evidence of the artists. On an aesthetic level, they were artworks in their own right. But I believe the portraits function as more than mere documents or art objects: they work as a strategy to assimilate a number of diverse individuals into an overall homogeneous group by contextualizing, explaining and familiarizing them. Considering the fact that the museum claimed that this was an art exhibitionnotmerelyanexhibitionofaculture,andthatitwasanexhibition that featured contemporary living artists, the inclusion of artists’portraits is quite unusual. It is not common curatorial practice in public art galleries, like the National Gallery of Canada, for example, to include photographic portraits of artists; indeed, they rarely provide biographical notes on the artists in the contemporary section. It is, however, more common to see grouped photographic portraits included in anthropological or ethnographic museums, which provide historical and analytical studies of the “other.”68 Each artist’s presentation was already accompanied by a biographicpanel;whythen,didthemuseumfeelthatsuchanintensedegree of biographical material was necessary, and why was an entire wall devoted to this information?
Throughout the exhibition there was a tension between the museum’s attempts to contain and explain cultural difference and the curator’s desire to highlight difference and refute notions of cultural essentialism. The final section of the exhibition featured text panels that discussed the concept of “mixed space.” Here the curator questioned notions of culture as an “autonomous whole,” especially in “immigrant countries” like Canada “where people from around the world meet on a daily basis, where exchanges and influences multiply.”69 Kaouk believes that modern notions of culture need to be more inclusive and less constrained by national boundaries. Instead of using the word “multiculturalism” (which she sees as a stale term that operates by folklorizing cultures by simply juxtaposing memories), she introduced the term “interculturalism,” which refers to “encounters between cultures.”70 Despite the admirable efforts of Kaouk to broaden our definition of culture, I believe that the CMC imposed ideological and physical constraints on the exhibition that reflected a less inclusive notion of Canadianness.
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The main concern the CMC’s administration expressed prior to the exhibition was that the works might not be contextualized enough for the public. The implication was that due to the events of 9/11 a lack of information about the exhibition could result in a hostile reception to the show. It is hard to conceive what the exhibition might have looked like had the museum carried through with their revisions.
The existing degree of contextualization of the exhibition was not lost on the media. One critic wrote: Halfway through the tour, you might begin to wonder, in light of all the events of the world, what’s on display, these Arab-Canadian artists, or their work. As spectacular as The Lands within Me is, it tries too hard to be inclusive, to demystify, to counter recent world events and to make it all happily and exquisitely banal. And it almost succeeds.71 Bowing to pressure from the federal government, The Lands within Me exhibition went ahead as scheduled. The very fact that there was any doubt about its suitability highlights problem areas within museum practice. The initial knee-jerk reaction of the CMC’s administration accentuated the insecure status of individuals whose cultural and ethnic backgrounds are not that of the dominant culture. Jamelie Hassan, an artist who until this point in time had been proudly claimed by the government as a Canadian artist, became threatening when grouped with others who potentially shared her cultural background.72 When considered part of a group of Arab- Canadian artists, she and her work became problematic: her “Canadian” identity was believed to be in some way compromised by a collective Arab identity. This conflict of collective and individual rights was not a problem six months earlier when she was honoured for her artistic achievement by another national cultural institution.
As mentioned earlier, in March 2001 Jamelie Hassan received one of the coveted Governor General’s Visual and Media Arts Awards in recognition for her “distinguished career achievement in fine arts.”73 This award marked official recognition of her work by the most prestigious arts institution in Canada. I contend that the Governor General’s Awards promote nationhood and identity in a much more subtle, and individualistic way than the CMC, although no less effectively. This is due in part to their affiliation with the Canada Council for the Arts. The Council was developed as an “arm’s-length” institution on the recommendation of the Massey-Lévesque Commission in 1951 to help foster nationalism and counter the threat of continentalism.74 The Massey-Lévesque Commission “emphasized the importance of recognizing the artist’s role in society and the need to support arts activity through national leadership and to recognize research in the social sciences, the humanities, and the arts.”75
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The Governor General’s Awards for both literature and performing arts have existed for some time, but the Governor General’s Awards in Visual and Media Arts were only created in 1999 and awarded for the first time in the spring of 2000.76 A joint venture conceived of by the former Governor General Roméo LeBlanc and the Canada Council for the Arts, the Visual and Media Arts awards are presently funded and administered by the Council (although they are presently seeking a corporate sponsor to promote the awards).77 Upon initial examination, the criteria for the awards appear to be relatively simple: in the press release announcing the creation of the awards Roméo LeBlanc stated, “I am pleased to be able to join the Canada Council for the Arts in creating these awards to honour Canadians who have made an extraordinary contribution to the lives of their fellow citizens through the visual and media arts.”78 While this implies that the only criteria for eligibility (besides artistic contribution) is that the artist be a (living) Canadian citizen, it is worth considering that the organization that administers and presently funds the award fully is the Canada Council for the Arts, a division of the Department of Canadian Heritage, a department that explicitly states the promotion of a national Canadian culture as its main goal. If this is their main goal, why didn’t the Council have a problem with awarding the honour to Jamelie Hassan, an artist who explores her cultural heritage in her art and has been a vocal critic of racism and injustice in a variety of contexts?
As stated, the Governor General’s Awards were developed to publicly honour artists and individuals whose work has contributed to a strengthened Canadian identity. The promotion of a collective national identity through individual artistic achievement can be seen clearly in a statement made by former Governor General Adrienne Clarkson: “I congratulate this year’s winning artists for their outstanding work … I thank them for showing us who we are, and for stirring our awareness and our consciousness.”79 However, cultural difference, political beliefs and personal expression are also accommodated more easily within the Governor General’s Awards. In the artist’s statement that accompanied the Award’s information package, Hassan wrote: Over the years, my work has reflected on the complicated nature of family history and official histories. This often positioned feminist and cultural identity politics through the concerns of women and children … I have also examined certain methods that document the colonial context of history and countered these official texts with fragmentary texts, parables and personal archives.80 The Canada Council for the Arts did not appear to find Hassan’s cultural heritage or social and political activism problematic. One of the main reasons for this is that the Council “evaluates artistic significance rather than relying on economic impact as the principal criterion for support.”81 Therefore, aesthetic and artistic merit play a more important role than
70 The Limits on Cultural Expression at Canada’s National Cultural Institutions cultural heritage in determining who may receive funding from the Council.
Another significant reason there was no controversy over the decision to award Canada’s most prestigious visual arts award to a Canadian of Arab descent is that the honour was awarded in the spring of 2001, six months before 9/11. March 2001 was a time when anti-Arab (more specifically anti-Muslim) sentiments and suspicion were not at the forefront of Canadian public opinion.82 Perhaps a more important reason is that the Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts is presented for individual merit, and individualism is a quality that is celebrated in a time of neo-liberal pluralism. Despite her artistic and political activism, Hassan is also internationally and nationally recognized for both her artistic achievements and her support of the London arts community. The widespread recognition of her artistic and social role reaffirms the Canada Council for the Art’s choice of Hassan as a suitable laureate. Furthermore, the cultural affiliations, personal interests, and political activism of a single artist can be considered much less threatening than a potentially problematic confrontation with a group of artists believed to be expressing a collective identity that runs counter to the dominant identity.
By examining these two specific instances, it is plain that there are limits on the extent to which Canadians are able to explore and express their cultural heritage within the dominant discourse of Canadian nationalism. This is particularly true with respect to national cultural institutions, which are, after all, publicly funded. As Victor Rabinovitch conceded, “At the end of the day, we are a federal institution. And we can’t ignore our biggest stakeholders. No museum can.”83 The above instances show that there is a fine line between the celebration of Hassan’s work (work that explores her cultural heritage), and a desire to contain difference. The contrasting reception is not entirely dependent on the institutions’ mandates; both the Canada Council for the Arts and the CMC are governed by the Department of Canadian Heritage, which is, as we have seen, deeply concerned with promoting national unity. The difference lies in part with subtle nuances between the focuses of the two institutions: the CMC, with its focus on cultural difference, perpetuates stereotypical depictions of the “other,” whereas the Council, an institution concerned specifically with “art” rather than “heritage” or “culture,” celebrates individual merit and artistic achievement.
It is also clear, though, that much depends upon the timing and overall political climate within which the aforementioned events occurred. In times of political uncertainty, intolerance is quickly exposed. As Pnina Werbner notes, “Global crises such as September 11 … bring out the dark side of diaspora.”84 Such intolerance, I believe, led to attempts to contain, or “contextualize,” the degree of cultural expression that Hassan was allowed to express. How does this affect her identity? Does being a member of the
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Arab diaspora mean “a matter of continually negotiating the parameters of minority citizenship?”85 Is Hassan only allowed to explore her heritage as an individual — a homogenizing concept that does not recognize differ- ence? Or is she condemned to express her identity within a “multicultural” and “managed” framework? Are we only willing to accord people the right to explore their heritage when it is not inconvenient or problematic? The questions raised by the surfacing of intolerance will only be answered by re-examining the policies that govern our national cultural institutions.
While the immediacy of the events in September 2001 has receded in time, controversy still rages over the handling of the exhibition at the CMC. Originally organized as a travelling exhibition, the museum latterly claimed that it did not have the funds to carry this out. Artists and activists continue to try, without much success, to get the Department of Canadian Heritage and the CMC administration to admit that racist beliefs underlay the handling of the exhibition. In addition, the museum has terminated its Southwest Asian/Middle East program (although there are claims that it never existed in the first place).86 In the midst of this, Hassan, like the other artists from The Lands within Me, continues to be actively involved in the controversy, and continues to make a vital contribution to the arts in Canada.
How will the institutions like the CMC respond to the growing diversity of Canada’s population? Can they do so without resorting to exhibitions that showcase “cultures”? As Monika Kin Gagnon and Scott Toguri McFarlane point out, the Department of Canadian Heritage is caught in a paradox; it must perpetuate notions of difference while ensuring assimilation into the national collectivity. Gagnon and McFarlane claim that “multiculturalism can never fully assimilate or overcome cultural differences because it needs them to make sense.”87
Since 2001, efforts have been made by the Department of Canadian Heritage to address deficiencies in cultural policy and programming. In April 2003 the Minister’s Forum on Diversity and Culture was held at the CMC. The forum, co-hosted by then Minister of Canadian Heritage Sheila CoppsandthenSecretaryofStateJeanAugustine(Multiculturalism;Status of Women), intended to “find ways to better reflect Canadian diversity.”88 After a series of round-table discussions in communities across Canada, the participants met to examine their findings and formulate a number of strategic recommendations. They concluded, “Whether dealing with policy development, program delivery, communications and outreach, human resources or institutional accountability, we must and will continue tolearnandtochangeinordertomeettheneedsofourdiversesociety.”89
It is not yet clear what impact the “war on terror” and the recent shift toward neo-conservatism will have on cultural policy in Canada. Will it create polarization among individuals that prevents any meaningful
72 The Limits on Cultural Expression at Canada’s National Cultural Institutions dialogue, and will public institutions like the CMC be reluctant to organize exhibitions that are potentially problematic? Will they choose to promote culturally benign, “safe” expressions of identity, or will they grasp the opportunity to present material that stimulates intellectual debates over what it means to be Canadian in the twenty-first century?
Notes * My thanks to Jamelie Hassan for her insightful comments on this paper. 1. Connecting to the Canadian Experience: Diversity, Creativity and Choice, the Government of Canada’s Response to A Sense of Place, a Sense of Being, the Ninth Report of the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage (Hull, QC: Minister of Public Works and Government Services Canada, 1998), 4. 2. The Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts was the second tribute Jamelie Hassan received from the Office of the Governor General. In 1992 she received the commemorative medal during the 125th Anniversary of the Confederation of Canada, an honour bestowed “in recognition of significant contribution to compatriots, community and to Canada.” Meera Sethi, “Richard Fung and Jamelie Hassan Speak About Their Recent Honours,” FUSE 24, no. 2 (July 2001): 33. 3. The other laureates honoured in 2001 were: Douglas Cardinal, Tom Dean, Russell Goodman, Liz Magor, Alanis Obomsawin and Joan Chalmers. The jury members were: Alan Dunning (artist and professor), Peggy Gale (curator and writer), Nan Griffiths (retired professor of architecture), Garry Neill Kennedy (painter), Lee-Ann Martin (independent curator), Guido Molinari (visual artist), Jayce Salloum (media artist), and Carol Wainio (painter). Canada Council for the Arts, http://www.canadacouncil.ca. 4. Ibid., 29. 5. The exhibition, which was free to the public, was displayed in the Contemporary Art Galleries of the National Gallery from 21 March to 21 May 2001. Works of Dean, Hassan, and Magor (from the National Gallery’s permanent collection) were featured in the exhibition, along with two films by Obomsawin (on loan from the National Film Board of Canada) and texts honouring Cardinal, Goodman and Chalmers. Then Governor General Adrian Clarkson opened the exhibition in the Great Hall of the National Gallery. National Gallery of Canada, “Works by Governor General’s Award Winners on Display at the National Gallery of Canada,” press release, 14 March 2001, Ottawa. 6. The French title of the exhibition was Ces pays qui m’habitent : Expressions d’artistes canadiens d’origine arabe. 7. The flash point that led to this decision appears to have been a video by Jayce Salloum, one of the twenty-six artists in the exhibition. The video featured footage of a Palestinian woman calling for resistance against Israeli oppression, and in the wake of 9/11 the museum deemed the video problematic. Victor Rabinovitch is quoted as saying that the video “seemed to disseminate aggressive anger.” Ray Conlogue, “Cheques and Balances: On the Eve of a Controversial Exhibit by Arab-Canadian Artists, Victor Rabinovitch Talks to Ray Conlogue About the Ongoing Challenges of Running Canada’s Pre-eminent Museum of Social History,” The Globe and Mail (Toronto), 16 October 2001. A number of artists threatened to pull their work from the exhibition if the museum went ahead with plans to add contextual material such as maps and diagrams (Graham Fraser
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and Karen Palmer, “Video Exhibit Decries US, Israel,” The Toronto Star, 28 September 2001). The protests seem to have been effective; Salloum stated that “the works are being presented as originally planned with the artists.” Jayce Salloum, “‘Everything and Nothing,’ or Art and the Politics of ‘War,’” FUSE 23, no. 4 (December 2001): 48. 8. Salloum, “‘Everything and Nothing,’” 48. Salloum describes how the artists involved sent out an email letter of protest the same afternoon that the CMC announced its decision to postpone the exhibition. By the next day the CMC had received over 200 responses from around the world. 9. Paul Gessell, “PM blasts museum for halting art show,” The Ottawa Citizen, 27 September 2001. Ray Conlogue states that Victor Rabinovitch, director of the CMC, bowed to “pressure from Liberal backbenchers of Middle Eastern origin.” Ray Conlogue, “Cheques and Balances.” 10. Since I believe they were the result of a variety of factors (cultural, political and social), I am examining these events from an interdisciplinary point of view. 11. Mary Malone, “The Hassans: Growing up Arabic in Southern Ontario,” The London Free Press, 19 November 1986. 12. Mireya Folch-Serra, “Geography, Diaspora and the Art of Dialogism: Jamelie Hassan,” Parachute, no. 90 (1988): 11. The following quotation is from Folch- Serra, 15. 13. Folch-Serra. Ibid.,15. 14. Hassan qtd. in Sethi, “Jamelie Hassan,” 30. 15. Folch-Serra, “Geography,” 17. 16. Eva Mackey, “Managing the House of Difference: Official Multiculturalism,” The House of Difference: Cultural Politics and National Identity in Canada (London and New York: Routledge, 1999), 50. 17. Ibid. 18. Dot Tuer, “Cultures of Conquest, Culture in Context,” Towards the Slaughterhouse of History: Working Papers on Culture (Toronto: YYZ Books, 1992), 58. Tuer is a writer and cultural critic who teaches Cultural Studies at the Ontario College of Art and Design in Toronto. 19. Ian Angus, “Multiculturalism as a Social Ideal,” A Border Within: National Identity, Cultural Plurality, and Wilderness (Montreal and Kingston: McGill- Queen’s University Press, 1997), 145. 20. Steven Vertovec, “Transnational Challenges to the ‘New’ Multiculturalism,” paper presented to the ASA Conference held at the University of Sussex, Brighton, UK, 30 March–2 April 2001. 21. R.D. Grillo, Pluralism and the Politics of Difference (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), 195. 22. Vertovec, “Transnational Challenges.” 23. Ibid. 24. Although Britain and Canada experience very different concerns related to multiculturalism, there are some points of convergence, particularly the ossification of “culture” and the perpetuation of notions of difference. The Runnymede Trust/Commission on the Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain, The Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain [The Parekh Report] (London: Profile Books, 2000), 26. 25. I am using Connecting to the Canadian Experience specifically because it was published shortly before the Lands within Me exhibition opened. The exhibition, which took several years to organize, was in the planning stages when this document appeared. I believe that the ideas expressed in the report are reflected in the policies of the CMC.
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26. Sheila Copps, Letter to Mr. Clifford Lincoln, MP, November 1999, Connecting to the Canadian Experience,1. 27. The term “ethnic” is problematic: while it can refer a group that has “common origins, a shared sense of history, a shared culture and a sense of collective identity” it can also imply “not-Western” or “not-white.” The Parekh Report, xxiii. 28. Copps, Letter, 5. 29. Monika Kin Gagnon and Scott Toguri McFarlane also question the assumptions underlying the Department of Canadian Heritage’s terminology, and comment on a statement that appeared on the Department’s website in April 2002: “Promoting the creation, dissemination and preservation of diverse Canadian cultural works, stories and symbols reflective of our past and expressive of our values and aspirations” (Department of Canadian Heritage, “Mission and Strategic Objec- tives,” http://www.pch.gc.ca/mindep/egg_text.htm). Gagnon and McFarlane write, “Who is the ‘our’ that the Department of Canadian Heritage has made the aim of its strategic objectives?” Monika Kin Gagnon and Scott Toguri McFarlane, “The Capacity of Cultural Difference,” background paper for the Minister’s Forum on Diversity and Culture, 23–23 April 2003. Canadian Museum of Civilization Corporation (CMCC), http://www.pch.gc.ca/special/ dcforum/pubs/ident-self_e.cfm, 23 February 2006. 30. Tuer, “Cultures of Conquest,” 57. 31. Joyce Zemans, “The Essential Role of National Cultural Institutions,” Beyond Quebec: Taking Stock of Canada, Ed. Kenneth McRoberts (Montreal: McGill- Queen’s University Press, 1995), 139. 32. Ibid., 140. 33. For more on the popularity of the CMC, see CMCC, “Ten Million Visitors in Eight Years Says It All!” Press release, 3 July 1997, http://www.civilization.ca. 34. CMCC, http://www.civilization.ca. 35. “The Canadian Museum of Civilization is a Crown Corporation established pursuant to the Museums Act (Statutes of Canada 1990, Chapter 3) which came into force on July 1st, 1990.” The Corporation manages the CMC (which bills itself as “Canada’s largest and most popular museum”) and its affiliate, the Canadian War Museum. 36. This was the statement on the CMCC’s website in December 2001. 37. CMCC, “Mandate,” Museums Act, SC 1990, c. 3. 38. For a discussion of the political role of cultural institutions, see Louis Althusser, “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatus,” Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1971). 39. Tuer, “Cultures of Conquest,” 57. 40. George F. MacDonald, “Change and Challenge: Museums in the Information Society,” Museums and Communities: The Politics of Public Culture, Ed. Ivan Karp, Christine Mullen Kreamer and Steven D. Lavine (Washington and London: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992), 158. MacDonald was the director of the CMC from 1983 to 1998. 41. Ibid., 160. 42. Ibid. 43. It should be noted that MacDonald’s essay was written at a time in Canadian history when the possibility of Quebec’s separation was very real. 44. Ibid. 45. Ibid., 176. MacDonald had been interested in the processes of globalization for several years by this point; in 1989 he published a book about the CMC called
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Museum for the Global Village: Canadian Museum of Civilization (Hull, PQ: CMCC, 1989). 46. The CMC, which was called the National Museum of Man until 1986, has a long history that stretches back to 1841, when Queen Victoria founded the Geological Survey of the United Provinces of Canada. In 1877 the Geological Survey expanded its collections from geological and archaeological material to include botanical, zoological and ethnographic material. In 1905 construction was begun on the Victoria Memorial Museum Building, and in 1910 the museum hired its first anthropologist. The museum opened to the public in 1911, and rapidly expanded throughout the twentieth century. CMCC, Institutional History, http://www.civilization.ca. 47. The choice of an architect with First Nations’ heritage was significant, as was the physical appearance of the building. Regarding the building, George F. MacDonald wrote, “By breaking free of cultural paradigms of architectural style, and by speaking of the historical landscape […] Douglas Cardinal’s creation is appropriate for the global village in which all peoples seek their common heritage.” MacDonald, “Change and Challenge,” 161. 48. Although predominantly concerned with British and French contributions to Canada, the Canada Hall makes some references to minority groups such as the Métis, Ukrainians and Chinese. CMCC, “Canada Hall,” http://www.civilization.ca. 49. Among the most impressive artefacts in the Grand Hall are a number of genuine Northwest Coast totem poles. While the museum has repatriated a number of Native artefacts in recent years, the totem poles remain in their collection. For more information on repatriation of artefacts, see the CMCC website. 50. These temporary exhibition spaces are where various productions of “multicultures” are exhibited. In the last few years, there have been exhibitions on such diverse subjects as ancient Egypt, Indian popular art, Vietnamese- Canadians, and Iroquois beadwork. 51. Aïda Kaouk, “A Message from the Curator,” The Lands within Me, CMCC, http://www.civilization.ca/cultur/cespays/pay1_10e.html (12 February 2006). 52. While the majority of the artists are Muslim, some are not. 53. Salwa Ismail, “Being Muslim: Islam, Islamism and Identity Politics,” The Politics of Identity (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2004), 624. 54. Pnina Werbner, “Divided Loyalties, Empowered Citizenship? Muslims in Britain,” Citizenship Studies 4, no. 3 (2000): 306, 309. Werbner notes that this belief can also be the case from a Muslim perspective. 55. While it is a commonly held belief that politics and art can exist in separate spheres, it is not my opinion that the two can, or should be, separate. 56. Hugh Winsor, “The Politics of Art: What Were They Thinking?” The Globe and Mail (Toronto), 1 October 2001. 57. Salloum, “Everything and Nothing,” 48. 58. Rabinovitch qtd. in Conlogue, “Cheques and Balances.” 59. Fraser and Palmer, “Video Exhibit Decries US, Israel.” Although Kaouk was not a permanent museum employee, she had been hired on contract by the CMC for fourteen consecutive terms. Janice Tibbetts, “Dismissed Arab Curator Calls Museum Racist: Human Rights Complaint: Syrian Canadian Led Controversial Arab Art Exhibit After September 11,” The National Post, 26 November 2002. 60. The idea of overlapping communities was discussed in The Parekh Report, 3. 61. The CMC’s press release from 26 September 2001 stated, “The Museum decided to postpone it in order to have time to prepare a more extensive and informative context for the exhibition. The exhibition team will be working on a more
76 The Limits on Cultural Expression at Canada’s National Cultural Institutions
comprehensive presentation on the background and diversity of Canadians of Arab origins.” Due to protests from the artists involved, it did not proceed with these changes. See also notes 7 and 8. 62. For a discussion of the ethical symbolism of the veil, see Ismail, “Being Muslim.” See also Joseph H. Carens and Melissa S. Williams, “Muslim Minorities in Lib- eral Democracies: The Politics of Misrecognition,” The Challenge of Diversity: Integration and Pluralism in Societies of Immigration, Ed. Rainer Bauböck, Agnes Heller, Aristide R. Zolbert (Aldershot, UK: Avebury, 1996). 63. Aïda Kaouk, Introductory text panel from The Lands within Me: Expressions by Canadian Artists of Arab Origin (Hull, PQ: CMCC, 2001). The choice of an exotic-looking and vaguely calligraphic font for the wall text supported the notion of “Arabness.” 64. While this phrase specifically refers to the multitude of different types of Arabs who make up the Arab world I think that it could also be used to describe multiculturalism in Canada. 65. CMC and i4design, A Look at Canadians of Arab Origin and the Arab World, video accompaniment to the exhibition The Lands within Me: Expressions by Canadian Artists of Arab Origin (Hull, PQ: CMCC, 2001). 66. Email correspondence between the author and Camille Zakharia, 9 August 2005. Camille Zakharia and Rawi Hage took the portraits of the other artists except Karim Rholem, who created his own self-portrait. 67. Ibid. The fact that the portraits were commissioned by the CMC is significant. While the artists had artistic freedom in composing the portraits, they sent the images to the CMC for feedback and comments. 68. For an overview of anthropological and ethnographic photography, see Christopher Pinney, “The Parallel Histories of Anthropology and Photography,” Anthropology and Photography 1860–1920 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1992). 69. Kaouk, “Mixed Spaces,” The Lands within Me. 70. Ibid. 71. Denis Armstrong, “Passionate Lands,” The Ottawa Sun, 2 October 2001. 72. Although I do not subscribe to the idea that an essential “Arab” identity exists among the artists, I believe that the idea of cultural essentialism that was one of the tenets of official multiculturalism at its inception is still at work in institutions like the CMC. 73. Canada Council for the Arts, “Introduction,” Governor General’s Visual and Media Arts Awards: Endowments and Prizes, http://www.canadacouncil.ca. 74. Zemans, “The Essential Role of National Cultural Institutions,” 147. 75. Ibid. 76. The 2000 winners of the Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts were: Jocelyne Alloucherie, Ghitta Caiserman-Roth, John Chalke, Jacques Giraldeau, John Scott, Michael Snow and Doris Shadbolt. 77. Canada Council for the Arts, The Canada Council for the Arts Announces the Governor General’s Awards in Visual and Media Arts, press release, 21 June 1999, Ottawa. 78. Ibid. 79. Adrienne Clarkson, “Messages: Adrienne Clarkson,” Governor General’s Visual and Media Arts Awards: Endowments and Prizes, Canada Council for the Arts, http://www.canadacouncil.ca (16 December 2001).
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80. Jamelie Hassan, “Laureates: Jamelie Hassan,” Governor General’s Visual and Media Arts Awards: Endowments and Prizes, Canada Council for the Arts, http://www.canadacouncil.ca. 81. Zemans, “The Essential Role of National Cultural Institutions,” 149. 82. This is not to imply that Islamophobia has not existed for a long time prior to 9/11 but, rather, to demonstrate that it had reached new heights at this time. 83. Rabinovitch qtd. in Conlogue, “Cheques and Balances.” 84. Pnina Werbner, “The Predicament of Diaspora and Millennial Islam: Reflections on the Aftermath of September 11,” http://www.ssrc.org/sept11/essays/ werbner.htm, 11 February 2006. 85. Ibid. 86. “In one of the most bizarre cases of apparent discrimination against Arabs in Canada the Museum of Civilizations abruptly terminated the Arab world program. (The decision was a reversal of the announced and articulated objectives of the Museum’s charter; namely, to foster understanding and appreciation of Canadian multiculturalism.) The management of the Museum continues to ignore the calls from Canadians to reverse its decision.” The National Council on Canada-Arab Relations, “NCCAR Annual Report, 2003,” http://www.nccar.ca/explore/annual_report03.pdf, 22 March 2005. In March 2002 Kaouk filed a complaint with the Canadian Human Rights Commission claiming that she was unfairly dismissed from her job at the CMC after many years of contract work. Tibbetts, “Dismissed Arab Curator Calls Museum Racist.” 87. Gagnon and McFarlane, “The Capacity of Cultural Difference.” 88. The Minister’s Forum on Diversity and Culture, 23–23 April 2003, CMCC. 89. Ibid.
Bibliography Angus, Ian. “Multiculturalism as a Social Ideal,” in A Border Within: National Identity, Cultural Plurality, and Wilderness. Montreal and Kingston, London, Buffalo: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1997. Armstrong, Denis. “Passionate Lands.” The Ottawa Sun. 2 October 2001. Bill C-12. Statutes of Canada 1990, Chapter 3. An Act Respecting Museums. Assented to 30th January, 1990. Canada Council for the Arts. Endowments and Prizes: Governor General’s Visual and Media Arts Awards. (Includes historical information on the Awards, as well as specific information on the 2001 laureates). See: www.canadacouncil.ca. Canadian Museum of Civilization Corporation. “Mandate,” “Institutional Purpose,” “Institutional History,” “Press Releases,” “The Corporation.” See: www.civilization.ca. Carens, Joseph H. and Melissa S. Williams. “Muslim Minorities in Liberal Democracies: The Politics of Misrecognition.” In Rainer Bauböck, Agnes Heller, Aristide R. Zolberg (eds.). The Challenge of Diversity: Integration and Pluralism in Societies of Immigration. Aldershot: Avebury, 1996. Cobb, Chris. “Museum Reverses Stand on Arab-Canadian Exhibit.” The Ottawa Citizen, September 29, 2001. Conlogue, Ray. “Cheques and Balances: On the Eve of a Controversial Exhibit by Arab-Canadian Artists, Victor Rabinovitch Talks to Ray Conlogue About the Ongoing Challenges of Running Canada’s Pre-eminent Museum of Social History. The Globe and Mail (Toronto), 16 October 2001. Connecting to the Canadian Experience: Diversity, Creativity and Choice. The Government of Canada’s Response to A Sense of Place, a Sense of Being, the
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Ninth Report of the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage. Hull, QC.: Minister of Public Works and Government Services Canada, 1998. Department of Canadian Heritage. The Minister’s Forum on Diversity and Culture. 22-23 April 2003. Canadian Museum of Civilization. See: www.pch.gc.ca/ special/dcforum/pubs/ident-self_e.cfm. 23 February 2006. Dewdney, Christopher. Material Knowledge: A Moral Art of Crisis, Exhibition Catalogue. London, Ont.: London Regional Art Gallery, April 1984. Fraser, Graham and Karen Palmer. “Video Exhibit Decries US, Israel.” The Toronto Star. 28 September 2001. Fraser, Sharon, et al. “Cancelling Art Show Was Disgraceful.” Letters to the Editor. The Ottawa Citizen. September 28, 2001. Folch-Serra, Mireya. “Geography, Disapora and the Art of Dialogism: Jamelie Hassan.” Parachute 90, (1988) 10-17. Gagnon, Monika Kin. “Al Fannanah ’I Rassamah: Jamelie Hassan,” in Sightlines: Reading Contemporary Canadian Art. Edited by Jessica Bradley and Leslie Johnstone. Montreal: Artextes Editions, 1994. ——— and Scott Toguri McFarlane. “The Capacity of Cultural Difference.” Background Paper for the Minister’s Forum on Diversity and Culture. 22-23 April 2003. Canadian Museum of Civilization. See: www.pch.gc.ca/special/dcforum/ pubs/ident-self_e.cfm. 23 February 2006. Gallagher, Noel. “London Artist Honoured.” The London Free Press, March 1, 2001. Gessell, Paul. “A Tale of Two Museums.” The Ottawa Citizen, September 29, 2001. ———. “PM Blasts Museum for Halting Art Show.” The Ottawa Citizen, September 27, 2001. Grillo, R.D. Pluralism and the Politics of Difference. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998. Hassan, Jamelie. “Women and the State,” in Canadian Women Studies/Les Cahiers de la Femme 2, no. 1 (Spring/Summer 1990): 25-26. Ismail, Salwa. “Being Muslim: Islam, Islamism and Identity Politics.” The Politics of Identity. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2004. Kaouk, Aïda. The Lands within Me: Expressions by Canadian Artists of Arab Origin. Exhibition text. Hull, QC: Canadian Museum of Civilization, 2001. (A selection of this material is also available at www.civilization.ca.) MacDonald, George F. “Change and Challenge: Museums in the Information Society,” in Museums and Communities: The Politics of Public Culture. Edited by Ivan Karp, Christine Mullen Kreamer, and Steven D. Lavine. Washington and London: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992. Mackey, Eva. “Managing the House of Difference: Official Multiculturalism,” in The House of Difference: Cultural Politics and National Identity in Canada. London and New York: Routledge, 1999. Malone, Mary. “The Hassans: Growing Up Arabic In Southern Ontario.” The London Free Press. November 19, 1986. Meisel, John, and Jean Van Loon. “Cultivating the Bushgarden: Cultural Policy in Canada,” in The Patron State: Government and the Arts in Europe, North America, and Japan. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987. 276-310. Murdocca, Carmela. Review Article of “Multicultural States: Rethinking Difference and Identity.” (Edited by David Bennett. London and New York: Routledge, 1998.) FUSE 23, no. 2 (September 2000): 54-55. National Council on Canadian-Arab Relations. “NCCAR Annual Report, 2003.” See: www.nccar.ca/explore/annual_report03.pdf. 22 March 2005. National Gallery of Canada. Works by Governor General’s Award Winners on Display at the National Gallery of Canada. Press Release, March 14, 2001. Pinney, Christopher. “The Parallel Histories of Anthropology and Photography.” Anthropology and Photography 1860-1920. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1992. Runnymede Trust/Commission on the Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain. The Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain [The Parekh Report]. London: Profile Books, 2000. Salloum, Jayce. “‘Everything and Nothing,’ or Art and the Politics of ‘War,” in FUSE 23, no. 4 (December 2001): 47-48.
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Sethi, Meera. “Richard Fung and Jamelie Hassan Speak About Their Recent Honours,” in FUSE 24, no. 2 (July 2001): 29-33. Tibbetts, Janice. “Dismissed Arab Curator Calls Museum Racist: Human Rights Complaint: Syrian Canadian Led Controversial Arab Art Exhibit After September 11.” The National Post. 26 November 2002. Tuer, Dot. “Cultures of Conquest, Culture in Context,” in Towards the Slaughterhouse of History: Working Papers on Culture. Toronto: YYZ Books, 1992. Vergo, Peter. “The Reticent Object,” in The New Museology. London: Reaktion Books Ltd., 1989. Vetovec, Steven. “Transnational Challenges to the ‘New’ Multiculturalism.” Paper presented to the ASA Conference held at the University of Sussex, 30 March-2 April 2001. Werbner, Pnina. “Divided Loyalties, Empowered Citizenship? Muslims in Britain. Citizenship Studies 4, no. 3 (2000): 307-324. ———. “The Predicament of Diaspora and Millenial Islam: Reflections on the Aftermath of September 11.” See: www.ssrc.org/sept11/essayswerbner.htm. 11 February 2006. Winsor, Hugh. “The Politics of Art: What Were They Thinking?” The Globe and Mail (Toronto). 1 October 2001. Zemans, Joyce. “The Essential Role of National Cultural Institutions,” in Beyond Quebec: Taking Stock of Canada. Edited by Kenneth McRoberts. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1995. Zolberg, Vera L. “Art Museums and Living Artists: Contentious Communities,” in Museums and Communities: The Politics of Public Culture. Edited by Ivan Karp, Christine Mullen Kreamer, and Steven D. Lavine. Washington and London: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992.
80 Heather A. Smith
Concentrated Immigrant Settlement and Concentrated Neighbourhood Disadvantage in Three Canadian Cities*
Abstract Canadian researchers have focused growing attention on the overrepresen- tation of immigrants in Canada’s poorest and most disadvantaged urban neighbourhoods. However, less attention has been paid to the fact that the degree and character of concentrated immigrant settlement in areas of concentrated poverty and extreme deprivation vary across time, space and the immigrant population itself. Focusing on Canada’s three largest cities, this paper explores the changing spatial and statistical relationship between immigrant settlement and neighbourhood-based disadvantage over the 1991–2001 decade. The paper highlights the evolving and increasingly divergent cases of Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal, emphasizes the contextual, temporal and spatial contingency of the relationship between concentrated urban disadvantage and concentrated immigrant settlement and considers the continued appropriateness of assessing the immigrant experience with traditional rather than immigrant specific markers of deprivation and poverty.
Résumé Alors que les chercheurs canadiens prêtent une attention accrue à la surreprésentation des immigrants dans les quartiers les plus pauvres et les plus défavorisés des villes canadiennes, bien peu d’études portent sur le fait que le degré et le caractère de l’établissement des immigrants dans des quartiers où se concentrent la pauvreté et le dénuement extrême varient en fonction du temps et de l’espace, ainsi que de la population immigrante même. Le présent article analyse le cours des relations spatiales et statistiques entre l’établissement des immigrants et les quartiers défavorisés des trois plus grandes villes du Canada au cours de la décennie 1991-2001 : il souligne l’évolution des cas de plus en plus divergents de Toronto, de Vancouver et de Montréal, fait ressortir la contingence contextuelle, temporelle et spatiale du rapport entre la concentration des désavantages urbains et la concentration des immigrants et étudie la pertinence d’évaluer continuellement le vécu des immigrants au regard des facteurs traditionnels plutôt que des indicateurs de dénuement et de pauvreté propres aux immigrants.
In North American cities the traditional narrative of immigrant social and spatial mobility has been upward and outward. Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries when immigrants first arrived in the urban centres
International Journal of Canadian Studies / Revue internationale d’études canadiennes 31, 2005 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes of Canada and the United States, they tended to do so lacking advanced workplace skills, education and financial and often linguistic resources. They settled first in concentrated ethnic enclaves central to business and industrialdistrictswhereproximitytoemployment,affordablehousingand a rich nexus of both formal and informal immigrant support systems could be found. Residence in the enclave facilitated assimilation processes as new immigrants learned from those who came before them the cultural, social and economic expectations and opportunities of their new countries. Over time languages were learned, skills were developed, education was furthered and capital was saved, allowing many immigrants to move up the class ladder and away from the city in a suburban direction.
The restructuring economies and cities of the post-industrial age, however, coupled with significant shifts in federal immigration policy and a diversification of immigrant source regions, have challenged this classic story.Inthelate1960sbothCanadaandtheUnitedStates“liberalized”their immigration policies, facilitating a shift away from a largely white European migrant pool to one quickly characterized as non-white and predominantly “third world.” Beyond the “changing face” of immigration in both countries, there was a broadening of the reasons behind migratory choices and a far wider range of socio-economic backgrounds and resources accompanying migrants themselves (Portes and Rumbaut 1996). It became just as likely for an immigrant to arrive highly skilled, educated and wealthy as to arrive penniless, persecuted and/or without skill and linguistic advantage.
The increasing number and broadening array of immigrants to North America at this time also encountered transitioning economies and restructuring cities. Manufacturing jobs, once a staple of immigrant employment opportunity and security, were rapidly being replaced by either high-skill/high-pay or low-skill/low-pay positions in the bifurcated service sector (Clark 2003). Processes of revitalization or deterioration were diminishing the availability and allure of central city housing, while suburbanization of jobs and affordable housing offset some of the advantages of residence in traditional (and often inner-city located) immigrant or ethnic enclaves. The diversity of immigrants themselves meant that in some cases previously established enclaves of shared ethnicity were non-existent and new immigrants had to carve out new patterns and practices of settlement and adjustment.
In this context, researchers began to notice trends that ran counter to expectations drawn from traditional theoretical models. Three such trends are particularly salient to this paper’s analysis. First, there was the growing tendency for recently arrived immigrants to bypass pre-existing enclaves and to settle upon arrival in peripheral public housing or suburban neighbourhoods proximate to employment and/or educational opportunities (Murdie 1994; Greene 1995; Muller 1997; Phelan and
82 Concentrated Immigrant Settlement and Concentrated Neighbourhood Disadvantage in Three Canadian Cities
Schneider 1996; Frey 2001; Murdie and Teixeira 2002). In some cases, these neighbourhoods quickly evolved into entirely new enclaves in suburban locations. Second, an increasing proportion of immigrants seemed to be falling behind. In the American case, there was a growing awareness that immigrants were becoming more likely than the native-born to receive public assistance (Borjas 2003). In the Canadian case, low-income rates among immigrants have been rising steadily since the 1980s and growing the most quickly among immigrants who have been in the country for the least amount of time (Picot and Hou 2003). In both the United States and Canada there was a growing sense that immigrants were increasingly represented among the unemployed, and, when working, concentrated in the lowest paid, lowest skilled, least stable sectors of the service economy. Third, a strengthening association between immigrant and “underclass” status was observed. In this regard underclass status for immigrant populations derived not just from increasing correlations with socio-economic markers (lone parenthood, prolonged welfare depen- dency, intergenerational transfer of poverty, etc.) but also from trends toward residence in highly deprived and isolated communities of concentrated urban poverty. In Canada, research shows that immigrants, especially those recently arrived and of visible minority status, are increasingly overrepresented in Canada’s poorest and most multiply deprived urban neighbourhoods, leading to concerns about spatial and social isolation and the development of a permanent “American style underclass” (Ley and Smith 1997a, 1997b, 2000). Clark (2001, 183–84) expresses similar concern for the United States: Given a vanishing, or at least much reduced, safety net, the future of the inner-city concentrations of the foreign-born, perhaps disproportionately foreign-born women, is not likely to follow the upward paths of earlier immigrants. Indeed, a new immigrant underclass, struggling for the ever scarcer resources available from local cities and counties, may emerge.
The Canadian Case By focusing on spatial and statistical relationships that exist between immigrant settlement patterns, rates of low income, and indices of deprivation in the census tracts of Canada’s three largest cities (Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal) over the course of the 1990s, this study examines the intersection between the trends noted above, and updates earlier research that addressed the underclass question as it pertained to Canadian immigrants in earlier decades (Ley and Smith 1997a). In keeping with that investigation, this study holds that the underclass remains an inappropriate narrative to apply to the case of Canada’s immigrant populations. Yet, that said, it also concurs with the growing array of work in both the United States and Canada that demonstrates increasing connections between poverty, disadvantage and immigrant status. In all three cities, immigrants in 2001
83 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes were more likely than in 1991 to reside in high poverty, multiply deprived census tracts isolated by virtue of either their peripheral suburban location or spatial embeddedness in far broader swaths of low-income concentration and disadvantage.
The story of immigrant settlement in Canadian cities and its connection with neighbourhood-based poverty and deprivation must be recognized as an evolving and spatially contingent one: a function of the complex interplay between the distinct urban and neighbourhood contexts in which immigrant groups settle, the skills and support systems brought with them and the economic conditions and policy contexts of the time in which they arrived. In 2001, 62% of all Canadian immigrants lived in Toronto, Vancouver or Montreal. Recent immigrants, those arriving between 1991 and 2001, had a particular propensity for settlement in Toronto. Whereas Vancouveraccounted for 18% of all recent immigrant settlement in Canada in 2001, and Montreal for 12%, Toronto accounted for a startling 43%. Compared to other cities, Toronto receives the largest proportion of migrants from the Caribbean while Vancouver receives the largest proportion from Asia. Montreal draws comparatively more immigrants from Haiti and the francophone countries of Africa. There are differences, too, in the economic and personal circumstances of immigrants. Toronto and Montreal receive many more refugees than other Canadian cities and Vancouver is the primary reception centre for business-class immigrants who necessarily bring with them substantial capital and entrepreneurial resources (Hiebert 2000).
As this study reveals, while Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal display common patterns with regard to the increasing suburbanization of immigrant residence and strengthening correlations between neigh- bourhood disadvantage and concentrated immigrant settlement, they also display unique and at times diverging experiences in terms of how relationships between immigrants, deprivation and poverty have changed over time and space. This is particularly the case when the experience of recent immigrants is evaluated.
After an overview of Canadian immigration policy and the declining socio-economic position of particular immigrant groups, this paper, using census tract data from Statistics Canada, maps and analyzes the changing configuration of immigrant settlement, poverty and neighbourhood deprivation in Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal in 1991 and 2001. For each of the three cities, statistical intersections between patterns of general and recent immigrant settlement and changing levels of concentrated poverty and deprivation are also explored. In some cases, this statistical assessment extends back to 1971 to allow for a longer-term view of transition. The paper concludes by emphasizing the geographically contingent and dynamic nature of these relationships and the pressing need for more disaggregated and qualitative study.
84 Concentrated Immigrant Settlement and Concentrated Neighbourhood Disadvantage in Three Canadian Cities
Changing Policy and Changing Immigrant Experience In 1967 a recrafting of Canada’s immigration legislation initiated significant changes in the nation’s immigrant profile. A long-established system giving preferential treatment to migrants from Europe and the United States was replaced with a points-based scheme through which independent migrants from any world region could earn merit based on educational attainment, workplace skills and language ability. Immigrants with family already established in Canada were permitted to seek entry through family sponsorship and those in need of asylum were able to seek entry on humanitarian grounds as refugee claimants. These new policies initiated a rapid shift from a predominantly Western to a more global immigrant stream. In the mid-1960s almost 90% of Canada’s immigrants came from European source countries; the United Kingdom was the originating country of almost a quarter of all migrants. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s new arrivals to Canada were more likely than not to have emigrated from Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, or Latin America (Knowles 2000). In 2001 India and the People’s Republic of China were by far the leading source countries, representing almost a third of all immigrants arriving in Canada that year (CIC 2002a).
Legislative changes affecting immigrant source regions were accompaniedbyadjustmentstotheannualnumberofimmigrantspermitted entry. Prior to the mid-1980s the Canadian government adjusted annual quota figures in accordance with national economic conditions. This practice was discontinued, however, as the role of immigrants in population growth and skilled labour supply became more apparent. Declining fertility rates and economic growth supported arguments to increase the number of immigrants allowed entry to Canada each year. Since the mid-1980s the overall number of immigrants permitted entry to Canada has risen steadily from about 84,000 in 1985 to over 250,000 in 2001. It is estimated that immigration currently accounts for about 50% of the nation’s population growth and almost 70% of its labour force expansion (Bourne and Rose 2001). The importance of immigration to the health of Canada’s economy is reflected in policy initiatives that further prioritize entry (or give more points) for migrants bringing with them entrepreneurial skills and investment capital. In the latter part of the 1990s, over half of all immigrants to Canada arrived under the economic immigrant banner and by 2001 61% did — almost 10% of those under the business immigrant program that allows immigrants entry as entrepreneurs, investors or self-employed persons (CIC 2002b).
These policy changes have not been without complication. Despite a concerted state effort to attract immigrants with personal characteristics and skills that would seemingly ensure socio-economic upward mobility, there is mounting concern that the experience of recent immigrants to Canada runs counter to expectations for advancement. While it is true that
85 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes with time most Canadian immigrants achieve personal and inter-gener- ational upward mobility, an increasing number, especially those who have arrivedsince1991andareofvisibleminoritystatus,seemtobestruggling.
Examining the comparative earnings and employment status of immigrants and the Canadian-born, Reitz (2001) found that in the early 1980s recent immigrants were just about as likely to have jobs and to earn 80% as much as the Canadian-born. By 1996 recent immigrants were far less successful than their Canadian counterparts in finding employment and were earning only 60% as much as the native-born. Reitz cites changes in the Canadian economy, specifically its shift toward a more post-industrial profile, rising educational standards and employer confusion/ discrimination about foreign acquired skills and post-secondary qualifica- tions as central reasons behind the steady decline of immigrant earnings since 1980.
Given the restructuring of national policy and associated shifts in the racial and ethnic makeup of recent Canadian immigrants, many observers emphasize that the economic disadvantage of new immigrants intersects with specific places of origin and visible minority status. Hiebert (2000) notes that while people of British and northern European descent are overrepresented in the most well-remunerated occupations, visible minorities are over-concentrated in those occupations considered less desirable and poorly paid. Pendakur and Pendakur (1996, 26) find that “even controlling for occupation, industry, education, potential experience, (city of residence), official language knowledge and household type, … visible minorities earn significantly less then native-born white workers in Canada.” Ley (1999) emphasizes the importance of disaggregating the visible minority category, as well as immigrant entry class and household structure, to glean a clearer picture of which immigrant subgroups fare better or worse than others. Not surprisingly, immigrants from the least developed source countries, entering Canada as refugee claimants and without broad household and/or community support, experience the deepestdisadvantageandthelongestclimbupthesocio-economicladder.
In a study exploring low-income rates among Canadian immigrants, Picot and Hou (2003) found that while low-income status rose and fell as expected with economic cycles, rates for immigrants have been rising steadily since 1980, while rates for the native-born have been falling. They further conclude that the depth of poverty for newly arrived immigrants (those arriving in the 1990s) is also increasing. That recent immigrants are likely to originate from impoverished countries in Asia and Africa (and thus bring with them limited resources and narrow skill sets) is a significant factor in these low-income status increases. So, too, is their time of arrival in Canada.
86 Concentrated Immigrant Settlement and Concentrated Neighbourhood Disadvantage in Three Canadian Cities
Ley and Hiebert (2001, 123) explain: The growing poverty rate among immigrants reflects their changing position in the economy. Earlier periods of rapid immigration to Canada coincided with buoyant economic times and a labour market that held out prospects for workers with relatively little formal education. Since the mid-1980s, these jobs have been scarce, especially during the recessionary early 1990s. Immigrants have therefore had to confront a changed labour market that provides poor jobs for those deemed unskilled. That said, Picot and Hou (2003) stress three things: one, that the low- income gap between the foreign and native-born was greatest among the educated (degree holders); two, that the traditional narrative of upward mobility over time still holds (as immigrants gain more workplace experience, linguistic ability, education and so forth, their low-income rates fall); and three, that compared to recent immigrant cohorts before them, low-income immigrants who arrived between 1991 and 2001 were more quickly able to close income gaps between themselves and the native-born. In other words, while the poverty of current new immigrants may be deeper and more widespread than among earlier cohorts, their catch-up rates appear to be much faster.
In their work, Kazemipur and Halli (2001) point out that there are also ethnic and generational factors that lead to rising levels of low income among Canadian immigrants. Immigrants of West Asian, Arab, Vietnamese and Latin American descent have poverty rates that approach three times the national average. That these groups are strongly represented among the nation’s most recently arrived migrants likely plays a role in rising immigrant poverty rates overall. Immigrant children (now adults) who were brought to Canada before they reached age of ten also showed slightly higher rates of poverty than immigrants who arrived in their young-adult years (ages 20 to 29). While Kazemipur and Halli (2001) urge caution in interpreting this finding, they emphasize that it challenges models that assume that assimilation and upward socio-economic mobility automatically come with increased time spent in Canada. If this were always the case, those who arrived as children of immigrant parents twenty years ago should show lower rates of poverty than immigrants of the same age cohort who have only recently arrived. In Kazemipur and Halli’s study, however slightly, they do not.
Immigrants and Neighbourhood Disadvantage There is mounting concern that the comparative economic disadvantage of Canadian immigrants is reflected in a form of spatial disadvantage that sees them increasingly resident in the nation’s poorest and most multiply deprived urban neighbourhoods. Following the lead of American research concerned with the spatial concentration of poverty among African-
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Americans and other visible minorities, Kazemipur and Halli (1997, 2000a, 2000b) examine the relationship between immigrant settlement and neighbourhoods with poverty rates in excess of 40%. The authors conclude that, with only a few exceptions, immigrants throughout the early 1990s were consistently overrepresented in the poorest census tracts of all Canadian cities. Vietnamese, Spanish, Chinese, black and Filipino immigrants were those ethnic groups most likely to reside in the highest poverty neighbourhoods. Fong and Gulia (1999) show that black Canadians, many of whom immigrated to Canada after 1970, fare particularly poorly and reside in “neighbourhoods with less desirable social environments” in comparison with all other ethnic groups. This remains the case even when blacks reside in areas with expensive housing. In this case, less desirable neighbourhoods are those with high levels of low income, household overcrowding, unemployment, linguistic disadvantage and low educational attainment. Murdie’s research (1994, 1998) highlights another variable and emphasizes that high concentrations of black immigrants are often found in peripheral suburban public housing complexes in disadvantaged community contexts.
Arguing that neighbourhood-based disadvantage is about more than just extreme poverty levels, Ley and Smith (1997a, 1997b) evaluate the relationship between immigrant settlement, multiple levels of census tract poverty and broader markers of disadvantage. Focusing on Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver, they demonstrate that immigrants in 1991 were likely to be overrepresented not only in neighbourhoods at all poverty levels but also in census tracts with overlapping levels of above-average male unemployment, reliance on government transfer payments, single- parent families, public housing, reported criminal activity and low levels of educational achievement.
Ley and Smith (2000) also demonstrate that the relationship between immigrant settlement and neighbourhood deprivation has temporal and spatial variability, that the geography of immigrant disadvantage shifts over time and space. In Toronto the correlation between concentrated immigrant settlement and extreme neighbourhood poverty strengthened over the 1971–1991 period, particularly in suburban areas. In Vancouver, correla- tions between immigrant settlement and neighbourhood disadvantage declined over the same period and the spatial configuration of both variables was far less suburbanized than in the Toronto case. In Montreal, although neighbourhood poverty was correlated more strongly with the Canadian-born, patterns of both deprivation and immigrant settlement showed suburbanizing tendencies, a pattern confirmed to extend to 1996 (Langlois and Kitchen 2001).
While these and other studies have established a growing relationship between certain immigrant groups and deep poverty, there remains limited understanding of the evolving geography of this relationship throughout the
88 Concentrated Immigrant Settlement and Concentrated Neighbourhood Disadvantage in Three Canadian Cities
1990s and only partial understanding of how different forms of neighbourhood-based deprivation are linked to different immigrant groups. Understanding the extent to which observed patterns have changed or remained stable between 1991 and 2001 is a critical step forward. While immigrants to Canada prior to the 1990s experienced sustained economic stability and growth, those arriving between 1991 and 1996 faced a severe economic downturn, high unemployment levels and immigrant entry levels that were higher than any other point in recent Canadian history. Immigrants arriving after 1996 entered the country at a time of economic recovery; employment levels rose and real incomes were offered.
Defining Poverty Levels and Deprived Census Tracts Unlike the most recent Canadian research on neighbourhood disadvantage, this study examines incidence of low income (or poverty rate) and various indicators of broader deprivation. At the core of this study is a belief that disadvantage should be viewed not simply as a lack of income but also as a lack of adequate education, as distance or exclusion from the formal labour market, reliance on government assistance, fractured families and, par- ticularly for immigrants, inability to communicate in an official language, cultural isolation and discrimination, among other things.
Following the convention of American researchers such as Wilson (1987) and Jargowsky (1992) and the initial Canadian study upon which this research rests (Ley and Smith 1997a, 2000), poverty tracts are those with an incidence of poverty among persons in private households in the 20%–29% range, high poverty tracts are those with rates between 30% and 39% and extreme poverty tracts are those with an incidence of low income in excess of 40%. In their work on the concentration of poverty in urban Canada, Halli and Kazemipur (2000) also use the 30% and 40% thresholds to demarcate high and extreme poverty tracts.
In the same way that it is important to look at the geography of poverty over space by examining the relative location of tracts of varied poverty levels, it is also instructive to assess various other indicators of deprivation. In this study, census tracts are defined as deprived based on the degree to which they show particular thresholds of the following four variables: 1. Percent of census tract population fifteen years and older without a high-school diploma 2. Census tract male unemployment rate (fifteen years and older) 3. Percent of census tract income from government transfer payments 4. Percent of all census families in census tracts led by a female lone parent
89 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes
Source: Dr. Heather Smith, Dept. of Geography and Earth Sciences, University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Cartographer Scott Whitlock, University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Data Source: Statistics Canada.
Source: Dr. Heather Smith, Dept. of Geography and Earth Sciences, University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Cartographer Scott Whitlock, University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Data Source: Statistics Canada.
90 Concentrated Immigrant Settlement and Concentrated Neighbourhood Disadvantage in Three Canadian Cities
“Deprived” census tracts are those with one to four variables scoring at least two times the current (1991 or 2001) value for the Census Metropolitan Area (CMA) and an incidence of low income among persons of at least 20%.1 For Toronto, Vancouverand Montreal, tracts that qualified with one, two, three or four indicators were each identified and mapped. It should be noted that tracts qualifying on all four indicators would approximate the American standard for an underclass neighbourhood (Ricketts and Sawhill 1998).
Itneeds tobeemphasized that neither poverty nor deprivation needs tobe extreme and overlapping to begin affecting the persons living in the midst of deprived areas. Similarly, census tracts and their populations do not exist in isolation from the neighbourhoods around them. The experience of poverty and deprivation is very much affected by its immediate and proximate contexts. Understanding these contextual relationships is critical to any meaningful discussion of the social isolation and disconnection that may come with living in a high poverty and multiply deprived tract.
Mapping Immigrant Settlement: Toronto Toronto is Canada’s primary immigrant reception centre, home to just over 2 million immigrants representing 37% of the nation’s foreign-born in 2001. The city’s three dominant immigrant source regions were southern Europe (315,400); Eastern Asia (299,860) and Southern Asia (279,415). While 61% of the city’s immigrant population arrived in Canada prior to 1991, 39% immigrated more recently. Of immigrants granted entrance to Canada in 2001 and resident in Toronto, 66% came as economic class, 25% as family class and 7.6% as refugees (CIC 2002b).
Comparing Toronto’s 1991 immigrant map with that of 2001, the effect of the overall increase in immigrant presence is clear (Figures 1 and 2). While immigrants represented about 38% of the CMA population in 1991, by 2001 that figure had risen to 44%. In both years we see a considerable number of census tracts with immigrant proportions over 45% but an explosion in 2001 of the number of tracts with percentages above 45% and 60%. While 33 tracts had immigrant proportions of 60% or greater in 1991, ten years later there were 150 (out of a possible 924). Ten tracts had rates in excess of 75%. In 1991, no tract had an immigrant proportion greater than 67%.
Three dominant immigrant settlement areas are evident in 1991: (1) a broad concentration including several contiguous tracts of very high immigrant representation in the northern part of Scarborough bordering Markham, (2) a corridor running northwest from the downtown core to the edge of Toronto’s old metropolitan boundary,2 and (3) another broad concentration of settlement in the western suburb of Mississauga
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Source: Dr. Heather Smith, Dept. of Geography and Earth Sciences, University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Cartographer Scott Whitlock, University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Data Source: Statistics Canada.
(Figure 3). Over the course of the 1990s we see that in each of these areas there has been considerable infilling as well as expansion of the concentration itself. By 2001, in all three areas very high immigrant concentrations are embedded within much broader swaths of declining immigrant presence. In the northwest and Scarborough/Markham concentrations, the greatest degree of intensification has occurred surrounding the metropolitan border (and major thoroughfare of Steeles Avenue), where the old postwar suburbs that surround the affluent and increasingly gentrified central city meet the new and outlying ones. In Mississauga the 2001 appearance of a tightly bound collection of 60% and above tracts pivots around the major intersection of Dundas and Hurontario Streets and a very eclectic mix of recently arrived immigrant groups (Teixeira 2003).
At this juncture, it is important to stress that while these maps show very extensive areas of immigrant settlement, they are not to be read as areas of single ethnic concentration. While it is true that certain clusters are strongly associated with particular immigrant and ethnic groups — that is, the Chinese in north Scarborough/Markham and Richmond Hill; Portuguese in the southern end of the northwest corridor and blacks of Caribbean descent in the northern end; South Asians in central East York and the northwest area of Etobicoke — it is not the case that these areas are the exclusive domain of any one ethnic or immigrant group. Indeed, while there is a growing tendency for “visible minorities to live with own group members
92 Concentrated Immigrant Settlement and Concentrated Neighbourhood Disadvantage in Three Canadian Cities in the same neighbourhood,” and the number of visible minority neighbourhoods is on the rise, it remains the case that levels of racial/ethnic homogeneity at the neighbourhood scale are lower still today than they were in earlier periods of high immigration from Europe (Hou 2004, 1).3 Rates also remain far below levels observed for African-Americans in the United States.
Beyond the intensification and broadening of pre-existing immigrant areas, Toronto’s 2001 maps also show the appearance of smaller-scale immigrant concentrations in the outer and newer suburban reaches of the city, albeit in locations spinning out from the areas noted above. In Brampton, Vaughan and Richmond Hill, pockets of contiguous tracts with immigrant proportions over 45% are evident.
In 1971 Toronto’s pattern of immigrant settlement was far less suburbanized than it was 30 years later (Ley and Smith 1997a). Indeed, it was not until 1991 that immigrant settlement beyond the border of Toronto’s metropolitan boundary began to clearly register. Until this time, immigrants new to the city settled in pre-existing centrally located enclaves (some found at the southern end of the northwest corridor) or in suburban pockets where an abundance of affordable housing in both public and low-rent private markets could be found (Murdie 1994, 1997).
The 1991 census captured for the first time the rapid development of immigrant concentrations of over 45% in the outer suburbs of Markham and Mississauga where recently built housing on large tracts of inexpensive land and employment associated with peripheral office parks and suburban services were found. It is important to emphasize that the suburbanization of immigrant residence in Toronto, and all Canadian cities, is a function of both the initial settlement of new arrivals and the secondary settlement of more established and affluent immigrants seeking access to home- ownership and the suburban dream. Still, the degree to which recent immigrants are located in the peripheral suburbs becomes particularly clear when we disaggregate and map by time of arrival.
Figure 4 illustrates the 2001 distribution of Toronto immigrants who arrived in Canada between 1991 and 2001. We see the most intensified settlement spread throughout the older suburb of Scarborough, and somewhat tighter concentrations in the newer suburbs of Mississauga, Richmond Hill and Markham. The pattern of recent immigrant settlement in the northwest corridor is a little more complex: new immigrants gravitated in a northerly direction (attracted in part by numerous concentrations of high-rise, high-density low-rent private sector and clusters of public housing in this area) and bypassed the more established enclaves of the south. What appears to be a preference for settlement in suburban areas most distant from the urban core diminishes somewhat when we assess the map of settlement for immigrants arriving post-1996
93 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes
Source: Dr. Heather Smith, Dept. of Geography and Earth Sciences, University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Cartographer Scott Whitlock, University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Data Source: Statistics Canada.
Source: Dr. Heather Smith, Dept. of Geography and Earth Sciences, University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Cartographer Scott Whitlock, University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Data Source: Statistics Canada.
94 Concentrated Immigrant Settlement and Concentrated Neighbourhood Disadvantage in Three Canadian Cities
(Figure 5). Focusing on those tracts with more than 45% of the immigrant population arriving between 1996 and 2001, we see that all but three tracts are located within the metropolitan boundary and embedded within Toronto’s aging suburban districts and extensive immigrant concentra- tions.
It appears, then, that the narrative of outward mobility of immigrants over time may indeed still hold. Perhaps it is simply the starting place that has changed. Rather than beginning the settlement process in central city enclaves, immigrants new to the city begin in the enclaves and/or communities of the inner ring and aging suburbs where housing is most affordable and socio-economic, ethnic and commercial transitions are occurring. From here, perhaps, as time brings more experience, language and capital, secondary moves are made in an outward direction to new and possibly more affluent suburban locations.
This research is not only about changing patterns of immigrant settlement but also about how those patterns correspond with changing levels of poverty and broader markers of deprivation. Toronto’s incidence of low income among persons was 14.6% in 1991. Reflecting the early 1990s economic downtown and its recovery in the later half of the decade, the incidence rose to 21% in 1996 but fell back to 16.7% in 2001. This overall rise in poverty across the city is starkly apparent in the two maps of low-income rates (Figures 6 and 7). In 2001 we see many more tracts with poverty rates at the high and extreme levels (over 30% and 40% respectively). We also see the intensified presence of poverty at all levels in the inner suburban areas of Scarborough and the northwestern corridor, precisely those general areas where immigrant settlement is also concentrating and expanding. In other words, there is a clear and intensifying spatial overlap between immigrant settlement areas in Toronto and areas with concentrations of high and extreme poverty.
While this research methodology does not tell us whether immigrants residing in these tracts are poverty-stricken themselves, it does tell us that regardless of their financial status they show a growing propensity for residence in neighbourhoods of high and extreme poverty — a context that has undeniable implications for all residents. Considerable research, especially in the American context, has focused on the effects of residence inhigh-povertyneighbourhoods.Beyondthecomparativelypoorqualityof infrastructure and local resources, there are also issues of weakened social networks,alackofworkingrolemodelsandagreaterdegreeofconformism in which community residents are thought to base their decisions on and emulate the behaviour of their neighbours (Wilson 1997; Galster, Metzger and Waite 1999; Halli and Kazemipur 2000; Frenette, Picot and Sceviour 2004).
95 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes
Source: Dr. Heather Smith, Dept. of Geography and Earth Sciences, University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Cartographer Scott Whitlock, University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Data Source: Statistics Canada.
Source: Dr. Heather Smith, Dept. of Geography and Earth Sciences, University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Cartographer Scott Whitlock, University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Data Source: Statistics Canada.
96 Concentrated Immigrant Settlement and Concentrated Neighbourhood Disadvantage in Three Canadian Cities
A densification of poverty over the decade is particularly apparent in Toronto’s northwest corridor where a number of tracts that had rates of poverty in the 20% and 30% range in 1991 were by 2001 registering rates in excess of 40%. Not immediately apparent is the fact that in 2001, with very few exceptions, all high and extreme poverty tracts in this corridor were also tracts with immigrant settlement in excess of 45%.
The association between poverty and immigrant settlement is less clear-cut in the eastern part of the city. Immediately noticeable is a striking and overall jump in the number of tracts that qualify as extreme, high or low poverty in the city’s eastern suburb of Scarborough. But the pattern is spatially varied, lacking extensive areas of contiguous poverty. This patchwork pattern is overlaid by an expansive and more complex pattern of immigrant settlement. In the cluster of tracts bordering north-central Scarborough and Markham, we see a very dense concentration of high immigrant settlement enveloping a scattered collection of below average to extreme poverty levels, suggesting class-based heterogeneity among immigrant and other groups resident in the area.
Before moving on to assess patterns of deprivation, it is important to emphasize again how tracts with poverty rates in excess of the CMA mean have remained largely contained within the old metropolitan core (see also United Way 2004). While immigrant settlement has clearly continued its suburbanizing trend throughout the 1990s, high and extreme poverty has remained bounded by the old metropolitan border.
Recall that this study utilizes a deprivation index that evaluates tracts in terms of the presence and level of standard markers of disadvantage: male unemployment, female lone-parent households, dependency on govern- ment transfer payments and limited educational attainment. In both 1991 and 2001 we see far fewer deprivation tracts than there are poverty tracts, reminding us that the roots of poverty are far more complex than those captured in this fourfold typology (Figures 8 and 9). Also present in both years is a remarkable tendency for deprivation to remain contained within central city and older suburban areas and to lie at the centre of much broader swaths of poverty and immigrant concentration. This, of course, parallels observed poverty and immigrant settlement patterns with concentrations of deprivation in central Scarborough and an even tighter overlap in the northwest corridor. It is in the northwest corridor especially that we see an infilling of deprivation over the decade akin to what we observe in both the poverty and immigrant maps.
This corridor is a difficult one about which to generalize in terms of the immigrant groups settling there. As noted earlier, while the southern end of the corridor is associated with some of the city’s long-established enclaves of southern European immigrants, the northern end is associated with a shifting ebb and flow of a range of immigrant groups. In the northern tip of
97 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes
Source: Dr. Heather Smith, Dept. of Geography and Earth Sciences, University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Cartographer Scott Whitlock, University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Data Source: Statistics Canada.
Source: Dr. Heather Smith, Dept. of Geography and Earth Sciences, University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Cartographer Scott Whitlock, University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Data Source: Statistics Canada.
98 Concentrated Immigrant Settlement and Concentrated Neighbourhood Disadvantage in Three Canadian Cities the corridor, the Jane-Finch intersection is the location of several high- density and high-rise public housing complexes that have long been associated with migrants coming from the Caribbean. Discussions with a housing manager in one of these complexes, however, suggested that this area is in the midst of a significant ethnic/racial transition; migrants from South Asian (particularly Bangladeshi) backgrounds are becoming more prominent (Anon., pers. comm. 2003). At the same time, this area lies adjacent to one of the city’s long-established middle-class ethnic enclaves associated with Italian-Canadians (Ray 1994).
While there is a continued and clear connection between the spatial location of immigrant settlement and poverty and deprivation in Toronto, over the 1990s there is a growing complexity in these relationships. By 2001 both poverty and deprivation remain largely contained within the borders of the former metropolitan area. On the other hand, immigrant settlement has very broadly expanded into newer suburban communities, showing concentrations of tracts with the immigrant population over 60% most notably in Markham, Richmond Hill and Mississauga. Beyond this, concentrations of very high immigrant settlement have grown to envelop a patchwork of high-to-low poverty and varied deprivation levels, especially in the city’s northeastern suburban edge. Indeed, while immigrant settle- ment, poverty and deprivation overlap in the northwest corridor, the spatial convergence of variables is far less clear in the eastern and north suburbs of Scarborough and Markham.
This finding corresponds with the work of Myles and Hou (2003), who demonstrate that Chinese migrants (by far the dominant ethnic group in the north Scarborough and Markham immigrant concentrations) display relatively low rates of residential segregation between high- and low- income families, new and established migrants and homeowners and renters. It is speculated that this is largely a function of linguistic retention and early homeownership among this group — factors that lead to the development of enduring, mixed-income, multi-generational ethnic communities that act as both new immigrant reception magnets and institutionally/commercially complete communities where co-ethnics are content to stay even as they move up the socio-economic ladder.
Mapping Immigrant Settlement: Vancouver Vancouver is Canada’s second leading immigrant reception city. It contained a 2001 total of 738,555 immigrants representing 13.6 of the nation’s total foreign-born. Eastern Asia (262,815), Southeast Asia (88,645) and Southern Asia (75, 945) predominate as immigrant source regions. Fifty-six percent of the immigrant population arrived in the country before 1991, while 44% arrived over the course of the 1990s. Of those granted entrance to Canada and resident in Vancouver in 2001, 55%
99 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes
Source: Dr. Heather Smith, Dept. of Geography and Earth Sciences, University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Cartographer Scott Whitlock, University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Data Source: Statistics Canada.
Source: Dr. Heather Smith, Dept. of Geography and Earth Sciences, University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Cartographer Scott Whitlock, University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Data Source: Statistics Canada.
100 Concentrated Immigrant Settlement and Concentrated Neighbourhood Disadvantage in Three Canadian Cities came as skilled workers, 27% as family class immigrants and 5.8% as refugees (CIC 2002b).
Compared to Toronto, the Vancouver immigrant maps (Figures 10 and 11) contain far fewer tracts with immigrant proportions over 60%. But in keeping with Toronto’s experience there has been a significant increase in the number of tracts with clear immigrant majorities. In 1991 only two tracts had immigrant proportions in excess of 60%. In 2001, there were 28 (out of a possible 386). The magnitude of proportionate immigrant increase in Vancouver actually exceeds that of Toronto. In 1991 immigrants represented 29.7% of Vancouver’s total population; in 2001, 37.5%: a growth difference of about 8% compared to Toronto’s 6%.
In 1991 there was a pronounced containment of the highest immigrant tracts (over 45%) within the eastern half of Vancouver; the lower levels were in all suburban tracts. By 2001 not only had this concentration expanded into the proximate suburbs of Richmond and Burnaby but it had also developed a tightly bounded core of tracts with proportionately dominant immigrant populations. This core captures the settlement locations of a range of immigrant and ethnic groups. In some tracts immigrants from South Asia are more numerous. In others, immigrants from Hong Kong or mainland China are more numerous.4
A significant suburban dispersal of immigrant settlement at all levels also occurred across the city by 2001. In Figure 12, we see that this is particularly evident in Richmond, where a contiguous concentration of immigrant settlement extends southwest from an extensive core of tracts in excess of 60%, straddling the Vancouver/Richmond border. Immigrants in this concentration are most commonly, though not exclusively, of Chinese descent.5
In 2001 we also see the appearance of a 60% immigrant tract in the suburb of Coquitlam; a cluster of several tracts with immigrant settlement rates closer to, or slightly above, the citywide average (37.5%) in suburban Surrey (where immigrants hail primarily from South Asia); and a small collection of 45% to 59% tracts in North Vancouver. Collectively, these indicate a clear pattern of immigrant suburbanization over the course of the 1990s. In comparing this change to Toronto, however, immigrant dispersion in Vancouver does not seem to gravitate in the same way to very distant and newer suburban locations. While there appears to be a strong immigrant presence in Abbotsford, rates of immigrant settlement in the other outer suburbs of Maple Ridge and Langley are well below the CMA average.
Immigrant suburbanization in Vancouver appears largely a function of thesettlementpatternsofimmigrantsarrivingpost-1991.Figure13showsa cleartrendonthepartofrecentimmigrantstoresideinareasattheperiphery
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Source: Dr. Heather Smith, Dept. of Geography and Earth Sciences, University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Cartographer Scott Whitlock, University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Data Source: Statistics Canada. of or distant from the centrally located and tightly bound immigrant cluster so clearly evident on the 1991 map. While tracts in the core of this cluster show recent immigrant rates of 30%–44%, tracts with higher rates are consistently found toward the cluster’s edges. In Surrey and Burnaby, concentrations of recent immigrant settlement overlay pre-existing albeit moderate proportion immigrant clusters present in 1991.
Immigrants arriving in the city between 1996 and 2001 were also drawn to the suburbs, particularly to tracts in Coquitlam, South Port Moody and Burnaby (Figure 14). In Burnaby there are two high immigrant tracts (over 60%; see Figure 11) in which more than 45% of all immigrants resident there arrived post-1996. It should be noted that the large single tract encapsulating the peninsula at the western edge of the city is the location of the University of British Columbia. This tract’s immigrant population is largely a function of the presence of foreign students who chose to reside close to the college campus.
As in Toronto, there is overlap between areas of concentrated immigrant settlementandconcentratedpoverty(Figures15and16).Thisisapparentin 1991, when the concentrated area of immigrant settlement in the city’s eastern tracts mirrors fairly closely a collection of tracts with rates of low income in the 20%–30% percent range. Overlap is most notable in the district immediately east of the downtown core where the city’s traditional
102 Concentrated Immigrant Settlement and Concentrated Neighbourhood Disadvantage in Three Canadian Cities
Source: Dr. Heather Smith, Dept. of Geography and Earth Sciences, University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Cartographer Scott Whitlock, University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Data Source: Statistics Canada.
Source: Dr. Heather Smith, Dept. of Geography and Earth Sciences, University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Cartographer Scott Whitlock, University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Data Source: Statistics Canada.
103 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes
Source: Dr. Heather Smith, Dept. of Geography and Earth Sciences, University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Cartographer Scott Whitlock, University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Data Source: Statistics Canada.
Source: Dr. Heather Smith, Dept. of Geography and Earth Sciences, University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Cartographer Scott Whitlock, University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Data Source: Statistics Canada.
104 Concentrated Immigrant Settlement and Concentrated Neighbourhood Disadvantage in Three Canadian Cities immigrant enclave (Chinatown) is enveloped by a large and contiguous area of extreme poverty.
Given that Picot and Hou (2003) found that over the 1990s rising rates of low income among immigrants in Vancouver and Toronto constituted the primary contributing factor in overall poverty increases, it is unsurprising that the spatial coincidence between these variables in both cities has continued to strengthen over the decade. As in Toronto, both poverty and immigrant settlement in Vancouver have increased,6 suburbanized, and shown an increasing tendency for overlap between 1991 and 2001. Also in keeping with the Toronto experience are new areas in Vancouver of high and extreme poverty embedded in suburban concentrations of high and geographically broader immigrant growth. This embeddedness is particu- larly apparent when we compare the 2001 Vancouver map of low income with the distribution of recent immigrant arrivals (between 1991 and 2001; Figure 13). In north Richmond, we see a contiguous group of tracts with high poverty overlapping tracts in which more than 60% of the immigrant population arrived post-1991. Areas of similar but lesser coincidence are found in north Surrey, on the border of Burnaby and Port Coquitlam and to some degree in central Burnaby running toward the central city.
Turning to compare immigrant settlement and poverty with patterns of multiple and lesser deprivation in Vancouver, we see that, as in Toronto, deprivation is far less spatially pervasive (Figures 17 and 18). There are far fewer deprived tracts in Vancouver than there are poverty tracts and far fewer deprived tracts altogether than in Toronto. The most notable change in Vancouver’s deprivation maps between 1991 and 2001 is the increase in deprivation in the city’s downtown East Side. This is an area in which, as a result of gentrification and revitalization processes, the number of extreme povertytractsdeclinedoverthe1990s.Still,thespatialcoincidenceoftracts that retained extreme poverty status over the decade, and those that rose to triple deprivation status, is exact. These changes strongly suggest the kind of impacted and centrally located deprivation that is commonly associated with American urban landscapes. Correspondence with immigrant settlement in this area is, however, largely restricted to the presence of the city’s transitional Chinatown (the tiny single tract that shows over 60% immigrants in 2001). The maps of recent immigrant settlement show that this area is not a primary destination for the recently arrived; other tracts of lesser deprivation, encircled by areas of high and extreme poverty, are.
In northern and central Surrey a swath of high-to-extreme poverty provides context for a loose collection of singly deprived tracts, all of which showimmigrantpopulationsinexcessof45%arrivingsince1991.Itshould be noted that while poverty rates of 30% and 39% characterize a concentration that corresponds with a cluster of recent immigrant settlement in north Richmond, there is no tract in this suburb qualifying as deprived on our index. A similar situation exists in Coquitlam, where a
105 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes
Source: Dr. Heather Smith, Dept. of Geography and Earth Sciences, University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Cartographer Scott Whitlock, University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Data Source: Statistics Canada.
Source: Dr. Heather Smith, Dept. of Geography and Earth Sciences, University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Cartographer Scott Whitlock, University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Data Source: Statistics Canada.
106 Concentrated Immigrant Settlement and Concentrated Neighbourhood Disadvantage in Three Canadian Cities cluster of tracts showing very high rates of recently arrived immigrants and low-income rates between 20% and 30% show no evidence in 2001 of deprivation as defined in this study. If the poverty reflected in these tracts is a function of the personal poverty of the new immigrants residing there (and this is not a given), it may well be that factors other than unemployment, lone parenthood, welfare dependence and low educational levels are responsible. Expectations for involvement in the labour force (regardless of remuneration levels), acceptable forms of household formation and family structure, and expected levels of minimal education vary between different ethnic and cultural groups. As such, a possible reason for the lack of poverty and deprivation overlap might be a shared ethnicity or cultural perspective between the newly arrived immigrants that mitigates against high levels of traditional deprivation markers.
In neither 1991 nor 2001, then, do we see in Vancouver quite the same degree of spatial overlap between immigrant settlement and patterns of deprivationandpovertyobservedinToronto.Wedo,however,seeevidence of spatial coincidence between tracts with significant concentrations of recent immigrants and high-to-extreme levels of poverty. Neighbourhood deprivation remains highly concentrated in the city’s downtown Eastside with the presence of occasional single and multiply deprived tracts popping up in the city’s outlying suburbs amid broader swaths of poverty.
Mapping Immigrant Settlement: Montreal Montreal, Canada’s third largest city, had in 2001 a foreign-born population of 621,890, representing 18.4% of its total population. In terms of national representation, Montreal’s immigrants only represented 11.4% of the nation’s total foreign-born.7 Sixty-five percent of Montreal’s immigrants arrived in Canada prior to 1991 and 35% arrived between 1991 and 2001. Given that Montreal’s immigrant profile reflects Quebec’s ability to select most of its own immigrants, dominant source regions convey the province’s preference for immigrants with French-language ability. While most of the city’s immigrant population hail from countries in southern Europe (19.1%), immigrants from the French-speaking countries of Africa and the Caribbean follow closely behind (representing 11.8% and 10.6% respectively). Of those immigrants arriving in Canada and settling in Montreal in 2001, 60.5% were economic class, 22.4% were family class, and 16.3% were refugees (CIC 2002b).
Thegeographyofimmigrantsettlementinthiscity,anditsrelationshipto both poverty and deprivation, is strikingly different from that of Toronto and Vancouver(Figures 19 and 20). The immigrant maps for 1991 and 2001 show the development trajectory of two distinct immigrant clusters: one, an extensive district of high immigrant settlement extending northwest of the downtown core, curving around Westmount, stretching to Laval and arcing south to extend into Saint-Laurent and Dorval;8 two, a cluster of lesser
107 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes
Source: Dr. Heather Smith, Dept. of Geography and Earth Sciences, University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Cartographer Scott Whitlock, University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Data Source: Statistics Canada.
Source: Dr. Heather Smith, Dept. of Geography and Earth Sciences, University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Cartographer Scott Whitlock, University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Data Source: Statistics Canada.
108 Concentrated Immigrant Settlement and Concentrated Neighbourhood Disadvantage in Three Canadian Cities
Source: Dr. Heather Smith, Dept. of Geography and Earth Sciences, University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Cartographer Scott Whitlock, University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Data Source: Statistics Canada. immigrant concentration lying more or less directly north of the centre city (Figure 21). Between 1991 and 2001 both these districts experienced accentuated immigrant settlement and spatial infill as immigrant percentages rose within and beyond borders established prior to 1991. While there has been some suburbanization of immigrant settlement over the ten years, this outward dispersal has not been as pronounced as in Toronto or even Vancouver. Montreal’s pattern is more firmly characterized by infilling and intensification of pre-existing immigrant concentrations.9
However, this changes markedly when we look at the distribution of recent immigrants (Figures 22 and 23). Those who arrived between 1991 and 2001 show a clear tendency for residence in very peripheral suburban tracts that do not have high total immigrant levels. Immigrants in these tracts are more likely to have the company of the native-born than they are fellow immigrants who arrived before 1991. The suburbanization of new immigrants in Montreal is contrasted by relative stability in the poverty pattern across the city over the 1990 decade (Figures 24 and 25). Unlike Toronto and Vancouver, Montreal shows a remarkable number of extreme and high poverty tracts in 1991 and 2001 and a general similarity in their geographic location across the decade. With the exception of poverty clusters in Longueuil and Saint-Jérôme, high and extreme poverty tracts have remained largely contained to the Island of Montreal.
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Source: Dr. Heather Smith, Dept. of Geography and Earth Sciences, University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Cartographer Scott Whitlock, University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Data Source: Statistics Canada.
Source: Dr. Heather Smith, Dept. of Geography and Earth Sciences, University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Cartographer Scott Whitlock, University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Data Source: Statistics Canada.
110 Concentrated Immigrant Settlement and Concentrated Neighbourhood Disadvantage in Three Canadian Cities
Source: Dr. Heather Smith, Dept. of Geography and Earth Sciences, University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Cartographer Scott Whitlock, University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Data Source: Statistics Canada.
Source: Dr. Heather Smith, Dept. of Geography and Earth Sciences, University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Cartographer Scott Whitlock, University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Data Source: Statistics Canada.
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And what of the spatial correspondence with immigrant settlement overall? Whereas extensive areas of immigrant settlement seem to envelop smaller areas of poverty in both the Toronto and Vancouver cases, the opposite appears to be so in Montreal. Not only does the city have more poverty tracts at high and extreme levels but also there are broad areas of poverty wholly enveloping smaller immigrant clusters. The experience of neighbourhood-based poverty in Montreal is one more commonly felt by non-immigrants.
That said, attention should be focused on the change that has occurred across the decade. In 1991, there was very little correspondence between the immigrant and poverty maps. Areas of very high and extensive poverty, such as those surrounding and immediately northeast of the downtown core, had immigrant settlement rates well below the city average. The two areas of concentrated immigrant settlement (one wedged between the areas of Saint-Laurent, Mont Royal and Westmount, and the other, of lower immigrant proportions, in Saint-Leonard) showed a varied collection of income levels with only a few tracts indicating high levels of both poverty and immigrants. By 2001, the overlap between these variables had intensifiedinbothareas.InSaint-Léonard, acorecollectionofcensustracts with immigrant rates above 45% were also tracts with rates of low income above 30%. Acorrespondence between concentrated immigrant settlement and rising poverty levels also appears in a cluster of tracts in Longueuil. Whether these intensifications are a function of the in-migration of new low-income immigrant residents or a function of the deepening poverty of residentsalreadylivingisthereislargelyunknown.Atleastonestudyseesa role played by increasing rates of out-migration on the part of affluent professionals and young families leaving the Island of Montreal in favour of the outer suburbs (Langlois and Kitchen 2001).
Turning again to the map of immigrant settlement between 1991 and 2001 (Figure 22), an even stronger association with poverty surfaces. Four areas of particularly concentrated settlement appear on the map: in the area surrounding the downtown core, in the area immediately north of the core along the St. Lawrence River, in the outlying suburb of Saint-Jérôme and embedded within the pre-existing immigrant concen- tration noted earlier around Saint-Laurent, Mont Royal and Westmount. In all cases these areas are ones in which poverty has been characteristic since 1991 and in which it has become particularly intensified over the course of the decade. In Montreal, the highest concentrations of new immigrants are found in areas of intensifying poverty. That said, these areas are not ones in which the very newest immigrants (those arriving since 1996) comprise a clear majority of the foreign population (Figure 23). The handful of tracts in which this is the case are scattered throughout the CMA, and none but those located in Saint-Jérôme register rates of poverty in excess of 29%.
112 Concentrated Immigrant Settlement and Concentrated Neighbourhood Disadvantage in Three Canadian Cities
Source: Dr. Heather Smith, Dept. of Geography and Earth Sciences, University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Cartographer Scott Whitlock, University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Data Source: Statistics Canada.
Source: Dr. Heather Smith, Dept. of Geography and Earth Sciences, University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Cartographer Scott Whitlock, University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Data Source: Statistics Canada.
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Like its map of poverty, Montreal reveals a fairly stable map of deprivation (Figures 26 and 27). While new deprivation tracts appear in the suburbs of Saint-Jérôme and Saint-Léonard, the map is remarkably stable over the 1991 to 2001 period with limited expansion and infilling in pre-existing deprivation areas. While there was virtually no overlap between immigrant settlement and deprived tracts in 1991, ten years later that correspondence can be seen quite clearly. After years of being more strongly associated with the Canadian-born, residence in Montreal neighbourhoods of poverty and deprivation is increasingly common among the foreign-born as well (Ley and Smith 2000).
Moving Beyond Cartography As a means to confirm the cartographic patterns outlined above, a set of simple regressions were run for each city to determine the extent to which immigrant settlement acted as a predictor of census tract poverty. Regressions were run for 1991, 1996 and 2001, allowing for an assessment of change over periods of both economic decline and recovery. In all years, and in all three cities, there is a clear positive (and statistically significant) relationship, suggesting that as a census tract’s immigrant population rises there is also likely to be a rise in the rate of low-income incidence. That said, there are notable variations between the three cities and significant changes in these relationships over time.
In Toronto, whereas immigrant settlement explained 28% of the variance in poverty rates in 1991, five years later it explained 45%. By 2001, the r2 had fallen to .399. Adifferent story exists for Vancouver, where a strengthening relationship exists between the two variables over the course of the 1990s. While the r2 is much lower in all years for Vancouver than for Toronto, the change between the years steadily rises from .14 in 1991 to .31 in 1996 to .33 in 2001. The predictive relationship between immigrant settlement and poverty is far less strong in Montreal than in the other two cities. This is consistent over all three years and not surprising, given the cartographic evidence. Still, as in both Toronto and Vancouver, immigrant settlement explains considerably more of the variance in census tract poverty levels in 2001 compared to five and ten years earlier. With an r2 of.07in1991,.14in1996and.20in2001,weseeatriplingofexplanatory power. In both Vancouver and Montreal the relationship between neighbourhood poverty rates and immigrant population ratios strengthened over the 1990s to a greater degree than in the nation’s largest immigrant reception centre.
With a strengthening statistical connection between poverty and immigrant settlement established for all three cities, what of the relationship between immigrants and deprivation? The cartographic analysis above has already emphasized that compared to poverty there is a lack of spatial overlap between immigrant settlement and areas of
114 Concentrated Immigrant Settlement and Concentrated Neighbourhood Disadvantage in Three Canadian Cities concentrated or multiple deprivation in all three cities. But it has also indicated that this correlation may be increasing. Understanding the evolving nature of this three-way relationship over time is especially important in the context of changing policy and economic conditions that have radically altered the cultural and economic profiles of Canadian immigrants. As the characteristics of immigrants to Canada have become less “traditional,” we might expect the immigrant experience of and response to deprivation to also become less traditional.
The variables in the fourfold deprivation index utilized in the cartographic components collectively address the most common paths to poverty and disadvantage in American and Canadian cities and, as such, in this analysis are considered traditional markers of deprivation. Female lone parenthood captures the challenges of rearing children alone and on a single income; dependence on government transfer payments reflects an inability to make ends meet through labour force engagement or other means of income generation; male unemployment captures the effects of skills mismatch in the new economic downtown and associated job loss and the challenges associated with non-engagement in the workforce; low levels of educational attainment among adults reflect an inadequacy of workplace skills in both the long and short term. Significantly above-average levels for each, or all, of thesevariablesinneighbourhoodscancreateadditionallevelsofhardshipnot just for the people directly implicated but also for the broader communities in which they live (Wilson 1987; Fong and Gulia 1999; Galster, Metzger and Waite 1999; Frenette, Picot and Sceviour 2004).
However, as noted above, as immigrants themselves have changed so too has the nature of their deprivation. What follows is an analysis of basic correlations between traditional deprivation indicators and immigrant settlement, as well as a selected set of “immigrant specific” deprivation markers. The aim is not only to understand the changing nature of association between the traditional variables and census tract concen- trationsofimmigrantsovertimebutalsotogaininsightintotheirstrengthas markers of poverty as compared to immigrant specific “disadvantages”: inability to understand/speak French or English; visible minority status; and recency of arrival. To provide for a longer view of change, data for Toronto and Vancouver are shown for each decennial census year, beginning in 1971. Montreal captures correlations for 1991 and 2001 only, given the prohibitive cost of custom data runs.10
Table 1 shows correlations of immigrant settlement against traditional deprivation indicators for each of the three cities. It is important to stress that these correlations are spatial, not individual. These statistics tell us whether concentrations of immigrants are increasingly or decreasingly likely over time to be found in census tracts that also have high levels of the deprivation markers. In Toronto and Montreal, while we see declining correlations over time between high levels of high-school incompletion in a
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census tract and immigrant settlement, we see growing correlations between unemployment, welfare dependency and low-income economic families.11 Supporting the findings of the maps, there is, in these two cities, a growing tendency for groups of immigrants to be found in areas with high rates of conventionally defined deprivation.
Table 1. Correlations of Immigrant Settlement against Deprivation Indicators: Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal CMAs, Census Tracts, 1971, 1991, 1996, 2001
Toronto Vancouver Montreal 1971 1991 1996 2001 1971 1991 1996 2001 1991 1996 2001 n=442 n=801 n=804 n=924 n=176 n=297 n=298 n=386 n=732 n=756 n=846 Indicators Lack of .43 .44 .45 .39 .14 .22 .26 .27 -.11 -.067 -.004 high-school Diploma Male unem- .38 .56 .61 .52 .53 .27 .39 .36 .26 .35 .39 ployment Government .24 .39 .53 .53 .50 .23 .26 .32 .11 .23 .34 Transfer Payments Female-led .25 .34 .44 .39 .42 .26 .21 .23 .08 .10 .19 Families Low-Income .49 .53 .70 .67 .43 .36 .62 .69 .28 .39 .46 Economic Families
Table 2. Correlations of Period of Immigrant Arrival against Deprivation Indicators: Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal CMAs, Census Tracts, 2001
1971-1981 1981-1991 1991-2001 Toronto Vancouver Montreal Toronto Vancouver Montreal Toronto Vancouver Montreal Indicators Lack of -.15 .05 -.08 .13 .37 .55 .13 .01 .08 high-school Diploma Male unem- -.24 -.08 -.28 .13 .16 .10 .56 .33 .49 ployment Government -.37 -.05 -.24 .07 .18 .09 .41 .13 .34 Transfer Payments Female-led -.23 -.11 -.26 .23 .28 .16 .48 .28 .47 Families Low-Income -.39 -.29 -.30 .20 .24 .15 .72 .64 .55 Economic Families Source: Statistics Canada profiles of census tracts for CMAs of Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal, 1971, 1981, 1991, 1996, 2001. Calculations by author.
In Vancouver, the reverse is true. Correlations between high-school incompletion and low-income families are consistently on the rise, while correlations between unemployment, government transfer payments and female-led families are weakening. Again, this corresponds with the cartographic analysis. Recall that while poverty and immigrant settlement were more likely to overlap in more places in Vancouver in 2001 than in
116 Concentrated Immigrant Settlement and Concentrated Neighbourhood Disadvantage in Three Canadian Cities
1991, the coincidence of both variables with the deprivation index was far from automatic. The changing degree to which high levels of immigrant settlement correlate with high poverty levels in the three cities is also instructive in emphasizing the distinction of the Vancouver case. Over 1991to2001,whileToronto’scorrelationroseby.14pointsandMontreal’s by .18, Vancouver’s rose by .33.
Table 2 assesses correlations of period of immigrant arrival against deprivation indicators. The first thing to point out is the clear overall trajectory in all three cities of upward mobility (decreasing correlations with deprivation) with increased time spent in Canada. In fact, measuring twenty years of residence in the country, in all cities and with all indicators, correlations show negative relationships. Over time, concentrated immigrant settlement shows a decreasing likelihood to overlap with high levels of conventional deprivation markers. In Toronto and Montreal significant drops in correlations are made after just ten years. Again, the story in Vancouveris a little more complicated. While correlations between high immigrant settlement and concentrations of unemployment and low income fall precipitously after ten years in Canada, correlations with government transfer dependence does not. In Vancouver, concentrations of immigrantswhohavebeeninthecountrytentotwentyyearsaremorelikely to reside in census tracts with high levels of welfare dependence than are immigrants who have been in the country ten years or less. To some degree this might be explained by Picot and Hou’s (2003) finding that while immigrants arriving in Canadian cities between 1991 and 2001 initially showed the greatest depth and incidence of poverty, in comparison to the immigrant cohort ten years ahead of them they also showed faster rates of movement out of low-income status.
One of the central findings of the initial study upon which this research builds (Ley and Smith 1997a, 2000) was that in terms of their association with poverty, immigrant indicators of deprivation fell quite short of traditional indicators. In other words, concentrations of unemployment, lone-parent families, government transfer dependence and high-school incompletion were consistently stronger predictors of high poverty tracts than were concentrations of immigrants. This result contributed in no small parttoourargumentthatanAmerican-styleimmigrant“underclass”didnot exist in Canadian cities at that time (1991). Ten years later things have changed.
Tables 3 and 4 compare the correlations of incidence of low income for persons in private households against both traditional and immigrant specific deprivation markers for both 1991 and 2001.While there is much more that could be said about these tables, four key points stand out in terms of their direct relevance to this study. First, in 2001, in all three cities, high percentagesofimmigrantsettlementwerefarmorestronglycorrelatedwith poverty concentration compared to 1991. At .63 for Toronto, .58 for
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Vancouver and .45 for Montreal, these levels approach the scores of the strongest traditional deprivation indicators of welfare dependency and male unemployment (hovering in the .70 range).
Table 3. Correlations of Incidence of Low Income (Persons, Private Households) against Traditional Deprivation Indicators and Immigrant Specific Deprivation Indicators: Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal CMAs, Census Tracts, 2001
Toronto Vancouver Montreal n=924 n=386 n=846 Traditional Indicators Lack of high-school Diploma .45 .42 .47 Male unemployment .67 .73 .75 Government Transfer Payments .76 .71 .78 Female-led Families .76 .55 .74
Immigrant Specific Indicators Percent Immigrant .63 .58 .45 Immigrant Arrival 1981–1990 .16 .17 .16 Immigrant Arrival 1991–2001 .70 .57 .61 Immigrant Arrival 1991–1995 .54 .39 .35 Immigrant Arrival 1996–2001 .66 .53 .55 No Knowledge of French/English .52 .60 .45 Visible Minority .60 .53 .59
Table 4. Correlations of Incidence of Low Income (Persons, Private Households) against Traditional Deprivation Indicators and Immigrant Specific Deprivation Indicators: Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal CMAs, Census Tracts, 1991
Toronto Vancouver Montreal n=798 n=298 n=736 Traditional Indicators Lack of high-school Diploma .47 .35 .54 Male unemployment .74 .85 .79 Government Transfer Payments .76 .77 .82 Female-led Families .84 .69 .79
Immigrant Specific Indicators Percent Immigrant .53 .37 .24 Immigrant Arrival 1971–1980 .10 .02 .004 Immigrant Arrival 1981–1990 .61 .45 .61 No Knowledge of French/English .58 .42 .45 Source: Statistics Canada profiles of census tracts for CMAs of Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal, 1971, 1981, 1991, 1996, 2001. Calculations by author.
Second, as immigrant correlations between immigrant specific markers and poverty rose between 1991 and 2001 in Toronto and Montreal, correlations between poverty and traditional markers fell. In Montreal, for example, while the correlation between government transfer dependency and poverty concentration was .82 in 1991, by 2001 it had fallen to .78. This
118 Concentrated Immigrant Settlement and Concentrated Neighbourhood Disadvantage in Three Canadian Cities is a small difference to be sure, but the fact that this change is occurring while immigrant specific associations with poverty are rising is worthy of attention and further research.
Third, in 2001 Toronto and Montreal correlations between recent immigrants (arriving between 1991 and 2001) and poverty are notably stronger than those for immigrants in general. In fact, in Toronto they exceed male unemployment’s correlation in the same year. In Vancouver, the correlations between immigrants in total, immigrants arriving between 1991 and 2001 and immigrants arriving between 1996 and 2001 are very closely matched, indicating that recent immigrants are no more likely to be concentrated in high poverty areas than immigrants overall. In Montreal, correlations between recent immigrants and poverty concentrations in both years were identical, showing no increase over time.
Fourth, a considerable array of research highlights visible minority status and inability to speak either French or English as two key barriers for immigrants as they seek social and spatial mobility. These two variables were added to the correlation matrix as a way to further test the comparative association of traditional versus immigrant specific deprivations with poverty. As Table 3 illustrates, in all three cities the variables show high correlations with poverty. In 2001, census tracts with high proportions of visible minority residents or persons lacking knowledge of the country’s two official languages were likely also to be tracts with high levels of poverty.
Discussion and Directions for Further Research This research has outlined a growing complexity in the relationship between Canadian immigrants, poverty and deprivation over the course of the 1990s, a decade over which both economic slowdown and recovery were accompanied by high rates of immigration and continued changes in the ethnic and entry class profiles of immigrants themselves. Compared to previous studies examining these relationships between 1971 and 1991 (Ley and Smith 1997a, 2000), the research suggests a convergence between the trajectories of Canada’s three largest immigrant reception centres as they relate to the intersection between immigrant settlement, poverty levels and markers of traditional neighbourhood disadvantage. In all cities, concentrations of immigrants more commonly overlap with concentrations of poverty and traditional deprivation in 2001 than they did a decade earlier. There is also evidence that immigrant specific markers of deprivation have strengthened their association with poverty at the same time that traditional ones have declined.
Despite these commonalities, this study points to the distinctiveness of each city’s individual experience. Cartographic and statistical evidence for Toronto suggest a deepening relationship between poverty and immigrant
119 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes status and conventional indicators of deprivation. Beyond this, we see concentrations of high immigration growing to envelop a tapestry of census tracts with varied income levels. Even where the ethnicity of an immigrant group is fairly homogenous, the socio-economic status is highly diverse. This is most certainly the case in Toronto’s north Scarborough/Markham immigrant ethnic cluster, where Canadian and foreign-born Chinese are creating a flourishing and expanding suburban enclave in which all classes and associated opportunities and amenities are present. There is a tendency to assume that concentrated immigrant or ethnic settlement correlates to a significantdegreewithdisadvantage,measuredeconomicallyorsociallyin terms of isolation and lack of mainstream integration. But as Wang (1999, 33) emphasizes in a study of Chinese commercial activity in the city, what is unfolding in Toronto’s northeastern suburbs is not a function of blocked mobility: Nowadays, Chinese commercial activities go far beyond merely providing low-order goods and primary services; they have expanded to include high-order goods … and sophisticated services requiring high job skills (such as business, medical, and legal services). They have also expanded to include the preserving and fostering of the Chinese culture — functions that Chinese bookstores, records/video stores, and theatres perform. As more and more goods and services required by the Chinese are provided by their co-ethnics, the Chinese community has been moving towards higher levels of institutional completeness. The development of multiple and institutionally complete Chinatowns across the suburban landscape of Toronto is, however, only one of the stories that help illuminate the patterns and relationships evolving between immigrant settlement, poverty and deprivation in this city. In the northwest corridor, expanding and deepening overlays between deprivation and immigrant settlement belie a complicated pattern of ethnicity, race, class and immigrant status that includes the original enclave areas of the city’s Italian and Portuguese communities but also several scattered concentrations of high-density, aging public housing and the very poor visible minority and recent immigrants who live within them (Murdie and Teixeira 2002).
For Vancouver, cartographic evidence indicates a growing but uneven relationship between immigrant settlement areas and traditional deprivation markers. While there is isolated overlap between a handful of single and doubly deprived tracts in suburban Surrey, Burnaby and the eastern side of the Vancouver, in locations where poverty rates have emerged as the most extreme, and overlap with deepening concentrations of immigrants occurs, deprivation (at least as measured here) is absent.
Statistical evidence, on the other hand, unequivocally indicates a relationship between poverty and immigrant status that appears to be
120 Concentrated Immigrant Settlement and Concentrated Neighbourhood Disadvantage in Three Canadian Cities strengthening to a greater degree than in Toronto. This paper has already speculated that the cultural practices of particular immigrant groups may help explain these patterns (i.e., lone parenthood as taboo, high-school incompletion as discouraged), but another explanation may be found in the fact that many immigrant families combine their financial resources to ensure a higher level of household income. Ley (1999, 11) points out: There is too ready a tendency to see those who arrive in Canada poor and with limited capital as passive and dependent. The truth may well be the opposite, for the many hands in a family seek, and in most cases find, employment of virtually any sort. The result is that while personal earning may be low, overall household income may be surprisingly higher. The use of individual rather than household poverty measures may obscure strategies that allow poor immigrants to avoid residence in deprived neighbourhoods, a strategy that if widely used may well help explain the spatial disconnect between deprivation, poverty and immigrant settlement in Vancouver. That some of the tracts in Vancouver with the highest immigrant and poverty levels are also tracts with the highest rates of homeownership indicates another possible reason for this disconnect. Immigrants here may be “cash poor” but “house rich” (Hiebert 2000). Clearly, sorting out the explanatory mechanisms for different parts of the city should be an important aim for any future research that flows from this study.
In Montreal the trajectory of change is also increasingly complex and distinct from the experiences of Toronto and Vancouver. Here, although the predictive relationship between immigrant settlement and poverty is increasing — as is the concentration of immigrants in multiply deprived tracts — economic and broader measures of neighbourhood disadvantage are still far more strongly associated with persons born in Canada. That said, statistical associations between concentrated immigrant settlement and neighbourhood-based disadvantage are increasing and areas of broadening and deepening disadvantage over the decade also tend to be ones with growing immigrant populations. Bauder and Sharpe (2002) offer insight into why these particular areas are found on the Island of Montreal rather than in outlying suburban locations. They argue that the comparatively low incomes of immigrants restrict their housing choices to apartments rather than more expensive single-family homes. In Montreal, while detached housing is predominantly found in the newer and more outlying suburbs, both low-rise and high-density multi-family housing is largely contained to the city centre and adjacent older suburbs. The geography of housing then plays a critical role in the neighbourhood choices of immigrant groups and explains in no small part why immigrant settlement in Montreal has suburbanized to a lesser degree over the decade than in Toronto and Vancouver.
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The location of affordable housing and its role in shaping immigrant and poverty maps is not restricted to Montreal. Ley and Smith (1997a, 1997b) found that in 1991 in both Vancouverand Toronto, census tracts with higher than average immigrant proportions were also often tracts with clusters of publicly assisted and/or private sector low-income housing (see also Murdie 1994, 1998). Given the extent to which the spatial pattern of immigrant settlement, poverty and deprivation have all shifted since then, and the lack of new social housing built in these cities over the same amount of time, a critical issue for future analysis is affordable housing and the extent to which diminishing access and location translate into the development of alternative housing and coping strategies on the part of immigrant residents themselves or an exacerbation of the deprivation experience altogether.
Research also needs to the address the ways in which immigrant concentration, and immigrant response to that concentration, offsets the disadvantages of residence in extreme poverty neighbourhoods with overlapping disadvantage. Do the networks developed, the support given, theculturalexpectationsmadeinethnicenclaves,overridetheinfluencesof a neighbourhood’s socio-economic comparative disadvantage? While “growing up in poor neighbourhoods is not good for one’s socio-economic health …” Borjas (1999, 168) cautions that “ethnic capital might still matter, above and beyond neighbourhood effects, if contacts within an ethnic group in a particular neighbourhood are more frequent or more influential than contacts across ethnic groups in that neighbourhood.” At what scale, though, does concentration need to occur to have this effect? Site visits to Toronto census tracts with high immigrant, poverty and deprivation concentration revealed a frequent and overlooked micro- geography. In the city’s northwestern corridor, for example, within a single census tract, several large-scale, high-density, housing complexes were located. In one complex, immigrant residents were primarily of South Asian descent; directly across the street was a public housing community in which the resident immigrant population was largely Caribbean. On an even finer scale of analysis, in a single public housing complex with three buildings, one building had a clear concentration of Somalis. Why this building and not the other two? Is it steering? Self-selection? And to what extent does same-group concentration at this microscale offset the pressures of living in highly deprived and poverty-stricken neigh- bourhoods? To what extent does it foster seclusion and decreased contact with community neighbours of different citizenship and cultural backgrounds? How do these microgeographies affect the experience of poverty and deprivation for both groups and immigrant individuals?
At the centre of this research is the recognition that neighbourhood- based disadvantage cannot be understood without addressing both poverty and broader measures of deprivation. But are the measures used in this
122 Concentrated Immigrant Settlement and Concentrated Neighbourhood Disadvantage in Three Canadian Cities study truly appropriate to the immigrant experience? Even though statistical correlations between tracts with high proportions of immigrants and high levels of traditional markers increased over the years in both Toronto and Montreal, those in Vancouver did not. It may well be that for particular immigrant groups, lone parenthood, unemployment, low education and welfare dependency are not germane to the ways in which disadvantage is caused, experienced and manifested in the communities in which they live. An example can be taken from Portuguese, Greek and Italian immigrants in Toronto. These groups have among the lowest education levels of all immigrants in the city, yet they also have “higher income and a lower incidence of poverty than many better educated groups. In part, this reflects the occupational niches they have found, and, especially for the Italians and Greeks, a peak period of immigration some time in the past” (Ornstein 2000, 126). In addition, as already mentioned in this paper, high levels of education among immigrants do not necessarily translate into salaries that place individuals and their families above the poverty line (Statistics Canada 2004). The same, of course, is true for employment.
Reconfiguring the deprivation index as used in this and previous studies is a central aim of the next phase of this research. In addition to language ability,12 recency of arrival and visible minority status, family structure, place of birth, degree of household overcrowding, housing tenure and type (public versus private sector), service availability and accessibility, and degrees of spatial isolation are among the variables that will be assessed as we move toward the necessary work of re-evaluating the meaning and measurementofimmigrant-baseddeprivationattheneighbourhoodscale.
It is also important to disaggregate the immigrant group itself. How exactly does the experience of neighbourhood-based disadvantage differ between distinct immigrant groups? While this study has emphasized that associations between neighbourhood poverty and deprivation are strongest among recently arrived immigrants, in each city greater specificity should be sought by disaggregating further. Ethnicity, place of birth, visible minoritystatusandfamilystructurearevariablesoffocusforfuturework.
While this paper has focused on comparisons across Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal, its findings have relevance beyond the triad of cities examined. The need to reconsider the ways in which we measure and assess immigrant poverty and disadvantage applies to the United States and other Western immigrant receiving nations as well. Far too often the immigrant experience of disadvantage has been uncritically intertwined with the underclass narrative (Waldinger 2001). While it may be true that “we are on the brink of fundamental changes in the social fabric of America’s urban immigrant regions, approaching a point at which inner city black poverty may be replicated by a new pattern of foreign-born poverty” we need to think carefully and cautiously about the unique ways in which immigrants
123 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes come into and become trapped by deprivation and how that differs from the experience and trajectory of African-Americans (Clark 2001, 183).
Afinal lesson to be taken from this work must be the recognition that the relationship between poverty, immigrant settlement and neighbourhood deprivation is spatially contingent at multiple scales of analysis. Researchers have long touted the myth of the North American city and this research has demonstrated the importance of comparing and contrasting experiences between individual cities in the Canadian context alone. But it goes beyond this. In the same way that it seems no longer possible to describe a singular Canadian experience, it also seems ill-advised to describe a quintessentially inner city or suburban one. The experience of poor immigrants embedded and potentially isolated in the affluent suburbs of northeastern Toronto is likely to differ significantly from the experience of poor immigrants concentrated in the high-density public housing complexes in the northwestern suburban reaches of the city. Researchers, Canadian and American alike, need to avoid generalizing about the relationship between immigrants and concentrated disadvantage and instead explore the subtle and not-so-subtle ways the dynamic differs both temporally and spatially across national, inter-urban, intra-urban and neighbourhood levels.
Of course, this will require moving beyond the comfort zone of census tract analysis and thus taking the research to immigrants and neighbourhoods themselves. It is only through qualitative assessment that we are likely to understand what makes immigrant poverty and neighbourhood deprivation unique from that experienced by the Canadian- born and distinctive among different immigrant groups. Perhaps most important, it is only through asking immigrants about the experience and negotiation of a poor life in a disadvantaged neighbourhood that we will be able to address the often mentioned, but poorly understood, experiences of social isolation and entrenchment associated with blocked mobility and the evolution of underclass populations and neighbourhoods.
Notes * This research was generously funded through the Canadian Embassy Research Grant Program, 2002–2003. The additional support of the Vancouver Centre of Excellence for Research on Immigration and Integration in the Metropolis (RIIM) is gratefully acknowledged, as is the assistance of the Toronto Centre of Excellence for Research on Immigration and Settlement (CERIS) and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte Junior Faculty Grant Program. An earlier version of this paper is available through RIIM as Working Paper No. 04-20. 1. Virtually all tracts that qualified on one or more of the deprivation indicators (two times CMA mean) had incidences of poverty 20% or more and, as such, qualified as “deprived.”
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2. On 1 January 1998, the six local municipalities of Metropolitan Toronto: York, East York, Etobicoke, Scarborough, North York, and Toronto were amalgamated into the new City of Toronto. The City of Toronto is the urban core of the Toronto Census Metropolitan Area. 3. In his study, Hou (2004) defines minority neighbourhoods as census tracts with over 30% of the population coming from any single visible minority group. 4. See Hiebert (1998) for an extensive and highly detailed study of Vancouver’s changing social geography. 5. This refers to Hong Kong, Taiwan, and mainland Chinese. 6. In 1991 the Incidence of Low Income Persons for the Vancouver CMA was 17.4. By 2001, it rose to about 20.4. 7. Across the range of Canadian CMAs, Montreal ranked tenth in 2001 in terms of the proportion of its population that was foreign-born. CMAs such as Hamilton and Abbotsford ranked higher, with immigrant population proportions of 37.5% and 21.8% respectively. Also ranking above Montreal were the CMAs of Windsor, Kitchener, Calgary, London and Victoria (Statistics Canada 2001). 8. This arc of immigrant settlement includes, among others, the communities of Côte-des-Neiges, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce and Côte-Saint-Luc. 9. Montreal’s Atlas of Immigration (Archambault et al. 2003) shows associations between these concentrations and particular immigrant groups. In the core of the northwest area extended out from the city centre, tracts show location quotients highest for immigrants of northern and western European origin (with the exception of the United Kingdom). Overlapping and extending northeast to the southern shore of Laval and over the river to Saint-Laurent, location quotients show concentrations of Algerian, Egyptian, Libyan, Moroccan and Tunisian immigrants. In the area of concentrated immigrant settlement lying north of the centre city, immigrants from Central and South America are more prominent, while those from the Caribbean and Bermuda are most notably concentrated in a line of tracts running along the northeastern edge of the Island of Montreal, across from Laval. In Longueuil, Southeast Asian immigrants reveal a measure of concentration. 10. 1971 data for Toronto and Vancouver were custom tabulated by Statistics Canada for Ley and Smith (1997a). 11. In contrast to the mapping analysis, Tables 1 and 2 use incidence of low income among economic families rather than incidence per person to allow for comparison with 1971 data. 12. The importance of language is illustrated particularly well by Truelove (2000, 144) who, although focusing her research on service provision, makes the often overlooked point that “having a residential location near an agency that offers a service … does not necessarily mean that the new immigrant can access that service. There are various barriers to use of a service … if one does not speak English and the service is not offered in one’s language, then the service cannot be accessed.”
Works Cited Archambault, Julie, Brian Ray, Damaris Rose and Anne-Marie Seguin (2003) Atlas of Immigration: Immigration et métropoles. INRS-Urbanisation, McGill University, Department of Geography, Montreal, available online at http://atlasimmigration.inrs-ucs.uquebec.ca. Bauder, Harald and Bob Sharpe (2002) “Residential Segregation of Visible Minorities in Canada’s Gateway Cities,” Canadian Geographer 46:3, 204–222.
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Borjas, George J. (1999) Heaven’s Door: Immigration Policy and the American Economy, Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press. ——— (2003) “Welfare Reform and Immigrant Participation in Welfare Programs,” in Jeffrey G. Reitz (ed.) Host Societies and the Reception of Immigrants, San Diego: Centre for Comparative Immigration Studies, University of California, chap. 11. Bourne, Larry S. and Damaris Rose (2001) “The Changing Face of Canada: The Uneven Geographies of Population and Social Change,” Canadian Geographer 45:1, 105–119. CIC (Citizenship and Immigration Canada) (2002b) Immigration by Level: Facts and Figures 2001; Immigration Overview, Citizenship and Immigration Canada, Ottawa, available online at http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/pub/facts2001/1imm- 03.html. ——— (2002a) Immigration by Source Area and Top Ten Source Countries: Facts and Figures 2001; Immigration Overview, Citizenship and Immigration Canada, Ottawa, available online at http://www.cic.gc.ca/english /pub/facts2001/1imm- 03.html. Clark, William A.V. (2001) “The Geography of Immigrant Poverty: Selective Evidence of and Immigrant Underclass,” in Roger Waldinger (ed.) Strangers at the Gates: New Immigrants in Urban America, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, chap. 5. ——— (2003) Immigrants and the American Dream: Remaking the Middle Class, New York: Guildford Press. Fong, Eric and Milena Gulia (1999) “Differences in Neighbourhood Qualities among Racial and Ethnic Groups in Canada,” Sociological Inquiry 69:4, 575–98. Frenette, Marc, Garnett Picot and Roger Sceviour (2004) “How Long Do People Live in Low-Income Neighbourhoods? Evidence for Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver,” Analytical Studies Branch research paper series, 11F0019MIE No. 216, Business and Labour Market Analysis Division, Statistics Canada, Ottawa. Frey, William H. (2001) Melting Pot Suburbs: A Census 2000 Study of Suburban Diversity, Washington, DC: Brookings Greater Washington Research Program, Brookings Institution Centre on Urban and Metropolitan Policy. Galster, George, Kurt Metzger and Ruth Waite (1999) “Neighbourhood Opportunity Structures and Immigrants’ Socioeconomic Advancement,” Journal of Housing Research 10:1, 95–127. Greene, Richard P. (1995) “Chicago’s New Immigrants, Indigenous Poor, and Edge Cities,” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 551: 178–90. Halli, Shiva and Abdolmohammad Kazemipur (2000) “Neighbourhood Poverty in Canadian Cities,” Canadian Journal of Sociology 25:3, 369–81. Hiebert, Daniel (1998) “The Changing Social Geography of Immigrant Settlement in Vancouver,” Working Paper No. 98–16, Vancouver Centre for Excellence: Research for Immigration and Integration in the Metropolis, Vancouver. ——— (2000) “Immigration and the Changing Canadian City,” Canadian Geographer 44:1, 25–43. Hiebert, Daniel and David Ley (2003) “Assimilation, Cultural Pluralism, and Social Exclusion among Ethnocultural Groups in Vancouver,” Urban Geography, 24:1, 16–44. Hou, Feng (2004) “Recent Immigration and the Formation of Visible Minority Neighbourhoods in Canada’s Largest Cities,” Analytical Studies Branch research paper series, 11F0019MIE No. 221, Business and Labour Market Analysis Division, Statistics Canada, Ottawa. Kazemipur, Abdolmohammad and Shiva Halli (2001) “Immigrants and ‘New Poverty’: The Case of Canada,” International Migration Review 35:4, 1129–56. ——— (2000a) “The Invisible Barrier: Neighbourhood Poverty and Integration of Immigrants in Canada,” Journal of International Migration and Integration 1:1, 85–100. ——— (2000b) The New Poverty in Canada: Ethnic Groups and Ghetto Neighbourhoods, Toronto: Thompson Educational Publishing.
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——— (1997) “Plight of Immigrants: The Spatial Concentration of Poverty in Canada,” Canadian Journal of Regional Science XX: 11–28. Knowles, Valerie (2000) Forging Our Legacy: Canadian Citizenship and Immigration, 1900–1977, Ottawa: Citizenship and Immigration Canada. Langlois, Andre and Peter Kitchen (2001) “Identifying and Measuring Dimensions of Urban Deprivation in Montreal: An Analysis of the 1996 Census Data,” Urban Studies 38:1, 119–39. Ley, David (1999) “Myths and Meanings of Immigration and the Metropolis,” Canadian Geographer 43:1, 2–19. Ley, David and Daniel Hiebert (2001) “Immigration Policy as Population Policy,” Canadian Geographer 45:1, 120–25. Ley, David and Heather Smith (1997b) “Immigration and Poverty in Canadian Cities, 1971–1991,” Canadian Journal of Regional Science 30: 29–48. ——— (1997a) “Is there an Immigrant “Underclass” in Canadian Cities?” Working Paper No. 97–08, Vancouver Centre for Excellence: Research for Immigration and Integration in the Metropolis, Vancouver. ——— (2000) “Relations between Deprivation and Immigrant Groups in Large Canadian Cities,” Urban Studies 37:1, 37–62. Muller, Peter O. (1997) “The Suburban Transformation of the Globalizing American City,” Annals of the Academy of Political and Social Sciences 551: 44–58. Murdie, Robert A. (1994) “Blacks in Near Ghettos? Black Visible Minority Populations in Metropolitan Toronto Housing Authority Public Housing Units,” Housing Studies 9: 435–57. ——— (1998) “The Welfare State, Economic Restructuring and Immigrant Flows: Impacts on Sociospatial Segregation in Greater Toronto,” in Sako Musterd and Wim Ostendorf (eds.) Urban Segregation and the Welfare State: Inequality and Exclusion in Western Cities, New York and London: Routledge, chap. 6. Murdie, Robert A. and Carlos Teixeira (2002) “Towards a Comfortable Neighbour- hood and Appropriate Housing: Immigrant Experience in Toronto,” CERIS Working Paper No. 10, Toronto Centre of Excellence for Research on Immi- gration and Settlement, Toronto, available online at http://ceris.metropolis.net. Myles, John and Feng Hou (2003) “Neighbourhood Attainment and Residential Segregation among Toronto’s Visible Minorities,” Analytical Studies Branch research paper series, 11F0019MIE No. 206, Business and Labour Market Analysis Division, Statistics Canada, Ottawa. Ornstein, Michael (2000) Ethno-Racial Inequality in the City of Toronto: An Analysis of the 1996 Census, report prepared for the Access and Equity Unit, Strategic and Corporate Policy Division, Chief Administrator’s Office, City of Toronto. Pendaker, Krishna and Ravi Pendaker (1996) “The Colour of Money,” Working Paper No. 96-03, Vancouver Centre for Excellence: Research for Immigration and Integration in the Metropolis, Vancouver. Phelan, Thomas, J. and Mark Schneider (1996) “Race, Ethnicity, and Class in American Suburbs,” Urban Affairs Review 31:5, 659–80. Picot, Garnett and Feng Hou (2003) “The Rise in Low-Income Rates among Immigrants in Canada,” Analytical Studies Branch research paper series, 11F0019MIE No.198, Business and Labour Market Analysis Division, Statistics Canada, Ottawa. Portes, Alejandro and Ruben G. Rumbaut (1996) Immigrant America, 2nd ed., Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Ray, Brian (1994) “Immigrant Settlement and Housing in Metropolitan Toronto,” Canadian Geographer 38:3, 262–65. Reitz, J. (2001) “Immigrant Skill Utilization in the Canadian Labour Market: Implications of Human Capital Research,” Journal of International Migration and Integration 2:3, 347–78. Ricketts, E. and I. Sawhill (1988) “Defining and Measuring the Underclass,” Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 7:2, 316–25. Statistics Canada (2004) “Study: Immigrants Settling for Less?” The Daily, Wednesday 23 June 2004, Statistics Canada, Ottawa, available online at http://www.statcan.ca/Daily/English/040623/d040623e.html.
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Teixeira, Carlos (2003) Personal interview and site visit tour conducted with author, August, 2003. Truelove, Marie (2000) “Services for Immigrant Women: An Evaluation of Locations,” Canadian Geographer, 44:2, 135–51. United Way (2004) Poverty by Postal Code: The Geography of Neighbourhood Poverty, City of Toronto, 1981–2001, report prepared jointly by United Way of Greater Toronto and the Canadian Council on Social Development, Toronto. Waldinger, Roger (2001) “Conclusion: Immigration and the Remaking of Urban America,” in Strangers at the Gates: New Immigrants in Urban America, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, chap. 9. Wang, Shuguang (1999) “Chinese Commercial Activity in the Toronto CMA: New Development Patterns and Impacts,” Canadian Geographer, 43:1, 19–35. Wilson, William Julius (1987) The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, The ‘Underclass’ and Public Policy, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
128 Janusz Przychodzen et Vijaya Rao
Écrire l’Inde au Québec : Mythes et réalités de l’Ailleurs
Suivi de la Table ronde : Écrire l’Inde au Québec
Résumé L’article est une présentation critique de la table ronde « Écrire l’Inde au Québec » (2004). Après avoir mis en valeur le fait que la construction de l’identité moderne au Québec se fait régulièrement en rapport avec la donnée orientale, ses auteurs se penchent sur la question de l’influence de la pensée moderne dans la représentation québécoise de l’Inde. Ainsi, l’image de l’Inde qui ressort des propos des écrivains, et qui se caractérise par « la dimension temporelle hors le temps », expression à la fois d’un choc culturel et d’une fuite vers le mythe, lieu exceptionnel de l’écriture, se complète étonnement et paradoxalement par la présence d’une conscience plus contemporaine, cause même d’un syncrétisme identitaire.
Abstract This article is a critical review of the proceedings of the round table “Écrire l’Inde au Québec” (2004). After having submitted that the construction of the modern identity in Quebec takes place normally in conjunction with the oriental fact, the authors address the issue of the influence of modern thought on the manner in which Quebeckers represent India. Thus, the image of India that emerges from the observations of the writers, one that is characterized by the “temporal dimension outside of time,” which is at once a reflection of cultural shock and of escape into myth, that little grotto of writers, culminates astonishingly and paradoxically in the emergence of a more contemporary awareness, indeed one that is at the very root of identitary syncretism.
À chacun son Inde, dit-on en raison de la richesse extraordinaire de l’histoire et de la culture du pays, de la complexité et de la variété de sa société, mais aussi en raison de sa différence souvent difficile à approcher. Comment et dans quelle mesure peut-on s’inspirer de cette civilisation en tant qu’écrivain, poète ou romancier? Quel rôle y jouent l’expérience directe et l’imagination? Quels sont les obstacles et les solutions qu’un homme ou une femme de plume rencontre en prenant le chemin d’un dialogue interculturel? Quelle est, finalement, la place qu’y occupent la mythologie, la philosophie, la religion et la société moderne?
International Journal of Canadian Studies / Revue internationale d’études canadiennes 31, 2005 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes
Sansquel’onensoittoutàfaitconscientencoreaujourd’hui,l’histoirede la littérature québécoise moderne a été marquée dès le début par l’image de l’Orient. Il suffit de penser seulement à Bengalis d’Arthur de Bussières ou au Paon d’émail de Paul Morin, même si ces visions du début du XXe siècle, rêvées, ont plus à voir avec la spécificité de la culture locale qu’avec les cultures et les sociétés asiatiques proprement dites. L’orientalisme québécois se révèle également influencé par une mode de la littérature française,fortementattiréeàcetteépoqueparlespaysetlesculturesd’Asie. Il n’en reste pas moins que la modernité et l’Orient se chevauchent régulièrement au cours de l’histoire de la littérature québécoise. Ainsi, le conflit entre les régionalistes et les exotiques, tels que de Bussières et Morin, donne naissance à un phénomène récurrent, dont la logique de la modernisation de la littérature par l’orientalisation de celle-ci1 marquera plusieurs étapes et aspects décisifs de l’évolution de la culture au Québec. L’Orient, par-delà son exotisme, semble en fait jouer dans ce contexte le rôle d’un catalyseur qui provoque la remise en question de la tradition et l’élargissement des frontières de la perception du soi et de l’autre.
Est-ce d’ailleurs le fruit du hasard si le premier recueil important de poésie moderne, celui d’Alain Grandbois, a été publié à Hankou en Chine? Comment expliquer également le fait que l’un des plus importants manifestes québécois, Refus global, signé par Borduas et les automatistes au lendemain de la Seconde Guerre mondiale pour s’opposer, à l’instar des surréalistes français, à la déchéance morale de la civilisation occidentale, s’en rapporte en contrepartie à l’Orient, comme le suggère déjà le titre de la couverture écrit à l’orientale, de manière verticale, et comme le confirme le système de valeurs dont le texte fait l’apologie : spontanéité, magie, sensibilité? « N’y aurait-il pas deux formes de l’amour, l’une occidentale qui isole l’objet aimé dans une forteresse, l’autre orientale où l’objet de l’amour est l’occasion de mieux sentir l’univers? », s’est demandé Borduas lui-même dans une de ses lettres à Noël Lajoie2.
Est-il alors vraiment étonnant que dans les années 80, au moment même où la littérature et la société québécoises connaissaient un autre virage identitaire et s’ouvraient à des écrivains d’origines ethniques, l’apparition d’artistes asiatiques tels que Ying Chen, Aki Shimazaki et Ook Chung ait été reçue avec une attention particulière par la critique et le public? Il serait alors utile d’explorer en profondeur la place de l’esthétique moderniste dans l’écriture qu’ont pratiquée ces nouveaux venus, comme les autres écrivains dits migrants.
Dans tout ce dialogue interculturel, quelle est la place exacte qu’occupe l’Inde? Quel est le rôle que joue l’héritage moderne dans l’imaginaire ori- entaliste, dans la représentation d’un pays oriental? La rencontre de quatre écrivainsautourduthème«Écrirel’IndeauQuébec»organiséeen2004àla Maison des écrivains québécois (et dont la transcription suit la présentation que voici) a permis de constater qu’aujourd’hui, indépendamment de la
130 Écrire l’Inde au Québec : Mythes et réalités de l’Ailleurs multiplicité des expériences, de la diversité des motivations et du degré divers de la connaissance de la société et de la culture indiennes, la découverte de ce pays a été déterminante tant sur le plan personnel qu’esthétique. La valeur de cet évènement se mesurera tout d’abord et avant tout dans sa force libératrice, pour ne pas dire libérante, puisque l’expérience de la liberté, telle qu’elle se manifeste ici, a peu à voir, à dire vrai, avec la jouissance de l’indépendance individuelle au sens occidental du terme.
C’est que cette liberté devient souvent le synonyme d’une métamorphose qu’engendre le choc causé, d’une part, par le dépouillement extrême d’une bonne partie de la population indienne et, d’autre part, par un enrichissement spirituel, difficile à exprimer, dont profite sans aucun doute le voyageur. Le dénuement des gens (frappant à la fois par sa dimension humaine, son indifférence joyeuse et son absence de tragique), l’inégalité des conditions de vie, la présence de l’infirmité et de la mort, entremêlées de manière surprenante pour un étranger, prisonnier des divisions du monde catégoriel, ainsi que le pouvoir générateur spirituel exceptionnel de cette civilisation — civilisation qui a donné naissance à nombre de religions (qu’elle a abritées) — mènent à la découverte d’une partie insoupçonnée de l’humanité et de soi-même. Yvon Rivard rencontre ainsi en Inde son enfance, « le temps propre de l’enfance », qui rapidement devient une « sensation même du temps », sinon de l’éternité. Monique Juteau y voit, entre autres choses, une manière « ancestrale » de vivre, qui concorde avec les sensations d’arrêt pour ne pas dire d’abolition du temps qu’observe Yolande Villemaire. Larry Tremblay sera surpris, pour sa part, par le phénomène de « l’étirement sinueux » du temps. Une telle perception, bouleversant évidemment le rapport au monde, provoque immédiatement une ouverture et une sensibilité exceptionnelles à la réalité, et cela entraîne un débordement de l’expérience du sensible. Suspendue en dehors de la mémoire (telle qu’elle fonctionne en Occident), sinon plongée dans un syn- crétisme temporel inouï, où diverses époques se côtoient quotidiennement, l’Inde offre l’occasion d’identifications inattendues sur le plan social et même national, identifications qui semblent justifiées du côté du Québec, ne serait-ce que par l’expérience commune de la colonisation et de tout ce qu’il en résulte au chapitre de l’identité et de l’autonomie et en ce qui a trait à la perception de l’altérité. Dans ce rapport entre les cultures, les liens s’avèrent beaucoup plus complexes et profonds que l’on ne pourrait le croire.
C’est alors que l’art d’écrire, comme tout acte créateur, prend des proportions et des significations différentes. L’étirement et la suspension du temps, éprouvés par les écrivains, ont un effet incontestable sur leur manière de percevoir et de pratiquer l’écriture. Le ralentissement de la plume que connaît Monique Juteau, éprise auparavant de l’idéal d’un Kerouac d’« écrire très vite » sans y revenir, correspond à la complexi-
131 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes fication et à l’approfondissement du monde observé, qui obligent à porter toute son attention sur l’essentiel. L’en-dehors du monde habité rend aussi l’artiste plus attentif et plus conscient de l’incidence du « JE si compromettant », lui fait sentir tout le poids et tout l’artifice du langage et l’oriente, inévitablement, ne serait-ce que par les conditions du voyage et du déplacement, vers la dimension ontologiquement poétique, essentielle, de la parole : « Sous l’influence de la lenteur indienne, je rédigeais chaque paragraphe comme un poème. »
Le besoin d’écrire, qui prend souvent sa source dans l’angoisse, se fait soudainement absent en tant qu’urgence ou nécessité et se transforme naturellement en art de l’inévitable. Dans le cas de YolandeVillemaire, une enquête documentaire devient un voyage à travers le temps et l’histoire, une écriture qui procède à l’envers, par une reconstruction d’une image quasiment archétypale, une réflexion, finalement, sur un des dieux, et un des mythes les plus anciens de toutes les civilisations. Ce n’est pourtant qu’une manière (et une voie) d’aborder sa propre identité, sa propre condition. S’éloigner de soi-même pour pouvoir mieux s’appréhender. Tout comme dans le Mahâbhârata ou le Râmâyana, son roman Le Dieu dansant3 repose sur une suite de mises en abyme qui conduisent vers l’énigme de l’existence.
C’est qu’écrire en Inde, sur l’Inde ou après l’Inde (comme dans le cas d’Yvon Rivard) est une expérience qui relève et qui témoigne de l’unité exceptionnelle de l’être et du monde, du monde et de l’imaginaire, de l’imaginaire et de l’art. La fascination de Larry Tremblay pour l’art statuaire, chrétien et hindou, uni d’un seul coup par l’aspect érotisé des figures, nous permet de nous rendre compte que l’Inde se pose comme un écran qui, paradoxalement, abolit les distances et les frontières. C’est en Inde que Villemaire verra donc le noir du a rimbaldien et sentira, quand elle chantera ses mantras, « la texture même de la réalité » dans la sonorité de chaque lettre. Devenue une matérialité difficile à dénier, l’écriture prend de vastes proportions qui impliquent totalement l’artiste dans ses actes créateurs. Larry Tremblay, malgré toutes les apparences qui pourraient nous faire croire que l’Inde n’occupe qu’une place négligeable dans sa création littéraire, nous rappelle fort pertinemment que la culture, la pensée et les mythes indiens font partie, dans son cas, d’une autre écriture, d’une écriture corporelle. L’esthétique relève ainsi plus qu’ailleurs de l’expérience tout à fait physique, de ce que l’on pourrait appeler aussi l’imaginaire vécu, soit, aux dires de Rivard, « l’imaginaire le plus pur ».
L’Inde, elle-même, apparaît dans l’écriture comme le fruit d’un processus complexe, résultat d’une difficile négociation entre « la crainte de trahir » et l’effort soutenu dans le but de franchir les mécanismes d’autocensure et les préjugés, et dans celui, finalement, de réfléchir sur la vérité et le mensonge à la fois du lieu commun, du stéréotype. L’Inde
132 Écrire l’Inde au Québec : Mythes et réalités de l’Ailleurs s’installe alors dans la représentation avec tous ses avatars. Il n’est nullementsurprenantqu’ellepuissegénérerdesrécitsdifférentstantdansle style que dans la manière d’aborder et de représenter le pays. À l’exception du Dieu dansant (1995), dont l’auteure nous avoue ouvertement : « c’est très difficile pour moi de parler de l’Inde contemporaine », la dimension autobiographique semble jouer une part déterminante dans cette rencontre. Tel est le cas de Poudre de kumkum (2002), journal de voyage, qui rend compte de deux expériences critiques de la vie d’un homme visitant l’Inde. Tel est aussi le cas de Silences du corbeau (1986) d’Yvon Rivard, rédigé à la suite d’un séjour de l’auteur à Pondichéry. Cet aspect d’écriture se révèle particulièrement important chez Monique Juteau, dont les multiples voyages ont façonné l’écriture, l’ont imprégnée des odeurs, des rêves, des gens rencontrés en Inde. Ces derniers, transformés en personnages, prennent par ailleurs le relais de l’autobiographie en lui attribuant une nouvelle dimension et en évacuant en quelque sorte le voyageur. C’est que la préoccupation d’écrire l’Inde véritable est un point de départ central des projets esthétiques, sans pour autant que ce pays soit dévoilé au terme de ces explorations. L’Inde, cette « grande émettrice », comme l’a saisi Juteau, oblige, envoûte, rebute, dépasse, mais condamne à une certaine forme de silence. Elle inspire, complète et dépasse l’écriture.
On emporte peu de choses en Inde, qui apparaît d’ailleurs comme un lieu hermétique, énigmatique. Il y a cependant dans les œuvres de nos écrivains un jeu subtil et complexe de représentations, d’influences, d’iden- tifications, de séductions, de fascinations, de jugements, de distanciations et d’appropriations, tout cela opérant sur le fond de dialogue culturel où le rôle de la modernité (québécoise) n’est pas du tout négligeable.
Poser la question sur la modernité dans le contexte de l’œuvre de Villemaire peut paraître saugrenu à première vue, le texte étant littéralement saturé de références à l’histoire indienne ancienne. Situé au XIe siècle dans l’Inde méridionale, à l’époque de l’empire Chola, le roman met en scène le drame du personnage de Shambala, épris de passion (interdite aux hommes) pour le Bharata Natyam, une des danses classiques les plus anciennes de l’Inde. Même si le choix du lieu de l’action, la ville de Chidambaram, (appelée autrefois Tillai, connue pour son légendaire temple à mille colonnes dédié à Shiva, où l’un des avatars du dieu, Nataraj, aurait dansé la danse cosmique) met en valeur l’aspect mythique et historique du récit, le conflit entre la tradition (surveillée par les puissants gourous) et le personnage central ressurgit très vite, presque dès les premières pages du roman. L’œuvre pose ainsi ouvertement, par une sorte d’anachronisme idéologique, les assises pour un antagonisme de valeurs, dont la nature et l’étendue se révèlent plutôt appartenir aux temps modernes. Ainsi, la révolte de Shambala est déterminée tant par son aveuglante passion pour un art qui lui est interdit que par les valeurs modernes d’égalité et de justice, qui alimentent l’insoumission du
133 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes personnage. Autrement dit, l’individualité de Shambala s’inscrit dans la complexité d’un je à tendance moderniste, dont l’identité est à vrai dire scindée, non pas en soi comme on aurait pu le croire, mais plutôt entre deux époques, l’une contemporaine, l’autre historique. La volonté de dégager le texte de son contexte historique est visible aussi sur le plan lexical, dépourvu de termes spécifiques.
Cette dualité, sinon un déchirement tragique (caractéristique absente de la culture indienne), se manifeste également à un autre niveau. Le sacrifice que fait le personnage de son corps en décidant de dépasser l’interdit au prix de l’infirmité que causera la violence du père s’inscrit dans la logique d’un mythe originel, cependant que l’éthique du pardon, qui imprègne la fin du récit, semble venir du monde judéo-chrétien. Il en naît une tension qui stigmatise l’évolution ambivalente du personnage, qui accepte son sort, sans l’avoir véritablement assumé. « Or, si son intelligence et son cœur avaient déjà pardonné, Shambala savait fort bien que son corps, lui, ne pardonnait toujours pas. Son corps était ivre de ressentiment.4 » La question esttoutefoisdesavoirdansquellemesurelavaleurdelafigurefondatricedu mythe est véritablement affectée par l’aventure de Shambala, car dans une perspective critique différente, qui proposerait d’aborder le récit non pas commeuntextesubversif,maisplutôtcommeuntexteinstaurateurdurituel dans sa forme toute primaire, c’est-à-dire sacrée, il serait permis de lire le roman autrement, comme une œuvre postmoderne, en tenant compte de son questionnement du bagage culturel et social rattaché aux pratiques rituelles. D’autant plus qu’à bien y regarder, on pourrait, d’un point de vue indien, trouver dans le dilemme de Shambala l’écho d’une des plus grandes questions de la philosophie hindoue, présente dans l’épopée Mahâbhârata, débattue par Krishna face aux hésitations qu’a Pandavas à l’idée de participer à une bataille sanglante contre ses ennemis, mais aussi ses cousins. La supériorité éthique du dharma, qu’explique Krishna en tant que loi générale, immuablement fixée — soit l’ensemble des règles et des phénomènes naturels régissant l’ordre des choses, des sociétés et des hommes et permettant ainsi d’accepter l’inacceptable —, est présente en tant que problématique dans le roman de Villemaire, qui recourt par ailleurs aux effets du merveilleux quant à la mort de Shambala. Le dieu Shiva descendchercherlecorpsdudanseurpourl’emporteràKailash,sademeure sur les cimes de l’Himalaya. L’intervention du dieu prête l’élément mystérieux au récit : « On ne retrouva jamais le corps du danseur.5 » Est-ce la justice divine? L’enfant du ciel, Shambala, serait-il délivré du cycle de la mort et de la naissance par Shiva? Son châtiment terrestre imposé par son père parce qu’il a failli à son dharma deviendra-t-il prodigieusement sa délivrance?
Le scepticisme, l’ironie et la distance que cultive Alexandre, protagoniste des Silences du corbeau d’YvonRivard seraient-ils également propres à la posture moderniste? Sans aucun doute, tout ce que l’homme
134 Écrire l’Inde au Québec : Mythes et réalités de l’Ailleurs représente, par sa quête infinie et mal définie de l’identité, relève de l’esthétique moderne. Décrit en tant que caricature de Faust, le cheminement du nouvel apprenti de la philosophie hindoue, réfugié dans le Guest House de la Sri Aurobindo Society à Pondichéry, est aussi révélateur de la nature du personnage que de la spécificité de son monde ambiant. Faisant partie tant bien que mal d’un groupe disparate d’individus arrivés de tous les coins du monde pour suivre les enseignements d’une jeune fille considérée comme une incarnation de Mère (la réelle compagne de Sri Aurobindo), Alexandre s’interroge sur sa propre existence et sur la valeur de l’expérience indienne qu’il est en train de vivre. Sa naïveté, l’expression de la spontanéité de son esprit, est toutefois souvent trompeuse, car elle ressemble à plusieurs égards au questionnement d’un maître bouddhiste. L’ambivalence, qui se traduit essentiellement par le fait que la désacralisation (ou du moins la subversion sinon la remise en question) du statut sacro-saint du gourou, viendrait d’une logique qui tire ses origines dans ce qu’elle conteste. Ce paradoxe est propre à l’ensemble du récit qui converge inévitablement vers le renversement de sa situation initiale.
Pour Rivard, l’Inde devient un prétexte pour interroger le concept global de l’Orient, tel qu’il circule en Occident, d’où la présence implicite, dans le roman, de références à d’autres cultures asiatiques, dont surtout les cultures japonaise et chinoise. Le Yi King, « recueil divinatoire chinois dont les soixante-quatre “hexagrammes” constituent une image complète du monde puisqu’ils reproduisent toutes les combinaisons possibles des énergies primordiales que sont le yin et le yang », prête ses figures pour marquer l’évolution circulaire du roman. L’Occident,tel qu’il est décrit : en perte de repères, en quête de transcendance, semble halluciner une Inde, tenter vainement de se l’approprier et de s’identifier à sa pensée lointaine (malgré la portée universelle que Sri Aurobindo désirait lui donner). Il confond le plus souvent la spiritualité avec une performance, toute moderne, de l’âme. « J’essaie de résister à la grâce contagieuse qui menace ici tous les pèlerins occidentaux et plus particulièrement ceux qui ont le bonheur ou le malheur d’approcher un maître6 », dira Alexandre. Mais dans cette posture, ce qui compte n’est pas vraiment la question de l’identité, mais celle de la vérité. Rivard rejoint par cette préoccupation épistémologique le modernisme du Dieu dansant. Dans le cas des Silences du corbeau, on ne peut toutefois pas parler de conflit, du déchirement tragique propre à l’œuvre de Villemaire. Le roman est plutôt construit autour d’une tension qui résulte du caractère instable, plus que jamais dynamique et même obscur de la vérité spirituelle. La littérature se pose dans cette quête comme le garant absolu du non-savoir et oblige à une certaine forme de silence. Dans cette perspective, l’énigme du texte sacré, tel que la Bhagavat Gita, fondateur de la pensée philosophique et sociale hindoue, reste entière, nonobstant la portée morale et même pédagogique de cette leçon légendaire de Krishna en Inde.
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Dans le renversement des paramètres qui se prépare, certains personnages indiens, tels que Mitra ou Chitkara et contrairement aux Occidentaux venus en Inde chercher leur salut aléatoire dans une quête spirituelle utopique, sont tourmentés par le désir de savoir comment on devient « blanc, riche et libre ». L’image de l’Inde contemporaine, partageant les déboires d’une société en développement, court-circuite l’image idéale du pays que portent en eux les protagonistes venus de l’étranger. Ce chassé-croisé de représentations témoigne autant d’un transfert paradoxal de valeurs que de la contradiction de la nature humaine. Iln’enrestepasmoinsque,danscecontexte,lestatutdusacréneserajamais garanti. Le spectacle de la spiritualité qu’offre la jeune fille de 17 ans, accompagnée d’un escroc (l’est-il vraiment?), qui sera dénoncé rapidement par la presse locale, sème le scepticisme chez les pèlerins. La communauté se dissipe définitivement face à ce qui devrait plutôt l’unir : la mort accidentelle et tragique d’un des leurs. Le thème de la mort, associé symboliquement au temps, émerge alors comme le véritable enjeu. Il stigmatise l’écriture dès les premières pages du roman. (« Je me serais sans doute aussitôt rendormi, si je n’avais pas cette manie de consulter ma montre à propos de tout et de rien. Est-ce pour me libérer un peu de cette tyrannie que j’ai changé, avant de partir, ma vieille Timex au cadran lumineux contre une Bulova aveugle et sans chiffres?7 ») Dans ce duel inégal dont le but, pourrait-on dire métaphoriquement, est de faire taire le corbeau — l’oiseau annonciateur de la mort —, l’auteur, sans pouvoir éliminer le temps dans une quelconque transcendance, réussit à opérer un renversement majeur des identités, et donc, de manière oblique, un renversement de la temporalité. Mère, adulée, se transforme alors en enfant et dans ce re-devenir, Alexandre, mandaté pour reconduire la fille dans son village natal, agit d’une certaine manière en tant que père. Toutsemble donc rentrer dans l’ordre et pareillement à l’idéal confucéen du langage qui repose sur l’impératif de « rendre correctes les dénominations » agissant en remède contre la corruption des mœurs, le désordre social, l’abus du pouvoir, le langage esthétique chez Rivard, malgré l’échec évident du commerce de la spiritualité, retrouve soudainement une dimension virginale du monde. Mais il y plus, car la redécouverte du temps de l’enfance (dont l’écrivain parle dans la table ronde), cette victoire inespérée, peut apparaître aussi comme l’expression du désir latent de conserver l’image d’une Inde lointaine, édénique, atemporelle et utopique, lieu non pas (non plus) de salut mais de refuge8.
Les nouvelles formes narratives, explorées dans les récits de Monique Juteau et de Larry Tremblay, ont-elles une incidence significative sur la représentation contemporaine de l’Inde? Curieusement, on pourrait affirmer que Des jours de chemins perdus et retrouvés et Poudre de kumkum publiés respectivement en 1998 et en 2002, se nourrissent subrepticement de l’expérience d’Alexandre dans la mesure où les personnages se disent ouvertement agnostiques et apparaissent comme les héritiers tant du
136 Écrire l’Inde au Québec : Mythes et réalités de l’Ailleurs modernisme compromis du siècle dernier que du désenchantement face au monde contemporain : Croire? En Brahma? En Vishnou? En quelque chose? En quoi croyez-vous?Medemandentleshindousàchaqueheuredujour.Je ne crois pas. Je leur explique, qu’au fond de moi, ilyauncadenas qui verrouille le temps, l’enferme dans un XXe siècle d’où je ne peux plus sortir.9 Et Tremblay précise en tant que praticien d’une des plus anciennes formes de théâtre dans le monde : Il est arrivé souvent que certains de mes étudiants ou de mes collègues croient que je séjourne en Inde pour des raisons mystiques. […] Le kathakali n’est pas une branche de l’hindouisme et celui qui l’exerce peut être athée ou chrétien, mangeur de bœuf, de porc ou végétarien. Je n’ai jamais adhéré à aucune forme de religion en Inde.10 Le refus du religieux et, partant, de la transcendance, exaspère toutefois la dérision identitaire. Le narrateur de Poudre de kumkum, dans la première partie de l’ouvrage, s’engage allégrement dans des dialogues philoso- phiques avec des fourmis, ce qui met en valeur le caractère souvent absurde et insignifiant de l’appréhension humaine de la réalité. La crise se fait sentir de façon beaucoup plus aiguë dans le texte de Monique Juteau. Le style hermétique, fragmenté, découpé, brouillé à l’extrême quant aux références et à l’énonciation est surtout porteur de la marque d’un traumatisme que le langage exprime par la perte presque totale de repères. Dans ces récits, très individualisés, fondés sur la perception sensible, minimaliste et subjective (intérieure) du monde, où le biographique prend déjà des proportions décisives, l’Inde, fortement intériorisée, transparaît moins en tant que produit de la fiction que comme produit de l’autofiction.
La cristallisation du malaise survient de manière surprenante dans le cas de deux écrivains, par l’entremise du même évènement : la disparition douloureuse et irrémédiable de la mère. Cette dernière figure prend toutefois dans le récit de Tremblay des significations plus larges, puisqu’elle est aussi associée à la belle image de la mer qui ouvre le récit et le termine en tant que métaphore. « Regarder la mer : seul sacre que ma présence sur terre accepte », écrit le voyageur. Ressenti comme la fin d’un monde, le tragique évènement est mis en parallèle avec la violence et la haine hindou-musulmane, qui éclate en 1992 à Ayodhya pour se propager dans tout le pays. Ce sera donc aussi la fin d’une Inde (autant pour le voyageur que pour l’habitant), l’évènement ayant été décrit comme le plus grave depuis l’assassinat de Gandhi. Toutefois malgré ce double deuil, l’Inde continue à enchanter et à exercer sa magie extraordinaire. Troublante à plusieurs égards, elle dévoile aussi toute sa force thérapeutique comme dans le récit de Juteau, car dès que le voyage se déplace sur la terre indienne, le langage retrouve sa cohérence et l’espoir renaît. C’est alors que le sens du
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titre Des jours de chemins perdus et retrouvés se dévoile. La transformation sémantique s’opère au moyen du passage de la représentation de la catégorie essentiellement spatiale, chemins perdus et retrouvés, à une nouvelle dimension de la réalité qu’expriment les jours (lumière) perdus et retrouvés. Chose importante, ce changement provoquera finalement la métamorphose de la nature du voyage lui-même. Chez Tremblay, qui désavoue ouvertement l’héritage moderne (« L’homme moderne? […] Tu veux vraiment savoir ce que je pense de l’homme moderne? Vraiment?11 »), la résolution du deuil adviendra dans une rencontre inattendue avec le sacré. À Pushkar, une des sept villes saintes de l’Inde, la participation simulée, toute théâtrale, au rituel brahmanique (sans y croire vraiment à cause du caractère touristique de l’évènement), non pour soi-même, mais uniquement pour l’offrir à la mère perdue, devient un sacrifice de l’incroyance, qui investira la cérémonie d’une signification personnelle pour redonner à la cérémonie, dans la sincérité et la spontanéité de l’âme, une dimension originelle, mythique et vraie.
La réalité indienne émerge donc des textes retenus par une dynamique complexe, marquée avant tout par le patrimoine de la culture occidentale (y compris son orientalisme), indépendamment des rapports (de plus en plus ambivalents) qu’entretiennent les écrivains avec cet héritage. Si, de l’autre côté, le degré d’adhésion, d’identification à l’Inde peut varier, la représentation elle-même semble être soumise à une constante ambivalence. L’image en rapport avec l’Inde semble se moderniser de plus en plus dans le récit (à ne pas confondre avec la modernité indienne, à peu près absente en tant que problématique), surtout sur le plan formel, dans l’importance que les écrivains accordent à la valeur esthétique du langage et à l’amplification et même à l’exaspération de ce que l’on pourrait appeler le dilemme de l’identité moderne, alors que la modernité, surtout en tant qu’idéologie, devient de plus en plus inactuelle, réprouvée et même reniée. Si cette désillusion frappe aussi en bonne partie la perception même de l’Inde (surtout dans le rapport à ce que nous avons appelé le spectacle de la spiritualité), l’Inde semble néanmoins sortir victorieuse de l’épreuve de l’altérité, malgré l’échec évident du moderne idéologique dans les romans de Villemaire et de Rivard et le refus, sinon la condamnation du même modernisme, dans les récits de Juteau et de Tremblay. C’est que dans le spectre élargi de sa représentation, elle s’offre avant tout généreusement en tant que possibilité,ouverture(malgrésonhermétisme),lieumythiquedepassage vers soi-même et vers l’autre. Il n’en reste pas moins qu’une telle Inde est aussi condamnée en bonne partie à rester accidentelle, distante, en dehors du temps, muette, donc mystérieuse, dans la barrière de ses langues, de ses cultures et de ses langages. Le double visage de l’Inde serait d’ailleurs traversé par sa propre ambiguïté, sa capacité d’actualiser l’archaïque qui
138 Écrire l’Inde au Québec : Mythes et réalités de l’Ailleurs tend parfois à se manifester au-delà de certaines formes périmées, dans ce qu’il a de plus moderne12.
Notes 1. L’idée de l’influence orientale sur la modernité occidentale est à prendre toutefois dans une perspective générale. Dans la peinture, la question a été traitée par Kirk Varnedoe (A Fine Disregard: What Makes Modern Art Modern, New York : Harry N. Abrams, 1990). Voir aussi « Bouddhisme et critique de la modernité en francophonie » (dossier sous la direction de James W. Brown et Raphaël Liogier), dans Dalhousie French Studies,no 46, Spring 1999. 2. Paul-Émile Borduas, Lettre à Noël Lajoie, 4 janvier 1958, in Gilles Lapointe, L’Envol des signes : Borduas et ses lettres, Montréal, Fides, 1996, p. 15. Cité par Boris Chukhovich dans « L’orientalisme dans l’art du Québec. Du mythe de l’Autre vers l’art de l’Autre », dans Orient et orientalisme au Québec. Identités hybrides, Benalil, Mounia et Janusz Przychodzen (dir.), Montréal : Presses de l’Université de Montréal. À paraître en 2006. 3. Yolande Villemaire, Le Dieu dansant, Montréal, L’Hexagone, 1995. 4. Ibid., p. 191. 5. Ibid., p. 228. 6. Yvon Rivard, Les Silences du corbeau, Montréal, Boréal, 1986, p. 14. 7. Ibid.,p.11. 8. Graham Huggan dans son étude « Orientalism reconfirmed? Stereotypes of East-West Encounters in Janette Turner Hospital’s The Ivory Swing and Yvon Rivard’s Les Silences du corbeau »(Canadian Literature,no 132, Spring 1992) va plus loin en affirmant : « While both writers undertake a critique of stereotypical Western (European) attitudes towards the Orient, thereby implying their dissociation from the colonialist practices of Orientalism, the dissociation is by no means as complete they might wish. […] The ironic treatment of this quest backfires: the real irony resides not in the two writers’ critical exposure of Western suprematism but in their tacit acceptance of the intrinsic superiority of Western values. What sets out, in other words, as a critique of Orientalism eventually becomes its reconfirmation: the journey East is duly identified as the pretext for a specious rationalization of Western anxieties », pp. 45-46. 9. Monique Juteau, Des jours de chemins perdus et retrouvés, Trois-Rivières, Écrits des Forges, 2000, p. 89. 10. Larry Tremblay, Poudre de kumkum, Montréal, XYZ, 2002, p. 63. 11. Ibid., p. 21. 12. En témoigne cette description, combien juste, de la ville sainte de Bénarès : « Cette ville, lorsque j’y suis allé la première fois, m’a profondément remué. Bénarès n’est pas faite de maisons, de rues, de temples, d’hommes, de femmes et d’enfants. C’est dans une matière uniforme, dont les principaux ingrédients sont le bois, la boue, l’eau, la mort, que nous pénétrons quand nous franchissons les frontières de cette ville où les principales activités, avec celle d’adorer Dieu, consistent à mourir et, pour les vivants, à brûler les morts. Bénarès est l’endroit le plus proche du mystère de la mort, celui où on la respire, celui où on la sent se déposer sur notre peau moite et salie par les cendres des bûchers allumés sur les ghats. Je me souviens de la boue de Bénarès, de cette sensation intime de coller à cette ville au point de se croire avalé par elle. On ne marche pas, là-bas, on
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nage. On est à l’intérieur d’une émotion qui transcende les cultures, les cultes. Observer les corps disparaître dans les flammes, les crânes exploser sous l’effet de la chaleur, ne provoque ni nausée ni frayeur. Regarder une vache manger les fleurs déposées sur un cadavre qui « attend son tour » ne provoque ni scandale ni révolte. La mort, à Bénarès, possède la force de pénétration d’un parfum. La mort, à Bénarès, ne se recouvre pas du masque de la hideur. Elle rappelle la naissance des mondes accomplis par le mélange de la terre, de l’eau, du feu et de l’air », Ibid., p. 53.
140 Écrire l’Inde au Québec
Table ronde (Maison des écrivaines et des écrivains québécois, Montréal, le 21 juin 2004)
Participants Monique Juteau, écrivaine Yvon Rivard, écrivain Larry Tremblay, écrivain Yolande Villemaire, écrivaine Organisateurs Vijaya Rao, Javaharlal Nehru University Janusz Przychodzen, Université York [Transcription : Anne Thibeault-Bérubé]
Janusz Przychodzen — J’ai le grand plaisir avec Vijaya Rao, professeur à la Javaharlal Nehru University (en Inde) de souhaiter la bienvenue aux quatre écrivains ici présents : Yolande Villemaire, Monique Juteau, Larry Tremblay et Yvon Rivard. Ils ont accepté avec beaucoup d’enthousiasme de prendre part à cette rencontre pour partager avec nous leurs expériences de la société et de la civilisation indiennes. Je salue également le public qui a démontré en plein été (quelqu’un ajoute : « l’été indien », rires) que l’intérêt pour les cultures orientales dans la littérature québécoise est de plus en plus grandissant. Cette table ronde a été organisée avec le concours du Conseil de recherche en sciences humaines du Canada et grâce à l’hospitalité de la Maison des écrivaines et écrivains québécois. À cet égard, je tiens à remercier Ginette Major et Pierre Lavoie, directeur de l’Union des écrivaines et des écrivains québécois. Cette soirée, la toute première du genre, est un évènement historique, qui s’inscrit dans la suite du colloque international et interdisciplinaire « Proche, Moyen, Extrême. Représentation de l’Orient au Québec » tenu à l’Université McGill au début de mars 2004. C’est cet évènement qui a permis la formation d’une petite communauté d’artistes, d’écrivains, de chercheurs intéressés par les cultures orientales au Québec. La participation de Vijaya Rao est cruciale dans cette communauté. Et cette table ronde à laquelle elle a invité quatre écrivains, parmi lesquels se retrouvent ses amis de longue date, en est la meilleure preuve. Vijaya Rao — Il est quand même étonnant qu’une Indienne présente des écrivains québécois à un public québécois! Je vais tâcher de présenter les
141 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes quatre écrivains uniquement dans le contexte de leur création portant sur l’Inde. Commençons par Yvon Rivard, professeur à l’Université McGill. Son livre Les Silences du corbeau lui a valu le prix du Gouverneur général en 1986. Situé à Pondichéry, le roman suit l’aventure de jeunes Occidentaux épris d’une jeune femme appelée Mère et vénérée en raison de ses présumés pouvoirs spirituels. Notre deuxième invitée de la soirée est Yolande Villemaire. À son retour d’Inde, elle publie Le Dieu dansant, qui a gagné le prix Edgar-Lespérance en 1995. Histoire passionnante de Shambala, un jeune danseur de Bharata Natyam, Le Dieu dansant se déroule au XIe siècle, au cœur de l’Inde du Sud, c’est-à-dire dans la ville sacrée de Chidambaram. Yolande Villemaire a également signé un recueil de poésie La Lune indienne. J’ai maintenant le plaisir de vous présenter Monique Juteau, dont Des jours de chemins perdus et retrouvés, un recueil de poèmes, lui a valu le prix Gérald-Godin. Et je viens de recevoir aussi son récit, intitulé Paris-Bombay : quatre chambres et une antichambre, qui a gagné le prix littéraire de Radio-Canada. Et enfin, Larry Tremblay, dramaturge, metteur en scène, comédien, bref, homme de théâtre, et un ami de longue date. J’ai rencontré Larry Tremblay pour la première fois à l’UQAM en 1989, parce qu’on m’avait dit qu’un professeur québécois faisait du kathakali! Comme vous le savez, Larry Tremblay est beaucoup joué en ce moment sur la scène montréalaise. Son œuvre a été traduite en plusieurs langues : anglais, portugais, tamoul, etc. Poudre de kumkum, son dernier ouvrage, est un récit émouvant issu du journal tenu lors d’un passage en Inde. Après ces quelques mots d’introduction, je vais demander à Janusz d’amorcer cette séance avec quelques questions préliminaires. J. P. — J’inviterais tout d’abord les écrivains à nous offrir à tour de rôle ce rare plaisir, il faut le dire, de les entendre parler de vive voix de leurs principales aventures et expériences avec l’Inde — pays, société, culture, civilisation, philosophie et religion. Le plaisir sera d’autant plus grand que ces voyages et séjours en Inde ont mené à la création d’œuvres fort intéressantes. Yolande Villemaire — Alors, voilà, Le Dieu dansant, ç’a d’abord été une image. J’ai vu l’image de la scène finale du roman et d’après ce que je voyais, ça semblait être un danseur indien. Ça semblait se passer en Inde et je n’étais jamais allée en Inde. Et je me suis dit : « Je ne peux pas écrire ça. Ç’a l’air de se passer il y a très longtemps. Et bon, je n’connais pas l’Inde », et tout ça. Alors, j’ai d’abord résisté au roman de façon intensive pendant tout un été et finalement j’ai décidé d’aller en Inde et de l’écrire. Et je suis partie avec l’intentiond’écrirecelivre.Jem’enallaisfairedelaméditation,jefaisaisde la méditation indienne depuis un certain temps déjà. Et je m’en allais dans
142 Écrire l’Inde au Québec : Mythes et réalités de l’Ailleurs un ashram de méditation. Je me suis dit « Je vais partir, je vais voir, je vais me laisser porter et puis peut-être que je commencerai le roman, au bout d’un certain nombre de semaines ou de mois. » Je partais pour un an et finalement je suis restée plus longtemps, je suis restée un an et demi. Et je suis arrivée le 5 octobre et je raconte l’anecdote parce qu’en parlant avec Vijaya, que j’ai rencontrée très récemment, je suis arrivée en Inde le 5 octobre — je suis partie le 3, je suis arrivée le 5, c’est un assez long trajet, n’est-ce pas? — et j’ai commencé à écrire le roman le 9 octobre 1989, et c’est ce jour-là que Vijaya est arrivée à Montréal pour la première fois. C’est une coïncidence amusante. Donc moi, j’étais en Inde, je faisais des pouja au Shiva dansant parce qu’au début, le titre du roman, c’était « Nataraja », le « dieu » dansant. Et j’ai commencé à écrire le roman. Et voilà. Ç’a été une expérience fascinante. J’ai passé un an et demi là-bas et cinq ans en tout à écrire le roman et je l’ai publié en 1995. Voilà. Larry Tremblay — J’ai fait 13 voyages en Inde, j’espère en faire un quatorzième bientôt. Souvent, on associe l’Inde avec la quête. Comme si on partait à la recherche de quelque chose. On se cherche. Ou, à l’inverse, on veut se perdre. En ce qui me concerne, je n’étais habité par aucune quête, ni motivé par aucune enquête. Je suis allé en Inde, en fait, par hasard. J’avais 21 ans. Je venais d’être engagé comme acteur au sein d’une troupe de théâtre expérimental, un peu visionnaire. Enfin, c’était l’époque! Je suis donc parti en Inde avec cette troupe. Ce n’était pas mon idée, mais un projet qui émanait de la troupe. Nous amenions dans nos bagages un spectacle de théâtre. C’était en 1975, l’année internationale de la femme. Je ne sais pas s’il y en a eu d’autres! Nous avions préparé, pour l’occasion, un montage autour de la figure de la femme à partir des Belles-sœurs de Michel Tremblay, des Bonnes de Jean Genet et d’Andromaque de Racine. Nous sommes allés jouer ça en Inde avec l’audace et la naïveté de nos 20 ans! Nous avons même intégrédesacteursindiensauspectacleàDelhietàSrinagarauCachemire. Ce premier voyage a duré quatre mois. À l’époque, je ne savais rien de l’Inde, je n’avais jamais rien lu sur l’Inde. Je n’étais contaminé, si j’ose dire, par aucun préjugé, ou encore attiré par aucune image. J’avais sans doute emmagasiné un ou deux clichés, comme tout le monde. L’Inde ne possédait pas, pour moi, de valeur symbolique spécifique, ne suscitait pas chez moi d’interrogation. J’avais vécu mon adolescence plongé dans la philosophie, la psychologie, la sociologie, la psychanalyse. Mes références intellec- tuelles étaient plutôt européennes. Comme beaucoup de jeunes gens de cette époque, je fréquentais très peu la littérature québécoise. Et ce jeune homme, dont la tête bourdonnait de concepts et de théories, pose le pied sur le sol de l’Inde. Boum! Je dis boum, mais au fond, je n’ai pas vécu l’Inde comme un choc ou une coupure ou une rafale. Non! Je me souviens très bien de mes toutes premières minutes passées en Inde. Sans réaliser ce qui m’arrivait, je venais de me transformer. Quelque chose — une porte? une
143 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes fenêtre? un œil? — quelque chose en moi — dans mon corps? mon esprit? — quelque chose, donc, s’ouvrait du simple fait que je venais de poser le piedsurlesoldeDelhi.Jen’aiaucuneexplication.Ças’estpassécommeça. Sans que je le demande ou le recherche. En douceur. Comme l’apparition d’un sourire. Sans effort. J’ai ressenti alors la joie très pure d’exister. Simplement. Comment nommer cela? Pourquoi aussi vouloir le nommer? Je peux appeler ça un mystère, mais je ne rattache pas cette expérience à un élan mystique ou religieux. À la fin de ce premier voyage où j’ai sillonné l’Inde et le Népal, j’ai suivi un stage en kathakali, une danse-théâtre classique du Sud de l’Inde. Je ne savais pas que j’allais passer, au cours des années suivantes, des milliers d’heures à étudier cet art exigeant, martial et théâtral. J’ai eu la chancedel’enseignerparlasuite.Ç’aamenébeaucoupderigueurdansmon travail d’acteur, de metteur en scène et d’écrivain. Et tout récemment, j’ai publié Poudre de kumkum dans une collection que dirige, d’ailleurs, Yolande Villemaire. C’est un récit autobiographique composé de deux journaux de voyage. Ilya17ansquilesséparent. Le premier journal relate les pensées d’un jeune homme de 22 ans qui fait parler les fourmis, omniprésentes en Inde. Le second fait entendre la voix d’un homme mûr qui vient de perdre sa mère et qui retourne en Inde se confronter à son deuil. Yvon Rivard — D’abord, les circonstances de ma découverte de l’Inde. Je connaissais l’Inde par les livres et par les personnes qui y étaient allées. J’y suisallépourlapremièreetlaseulefoisen1979pouruncourtséjourdetrois mois. J’ai donc découvert l’Inde en 1969 par un poète québécois, Guy Lafond,qui,lui,avaitdéjàséjournélonguementenInde,d’abordàl’ashram de Sivananda à Rishikesh dans les années 50 et à l’ashram de Shri Aurobindo dans les années 60 et 70. C’est donc par lui que j’ai découvert l’Inde et Pondichéry. Même si je n’y suis allé qu’une fois, je crois qu’il s’est passé véritablement quelque chose, là-bas. Essentiellement, je dirais que j’y ai redécouvert, à une certaine profondeur que je ne connaissais pas, ma propre enfance. Quand j’ai publié Les Silences du corbeau, Gilles Marcotte avait écrit, faisant référence à mes livres précédents, que j’étais plus à l’aise en Inde que dans les forêts de la haute Mauricie. Je ne suis pas tout à fait d’accord, mais je dirais qu’il avait un peu raison. C’est l’Inde en quelque sorte qui m’a révélé non pas tant les forêts de la haute Mauricie que ma propre enfance, plus précisément le temps propre à l’enfance. Essentiellement, je dirais que l’Inde pour moi ç’a été une sorte de redécouverte de mon enfance et du temps particulier à l’enfance. Même si j’avais des amis qui me parlaient de l’Inde depuis 10 ans, je ne savais pas trop pourquoi j’y allais, mais quand j’ai mis le pied sur le sol indien, je savais très bien que, d’une certaine façon, ç’a l’air idiot de dire ça, que j’étais chez moi. J’étais de retour dans l’enfance (d’ailleurs ne dit-on pas en
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Inde « notre mère l’Inde »?), j’étais enfin de retour dans un temps qui m’était naturel. Monique Juteau — C’est le voyage qui m’a emmenée en Inde, après m’avoir fait parcourir l’Amérique de l’Alaska au lac Titicaca; l’Europe en mobylette, de camping en terrain vague, à la manière des gitans; l’Afrique du Nord naïvement, sans avoir lu Flaubert. Puis un jour, le voyage a dit : « On s’en va en Inde ». Heureusement, j’avais atteint l’âge de la comparaison, passé l’âge des égarements, à gauche de la trentaine. J’avais accumulé dans le cœur et dans les yeux une foule de données qui pouvaient me permettre de comparer une réalitéàuneautre.Ainsi,àforcedejeuxderéflexionsetdedialoguesavecle voyage, j’en suis venue à aimer l’Inde parce qu’elle m’offrait une part de l’Homme que je n’avais pas retrouvée ailleurs. L’Homme, l’organisation des clans, l’importance de la famille (en Amérique latine, la fuite du père, la meute abandonnée m’avaient grandement impressionnée). L’Homme, celui qui a des règles d’hygiène corporelle beaucoup plus subtiles que nos douches quotidiennes. L’Homme écologique, celui qui mange dans des feuilles de bananier, n’utilise pas de papier hygiénique, enveloppe les denrées dans du papier journal, vend le yogourt dans des petits contenants en terre cuite qu’il retourne à la terre après usage. L’Homme, celui qui boit sans jamais toucher des lèvres le contenant qu’il porte à sa bouche. Technique ancestrale qui, de prime abord, peut paraître insensée aux yeux de certains touristes pressés, mais si seulement le voyageur savait, il s’éviterait bien des ennuis. L’Homme si familier avec la mort que, nous Occidentaux, avons du mal à suivre la gestion de leurs cadavres. J’y suis allée à quatre reprises, pour des séjours de trois à six mois. J’ai tenté de dire ce pays par l’entremise de la fiction, dans les premiers chapitres de En moins de deux. J’ai ensuite raconté, dans L’Emporte-clé, l’Inde vue par César et Tristanne, enfin, ce qu’il en reste, une fois qu’on n’y est plus : des rêves, des nostalgies, des traces, des odeurs. Et j’ai réussi enfin à écrire l’Inde au JE, sans personnage, à l’aide de la poésie dans la deuxième partie de Des jours de chemins perdus et retrouvés ainsi que dans Le voyage a dit (à paraître), en compagnie de la prose. Chaque séjour en Inde était complété par des échappées en Asie : le Viêt-nam, le Laos, la Thaïlande, l’Indonésie, mais chaque fois, je revenais et je disais : « La prochaine fois ce sera encore l’Inde ». L’Inde, c’est un peu comme chez nous. Après tout, on a eu le même colonisateur : l’Anglais. On retrouve d’ailleurs des traces de cette colonisation dans nos semblables goûts et désirs d’indépendance et de liberté. Et le temps a filé, et j’ai vieilli, et c’est sans doute l’âge qui m’a incitée à retourner en Inde une quatrième fois. Pas l’âge de la comparaison, cette fois-là, mais l’âge de la compréhension. Un jour, on comprend. On comprend que l’on n’aura jamais la tête à lire le Mahâbhârata, récit épique d’environ 120 000 versets; qu’on ne réussira jamais à apprendre l’hindi ou l’arabe entre deux tâches de survie; qu’on
145 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes n’aura peut-être pas le temps de retourner à Vãrãnasi ou à Dwarka; qu’on ne pourra pas tout voir, tout expérimenter… Et l’on se met à vouloir repartir au plus vite parce qu’on a l’impression que l’écriture, malgré ses richesses, ne nous apprend plus, ou pas assez sur l’Homme, cet animal très proche des grands singes. J. P. — Merci. Pour approfondir, j’aimerais vous poser une autre question. Pourquoi l’Inde? Pourriez-vous mettre l’Inde en perspective? Tout d’abord du point de vue biographique. Ensuite, par rapport à l’ensemble de votre création littéraire, puisque, bien sûr, vous n’êtes pas des écrivains qui écrivent uniquement sur l’Inde. L’Inde occupe probablement une place spéciale, joue un rôle tout à fait particulier dans votre imagination. Je suis curieux de savoir quelle place vous accordez à l’Inde dans votre écriture et également dans votre vie. Y. R. — Pour moi, je crois que ç’a été déterminant. Ça ne peut pas qu’être accidentel,iln’yajamaisriend’accidenteldanslavie.Dansmonœuvre,ily avraimentavantetaprèsl’Inde.Avantl’Inde,jediraisquelepeuquej’avais écrit relevait de l’imaginaire. Un imaginaire qui était nourri de l’espace québécois, y compris celui des forêts de la haute Mauricie, mais, pour moi, jusqu’à ce moment-là, écrire ça consistait essentiellement à laisser se déployer l’imagination. Juste pour vous donner une idée de ces romans qui sont, je crois sans doute à tort, loin de moi : je pouvais très bien imaginer qu’il y avait un bordel tibétain au fond d’une rivière au nord de La Tuque ou bien imaginer que quelqu’un découvrait un jour être né non pas d’une femme, mais de la parole des immortels! Écrire, pour moi, c’était cela, ça venait comme ça, tout seul. Quand je suis arrivé en Inde, c’était comme si tout le réel devenait imaginaire. Comme si tout le réel, je le voyais pour ainsi dire du seuil de la mort, du point de vue de l’éternité en quelque sorte et, ainsi, la chose la plus quotidienne m’apparaissait miraculeuse de surgir là, à l’instant même, sous mon regard. Cela est sans doute rattaché à ce que je vous disais tout à l’heure à propos du temps, sorte de temps arrêté, d’instants suspendus, presque l’éternité. Et ça, c’était presque physique, ce n’était pas intellectuel, c’était un temps palpable, c’était un instant, la sensation même du temps. À chaque instant, je vivais dans l’instant. C’est pour ça que je rattache le temps découvert ou retrouvé en Inde au temps de l’enfance. Chaque instant, je contemplais l’apparition et la disparition du monde. Et à partir de cette expérience, je n’ai plus jamais été capable d’inventer ou de vivre l’imaginaire comme je le vivais auparavant. Le simple fait de décrire quelque chose qui est, c’était cela maintenant l’imaginaire. Est-ce que c’est l’Inde qui a ainsi changé mon écriture et ma vision des choses? Ou bien n’était-ce pas parce que j’étais déjà dans cette nouvelle vision des choses que je suis allé en Inde, un peu comme on dit que « lorsque le disciple est prêt, le maître apparaît »! Sans doute que l’Inde est apparue parce que j’étais prêt à passer d’un imaginaire à un autre.
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Ainsi, quand j’y pense aujourd’hui, je constate que pour écrire j’ai dû d’abord sortir du bois, littéralement passer de la forêt à la ville, puis sortir du Québec pour aller vivre en Europe. Et c’est dans cette première période que l’écriture a été associée, pour moi, à l’imaginaire, à la capacité d’invention. Puis, dans un deuxième temps, qui commence avec le voyage en Inde, je dirais que j’ai dû m’éloigner de moi pour pouvoir enfin me rapprocher du Québec et de mon enfance, réalité non plus fantasmée, mais saisie telle quelle comme l’imaginaire le plus pur. Y. V. — Je vais poursuivre si vous le permettez. Tantôt, quand Yvon Rivard disait que c’était le retour à l’enfance, j’ai établi un lien. Pour moi, l’Inde a été une sorte de catalyseur qui m’a ramenée aussi à l’enfance, et aussi à mon identité. C’était ma deuxième tentative d’exil. J’avais tenté l’exil à New York en 1985 pendant un an et bon, j’étais revenue. Et là je partais pour toujours quand je suis partie pour l’Inde et finalement j’ai fini par revenir aussi. Et l’impact que ç’a eu dans mon écriture, c’est surtout que ça m’a ramenée à mon identité. Le livre que j’ai écrit à la suite du Dieu dansant, en 1997, c’est Céleste tristesse qui est un livre sur l’identité québécoise, et c’est peut-être d’être en contact avec le peuple indien, Monique le disait aussi, qu’on se sent chez nous, c’est aussi le sentiment que j’ai eu. Par exemple dans l’ashram où je vivais, on travaillait parfois avec des intouchables et ce qu’on appelait les « Adivasi », c’est-à-dire les gens qui étaient là avant même le système de castes. Et je trouvais une telle grandeur d’âme chez ces gens-là, ça m’étonnait tellement. Des gens qui étaient totalement démunis. On les voyait à l’occasion d’une opération pour la cataracte et leur sérénité m’a complètement restitué une dimension de mon identité. Moi qui vivais dans un pays d’abondance, en fait, par rapport à l’Inde. Ç’a été un choc culturel très grand pour moi. Ç’a été difficile. La rue Saint-Denis m’a quasiment semblé le faubourg Saint-Honoré. C’était difficile cet aspect-là. Puis en même temps, une sorte de… justement l’éternité, comme vous disiez si bien aussi. Puis aussi une dimension presque intemporelle. Moi, je vivais dans une vallée qui est à deux heures et demie de Bombay à peu près. C’était comme en dehors du temps. C’était vraiment comme en dehors du temps et mon roman se passait au Moyen Âge, c’était pas tellement difficile d’imaginer le Moyen Âge parce qu’il y avait quelque chose d’intemporel dans la façon dont les paysans vivaient dans la vallée autour de l’ashram. Et je me rappelle, quand je partais très tôt de l’ashram le matin et qu’on voyait les feux, les gens qui faisaient cuire leurs chapatis, il y avait des feux partout dans la vallée et c’était magique. C’est un pays magique. Je pense. L. T. — Dans Poudre de kumkum, j’ai écrit cette phrase: « L’Inde génère le temps le plus proche de l’éternité. » C’est sans doute cet étirement sinueux qui me donne l’impression qu’en Inde, je voyage plutôt dans le temps que dans l’espace. Tout coule, nous avec. Comme un fleuve de temps qui nous
147 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes calme et, en même temps, nous rend étranges à nous-mêmes. L’Inde bouscule l’ego, le questionne, le talonne. Cette contraction d’identité, souvent fausse, qui nous rend anxieux, on a l’impression qu’elle se relâche en Inde. J’ai souvent l’image d’un poing fermé, têtu, habitué à affronter le réel en cognant dessus. Soudain, le voilà qui s’ouvre. La main apparaît alors sans le besoin d’arracher ou de prendre. Sartre décrivait l’ego comme un objet perçu par la conscience. Il appelait cela la transcendance de l’ego. C’est en Inde que cette transcendance s’est révélée à moi dans toute sa clarté. Pourquoi? Je ne sais pas. C’est comme ça. L’Inde effrite l’ego et rapproche la conscience d’un courant existentiel qui voyage emmêlé à celui du monde. L’Inde redéfinit ce qu’on entend par individu. En Occident, nous sommes évidemment très individualistes. En Orient, l’individualité est vécue différemment. Un exemple : en Inde, la foule ne m’a jamais fait peur. Je la trouve liquide. Je ne ressens pas de panique. La même foule, à New York, m’oppresserait. L’Inde positionne le corps, en fait, comme matière et énergie sans l’opposer à l’esprit. Nous ne retrouvons pas la dualité corps/âme, mais plutôt celle de shakti/maya, c’est-à-dire d’énergie/illusion. J’ai aussi vécu l’enfance en Inde. L’enfance à travers l’excitation de la féerie. Grâce au kathakali que je pratiquais dix heures par jour, j’étais plongé dans les grandes épopées de l’Inde, le Mahâbhârata, et le Râmâyana : des histoires de dieux, de démons, de héros mythiques. J’ai eu la chance de personnifier Shiva, Krishna, Hanuman. En Inde, finalement, j’ai trouvé un corps. Et je me suis aperçu que je ressentais moins d’urgence à créer. Ça rejoint ce que disait Yvon tout à l’heure : en Inde, on est déjà tellement, en quelque sorte, dans l’imaginaire que notre soif de création diminue sans nous apeurer ou nous faire douter de notre inspiration. On prend une pause. Et, en général, rentré au pays, la machine à idées se remet en marche avec une énergie renouvelée. Pour répondre de façon plus précise à la question de Janusz, j’ai peu écrit sur l’Inde. Quelques poèmes. Des journaux de voyage dont Poudre de kumkum, dont j’ai parlé. Quelques courts essais sur le kathakali. L’importance de l’Inde, en rapport avec les livres que j’ai publiés, pourrait ainsi paraître négligeable. Mais ce n’est pas le cas. L’Inde fait partie de ma vie et, donc, nourrit mon œuvre de façon substantielle. Je dirais même que j’ai un accent indien, un accent corporel qui me vient de mon apprentissage dukathakali.Cethéâtredanséestenfaituneécriturecorporelle.Àtraverssa pratique, j’ai installé une partie de l’Inde mythologique dans mes muscles, mes ligaments, mes os. Et peut-être aussi dans ma façon de penser. M. J. — J’ai toujours voulu écrire très, très vite, comme Jack Kerouac, sans jamais m’arrêter. Je croyais en l’écriture presque automatique sur laquelle on ne revient pas. Il y a un âge pour ça. Aussi, quand je suis arrivée à Delhi, pour écrire l’Inde, j’ai dû ralentir la main qui pousse le crayon.
148 Écrire l’Inde au Québec : Mythes et réalités de l’Ailleurs
Je ne voulais surtout pas trahir l’Inde, passer à côté de l’essence même de ce pays par manque de culture, d’intuition ou d’ouverture d’esprit. J’ai commencé à rédiger En moins de deux en me fabriquant un personnage à l’image de cette touriste rencontrée dans un café. Elle était désemparée, ne réussissait pas à comprendre le désordre des rues, l’anarchie des bazars. Elle est retournée dans son pays au bout de trois jours. Sans le savoir, elle est devenue, par le pouvoir de l’écriture, un personnage derrière lequel je me suis mise à l’abri, loin du JE si compromettant. Sous l’influence de la lenteur indienne, je rédigeais chaque paragraphe comme un poème. L’Inde m’apprenait à m’asseoir et me répétait : « Prends ton temps pour écrire. Regarde les femmes au champ. Observe les hommes sur la route. Prends beaucoup de temps pour faire ce que tu as à faire. » De plus, un jour, après avoir rencontré un groupe de femmes assises par terre en train de réduire, à la main, à l’aide de marteaux, de grosses pierres en petits cailloux pour en faire de la garnotte, de la pierre concassée, je me suis dit que c’était peut-être ça l’écriture : faire de la garnotte avec les mots, concasser la phrase, la réduire en fins moments d’existence. Dans un autre ordre d’idées, lors de mon dernier voyage, ce n’est pas l’enfance qui m’a interpellée, contrairement à Madame Villemaire, mais bien la vieillesse. On nous a fait rencontrer beaucoup de personnes âgées qui, par-delà certaines incapacités, nous ont légué un regard, une façon de composer avec le présent tout en mémorisant le passé quotidiennement pour ne pas l’oublier, pour construire des portions de réel afin de toujours avoir sous la main des idées pour demain et le jour suivant. Et tous ces jeunes qui prenaient soin de nous! C’était vraiment déroutant de les voir respecter nos rides et le nombre magique d’années que l’on traînait dans nos sacs à dos. Cela nous a donné le goût d’avancer en âge avec plus de confiance. V. R. — J’ai retenu quelques mots-clés. Peut-être pour provoquer un débat, je voudrais lancer quelques idées : l’Inde vis-à-vis du temps qui se présente comme une éternité; le manque d’individualité; le retour à l’enfance quelque part. Ou comme Larry l’a dit, il y a trouvé un corps. Y. R. — J’aimerais revenir sur la chose que Larry a dite, à savoir que là-bas, il n’avait pas ressenti le désir de créer ni d’écrire. Ça m’a fait penser que c’est sans doute la seule fois de ma vie où je suis parti loin de chez moi, sans écrire et sans avoir l’intention d’écrire, parce que ma méthode pour écrire consiste à partir, à aller vivre ailleurs pour écrire. C’est une méthode qui coûte de plus en plus cher. (rires) Et c’est pourquoi j’écris de moins en moins ou que j’apprends à écrire au Québec. Mais là-bas, pendant trois ou quatremois,jen’aipasécrituneligneet,ômiracle,çanem’apasmanqué. M. J. — Malgré les nuits blanches, les repas improvisés, les fatigues de la route, j’écris tous les jours, ou presque. Je crée sur place, mais je reconstruis, retravaille tout au retour. J’aime consacrer du temps à l’écriture, c’est une façon de renouer avec soi, de se recomposer
149 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes physiquement, de questionner le présent. Quand on voyage en Inde, on reçoit beaucoup, on se fait remplir d’images, de voix, de visages, de trains, de bagages, de paysages fascinants et, à un certain moment, on devient trop plein, on déborde, on ne voit plus ce qu’on devrait voir parce qu’on n’en peut plus d’accumuler, parce qu’on s’habitue à l’exotisme. L’Inde est une grande émettrice. Sans cesse, elle communique, envoie des messages. Alors, le matin quand j’écris, c’est à mon tour de transmettre, de prendre la parole ou de faire le vide tout simplement. J’aime accomplir ce rituel du matin. Je me lève tôt dès que les Indiens se mettent à brasser leurs paniers, leurs casseroles, leurs champs. Je travaille jusqu’à midi, mon compagnon de route aussi. Artiste, il dessine, tente à sa façon de se dessaisir des couleurs vives des saris pour mieux plonger dans les noirs denses de la vie. Les Indiens ne nous ont jamais demandé pourquoi nous restions ainsi dans la chambre, le matin. Jamais, ils ne nous ont donné cette impression qu’il fallait sortir dehors pour voyager à tout prix. Les Indiens sont très intuitifs,comprennenttrèsvite,sansgrandsdiscours.Dèsqu’ilssententque vous êtes heureux dans leur pays, ils vous accompagnent, veillent à ce que vous ayez toujours un tchai pour accomplir vos rêves les plus chers. Ailleurs, en Asie, ces moments d’arrêt et de travail étaient souvent perçus comme des comportements anormaux, étranges. Comme si les gens de l’Extrême-Orient avaient de la difficulté à différencier un voyageur d’un touriste… ce que l’Indien sait faire avec tout le flair et l’élégance d’un citoyen du monde. L. T. — J’aimerais ajouter quelque chose. On me pose souvent ces questions : « Comment fais-tu pour retourner là-bas? Un pays où règnent la pauvreté et la saleté. Comment fais-tu pour supporter cela? Quelle est ton action politique? » Des questions, j’imagine, que je me suis aussi posées, mais je les ai sûrement formulées autrement. Des questions souvent confuses qui ne supportent pas une analyse objective. Il y a une certaine malhonnêteté intellectuelle, et aussi une facilité ou une paresse de la pensée, à réduire un pays comme l’Inde à pauvreté et saleté. Les médias n’offrent sans doute que cette image négative de l’Inde aux gens. Je ne nie pas la problématique sociale de ce pays avec ses énormes contradictions, son gouffre d’inégalités, les stigmates de son ancien système de castes, mais quel pays ne souffre pas de pauvreté? Ou, sinon, d’obésité? De consumérisme? Ou d’anorexie? Ou encore d’idéologies sclérosées de droite ou de gauche? Bref, c’est sur place, en Inde, que le voyageur constate qu’il vient d’arriver dans un pays où les extrêmes se côtoient sans cesse dans la rue. Il existe une grande visibilité en Inde : la vie, la mort sont dans les rues. C’est parfois insupportable pour certains. Mais, avec un œil exercé, cette détresse tout aussi bien que cette ivresse d’exister se remarquent aussi dans les rues de Montréal.
150 Écrire l’Inde au Québec : Mythes et réalités de l’Ailleurs
L’Occident a de plus en plus de difficulté à cacher ses morts, ses malades, ses marginaux. Mais bien des gens préfèrent porter le regard sur un malheur lointain plutôt que de constater une déroute trop proche. On pourrait me demander : « Est-ce que, par exemple, tu te sens coupable de ressentir un bien-être existentiel en Inde alors que tu sais que tant de gens souffrent? » On voit bien que cette question pourrait s’appliquer au monde entier, surtout à l’heure de la mondialisation, de l’Internet et du clivage grandissant entre Nord et Sud. En fait, j’ose dire que, malgré la précarité de leur vie, je rencontre plus de gens heureux en Inde qu’ici. Y. V. — Il y a une scène qui me revient. Pour moi, le contact, le premier contact avec l’Inde, après 24 heures d’avion, a été un choc très très très fort. J’avais voyagé en Afrique du Nord, mais les bidonvilles autour de Bombay pendant deux heures et demie, c’est extrêmement difficile, ça ouvre les yeux à une dimension humaine, de désarroi humain que je n’avais jamais vu à Marrakech ou ailleurs. Et ça m’a pris quatre mois et demi avant de revenir à Bombay. Je restais dans mon ashram plein de fleurs et de singes et de paons et j’essayais d’apprendre le marathi pour découvrir que les gens parlaient hindi ou bengali, alors j’ai renoncé. Je me suis mise à parler anglais finalement. Mais au bout de quatre mois et demi, il a fallu, je ne sais plus pourquoi, il a fallu que je retourne à Bombay. En traversant les bidonvilles, cette fois-là, c’était le matin très tôt et c’est toujours un peu sinistre, quand c’est encore gris. Par contre, j’ai vu une scène qui m’a vraiment permis d’accepter toute cette misère. Parce que c’est vraiment difficile à accepter. Je pense, en tout cas, que ç’a été un choc vraiment difficile. Il y avait une petite fille d’à peu près un an qui commençait à marcher. Elle avait une petite robe toute grise, délavée. Elle était nu-pieds. Et il y avait deux petits garçons de cinq ou six ans qui la tenaient par la main. Et elle riait. Elle était en train de faire un immense pas pour l’humanité. C’était simplement une petite fille qui apprenait à marcher dans un bidonville. Et les enfants étaient pleins de joie. Malgré tout ce qu’il y avait autour. Et je me suis dit que : « Bon ben c’est comme ça. » Juste, être témoin de cette scène-là, c’est une grâce. Mais c’est constamment des épiphanies comme ça, l’Inde. Moi, je vivais constamment des moments insupportables où je ne voulais pas voir ce que je voyais. Ou des fois, je ne voulais pas sentir ce que je sentais. Et puis aussi toute la richesse, Larry parlait d’Hanuman, tantôt, le Râmâyana, toute cette magie de la culture indienne. Moi, j’étais dans une démarche spirituelle et la dévotion des Indiens était quelque chose qui m’allait droit au cœur. C’est extraordinaire. Autant dans les temples de Shiva ou de Vishnou, c’est extraordinaire. Je n’ai jamais assisté à une Khumbamelâ où l’on voit des foules extraordinaires. Mais cette dimension de la dévotion, on peut la voir dans un temple, au temple de Mahalakshmi à Bombay, par exemple. Les gens y font des offrandes à l’océan, tout simplement. Et c’est toujours extrêmement
151 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes touchant. Et ça permet d’accepter la poussière, les détritus, les lépreux, les culs-de-jatte. Ce sont des choses que je n’avais jamais vues, même en Égypte, j’avais vu un peu ça, mais pas à une telle échelle… C’est comme si, en Inde, on avait toute la réalité d’un coup. Alors que dans nos vies, par exemple juste la réalité de la mort, ici, c’est tellement camouflé, dans nos salons funéraires et tout ça. Et en Inde, on a directement prise sur la mort. Et c’est peut-être une des dimensions les plus importantes de l’Inde, la mort, je pense. L. T. — Oui, l’Inde est le pays des extrêmes qui cohabitent de façon parfois scandaleuse, parfois loufoque ou surréaliste. C’est un pays où la mort est tangible, non niée, omniprésente. Mon séjour à Bénarès m’a fortement impressionné. C’est une ville où on respire la mort, où la fumée âcre des bûchers funèbres pénètre profondément à l’intérieur de notre angoisse. Et c’est vrai, en Inde, il y a cette prodigieuse capacité d’adoration. On adore quantité de dieux et déesses dans une atmosphère bruyante de joie, dans un bric-à-brac de rituels. Les dieux du panthéon hindou sont hauts en couleur, possèdent des attributs sexuels évidents. Même la statuaire chrétienne, en Inde, s’est métamorphosée. Les anges affichent des seins voluptueux. Les extrêmes, encore! Y. R. — Un petit mot sur les clichés. Je pense qu’il ne faut pas avoir peur des clichés. Si un cliché est quelque chose qui vous permet de mieux vivre et même d’approfondir votre relation aux autres et à vous-même, eh bien ce cliché devient une vérité. Je pense que c’est par une sorte de censure que les gens disent : « Ah, c’est des clichés tout cela! » L’épreuve d’un cliché est la suivante : est-ce qu’un cliché re-transplanté dans votre réalité devient le germe d’une nouvelle vie ou d’un nouveau regard? Si oui, ce cliché est devenu une vérité qui vous conduit à la réalité. Ainsi, il y a des images frappantes en Inde, comme celle de la pauvreté, sur laquelle je reviendrai plus tard, des images qui restent, qui marquent. Tout le monde a une collection de ces images qui les accompagnent, qui les aident à vivre. Une de ces images que tout le monde a vue, c’est cette pratiquedesfemmesetdesenfantsquifontdesdessinssurletrottoir,devant leur maison, avec des craies de couleur et qui, le soir, lavent ces dessins à grande eau. Cette image m’accompagne depuis 25 ans. Je trouve cela absolument incroyable. Bon, c’est un cliché, bien sûr, mais ce cliché m’accompagne, me permet même, je dirais, de surmonter de grandes épreuves. « Lave ton ardoise, me dit cette image, pour que le temps y circule à nouveau. » Ainsi, ce cliché, pour moi, a passé le test. Cette image est devenue, pour moi, porteuse d’une vérité. L. T. — Ce qui me frappe aussi en Inde, surtout dans les villages, c’est la joie. Elle se rencontre tous les jours dans le regard des gens, leur démarche, leur curiosité envers vous, la facilité qu’ils ont à vous offrir leur temps
152 Écrire l’Inde au Québec : Mythes et réalités de l’Ailleurs comme si c’était la moindre des choses. Alors que, vous le savez tous, donner du temps en Occident, ce n’est pas à la portée de chacun. Y. R. — Juste un dernier mot sur la question de la pauvreté, qui a été soulevée tout à l’heure. Dans Les Silences du corbeau, il y a une page qui m’a vraiment coûté. Je me suis dit : « Est-ce que je l’écris? Je vais me faire lapidersij’écriscela,parcequ’onvadire:ehbien,voilàunautreOccidental qui ne veut pas voir la misère, qui la banalise. » Je l’ai écrite quand même, cette page, même si je suis bien conscient que je n’ai pas vu l’Inde que vous avez vue, que je ne connais pas vraiment l’Inde. J’avais un ami indien à Pondichéry qui me disait constamment : « Yvon, Pondichéry, tu sais, c’est pas l’Inde. » Bon, j’ai entrevu un peu Bombay et New Delhi, et je devine un peu à quoi cet ami faisait référence, mais il y avait quand même à Pondichéry de la pauvreté, de la misère, et la page que j’ai écrite finalement, c’était ma perception de cette misère. J’avais l’impression, par exemple, que les mendiants faisaient bien leur travail de mendiants et que tu leur donnes ou non quelque chose, jusqu’à un certain point, ça leur était égal. Leur fonction, c’était de mendier. Je dirais que leur fonction, au fond, c’était d’accepter, je ne dirais pas leur pauvreté, mais d’accepter d’être. Cette façon presque désintéressée de mendier me rendait cette pauvreté-là non pas supportable, mais je dirais, pour utiliser un grand mot, presque nécessaire, ontologiquement valable. Ça m’a beaucoup frappé quand vous disiez tout à l’heure que ça vous a ramené à une sorte d’identité québécoise. Ça ne m’avait jamais frappé, mais quand vous l’avez dit, j’étais d’accord avec vous, car je crois que le fond de la culture québécoise repose sur une expérience de la pauvreté. Ce n’est donc pas uniquement l’expérience du temps, de l’instant suspendu, en Inde, qui m’a ramené à l’enfance, mais probablement aussi la reconnaissance d’une pauvreté qui était, sinon la mienne, celle de ma propre culture ou de mes ancêtres. Ce qui explique peut-être que je n’étais pas plus choqué par l’extrême pauvreté en Inde que par la pauvreté ici. Au contraire, j’y retrouvais comme une sorte de valeur profonde : c’était comme une pauvreté débarrassée du désir de devenir riche, ce qui est différent de l’acceptation de l’exploitation. Bon, c’est une grande histoire, on n’entrera pas là-dedans, ce soir. Y. V. — Ça me rappelle des réflexions que je me suis faites. Parce que je vivais dans un ashram où il y avait une communauté internationale, où il y avait des Australiens, des Canadiens anglais, beaucoup d’anglophones de différentspays,quiavaienttousétécolonisés,donc,parlesAnglais,etjeme retrouvais là comme Québécoise francophone, donc avec un accent, souvent avec un statut d’intouchable par rapport aux Australiens ou… Et ça mefaisaitbeaucoupbrûler,commeondisaitdansmonashram,çatravaillait l’ego.
153 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes
J.P.—Sijerésumecequiaétéditjusqu’àmaintenant,jedirais,àlalumière de vos réminiscences, que l’Inde apparaît comme une expérience critique, complexe, totale, libératrice, mais en même temps créant une certaine forme de dépendance. Après, on n’est plus le même. Pourrions-nous peut-être parler maintenant de la question du comment. Comment écrire l’Inde? V. R. — Je voudrais vous ramener, en fait, à votre écriture, mais à partir des sensations. Tout à l’heure vous avez évoqué l’idée des extrêmes. Je vais citer une phrase qui se trouve dans l’œuvre d’Yvon Rivard, et aussi dans celle de Larry Tremblay. « L’Inde est un pays de merde et d’encens. » Ou prenez une phrase de Monique Juteau. Je la cite : « Elle ne pensait pas que huit cents millions d’habitants ça donnerait tant de monde, tant d’autobus, tant de traces de doigts sur les murs, tant d’usures. » À partir de ces sensations, quelle est la fonction de la censure au moment où vous passez à l’écriture? Parce qu’il y a évidemment le trouble de l’exotisme. On a parlé desclichéstoutàl’heure.Cequim’intéresse,c’estdeconnaîtreleprocessus de l’écriture, qui vous oblige à choisir certaines choses, et à en éliminer d’autres. Y. V. — Je ne sais pas si devant l’Inde, on a le luxe d’inventer autre chose, parce qu’on est débordé par toutes les sensations, justement, qui sont très vives. Je me rappelle une sensation que j’ai essayé de décrire dans un texte, mais qui s’échappe, c’est la sensation des pétales de fleurs dans un vent chaud. Et ça, il n’y a qu’en Inde que j’ai eu ça et c’est une sensation exquise et en même temps très très difficile à décrire, mais il me semble que tout le réel est comme ça. Une succession de sensations qui peuvent être aussi moins agréables. J’évoquais les bûchers funéraires tantôt et cette odeur très très difficile à supporter.Enmêmetempsdesodeursexquises,simplement.Jemerappelle le parfum des fleurs en Inde, c’est comme nulle part ailleurs. La dimension des roses aussi. M. J. — Moi, c’est écrire les pauvres de l’Inde. Je me suis dit non, ça va faire trop cliché! Mais je tenais à ce texte, je l’ai recommencé dans trois villages, refait dans trois villes. Toujours le même constat d’échec : non, ce n’est pas correct, ce n’est pas ça. Au début, je croyais qu’il fallait que je sois fidèle, noire, sans espoir. Tantôt je devenais trop abstraite pour un sujet aussi concret, tantôt j’allais du côté du déjà dit. Puis, un jour, j’ai compris ce qui n’allait pas : je me censurais trop. Je me décide alors à écrire ma vision, ma propre perception des pauvres, advienne que pourra. Il y a parfois certains sujets, comme ça, qu’on hésite à explorer parce qu’on n’a pas tous les papiers requis. Mais quand on est poète, à défaut d’avoir des papiers, on a certainsdroits.Droitsd’errer,deseperdre,desetromperetdeseretrouver. L. T. — J’ai voulu réfléchir au système des castes. De ne pas, au départ, le juger à partir de ma propre culture. Même si le gouvernement indien l’a aboli depuis longtemps, il demeure actif dans la vie de tous les jours. On ne
154 Écrire l’Inde au Québec : Mythes et réalités de l’Ailleurs peut pas effacer d’un coup de plume des siècles d’habitudes et de comportements sociaux. J’ai compris, après plusieurs séjours en Inde, que ce système ne trouve pas son origine dans l’hindouisme, comme on le croit facilement, mais plutôt dans le brahmanisme, qui a structuré la société indienne en profondeur. Bien sûr, ce fonctionnement social a ordonné, orienté les classes sociales et définit les relations entre les gens et même prescrit les fonctions, les emplois, les droits. Les croyances religieuses se sont greffées autour de cette armature. A posteriori, on pourrait ainsi penser que la croyance à la réincarnation n’est qu’un effet du système des castes puisque celui-ci indique à l’individu, dès sa naissance, sa place dans la société en lui rappelant que sa conduite lui procurera, selon qu’elle respecte ou non les droits et les devoirs de sa caste, une amélioration ou une dégradation au cours de sa prochaine vie. Cette sensation de « naître à sa place » est si forte qu’on la retrouve même chez les chrétiens en Inde qui reproduisent, à leur façon, la hiérarchie des castes. Cette systématisation, on la retrouve bien sûr au cours de l’histoire en Occident sous différentes formes qui se sont passablement modifiées. Ce qui m’a frappé au début en Inde, c’est la lenteur des changements sociaux. Mais, depuis une dizaine d’années, c’est de moins en moins vrai. L’Inde bouge. À chaque nouveau voyage, j’en vois les bienfaits et les méfaits. Qui maintenant peut échapper à la suprématie de l’automobile et à l’appétit de consommation? La classe moyenne en Inde prend de l’ampleur. On sent une activité économique bourdonnante. Et on se demande comment l’Inde va conjuguer croyances séculaires, comportements sociaux et une économie qui se distancie des valeurs traditionnelles. Malgré ces changements sociaux et économiques, l’Inde, le pays, la terre, le ciel, la lumière, le temps, cette qualité particulière de l’air, cette façon qu’a le son de se propager, le cri incessant des corneilles, cette sensation unique que nous procure le fait d’être en Inde perdure. Et à cette sensation existentielle se rattache une perception particulière du corps. En Inde, le corps en cache un autre qui en cache un autre. Chacun de ces corps est une porte qui s’ouvre sur une autre dimension. Il n’y a pas cette dualité cartésienne qui crée un fossé entre la matière et l’esprit. L’ascèse, des pratiques respiratoires et énergétiques, sexuelles, ou encore la danse permettent de comprendre cette superposition de corps, cette profondeur qui fait du visible une simple couche de l’invisible. En Occident, on accorde beaucoup d’importance à la performance sportive, à l’éclat, au changement apparent. Alors qu’en Orient, on tend vers un meilleur contrôle intérieur, une meilleure maîtrise du souffle, par exemple. Cette différence, on la remarque facilement dans le domaine de la danse. La danse classique indienne sculpte le temps en le divisant grâce à une mathématique rythmique complexe et rigoureuse. Le danseur établit un rapport incessant avec le sol. Alors que le ballet classique, en Occident, n’a qu’un fantasme : s’envoler, quitter le plancher, défier les lois de la gravité. La profusion de gestes du danseur indien, livrés avec une précision vive
155 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes comme l’éclair, cache donc le désir d’atteindre la pureté d’un temps rare, divisé jusqu’au calme, jusqu’à l’éternité. De même, l’expression religieuse en Inde, avec ses innombrables ramifications et son labyrinthe de pensées et de symboles, peut se voir comme un corps multiple, agitant des bras surnuméraires et des rangées de têtes. Cependant, pour l’œil exercé, cette multiplicité protège le secret d’une pensée unifiée. V. R. — J’ai une question pour Larry Tremblay. Cela fait quand même 20 ans depuis votre premier voyage en Inde, et vous y êtes retourné plusieurs fois. Comment expliquer le fait que l’Inde n’a jamais figuré dans votre écriture avant Poudre de kumkum, qui est quand même une œuvre très récente? L. T. — J’ai l’impression, en fait, d’avoir beaucoup écrit sur l’Inde mais pas avec du papier et un stylo. Je l’ai plutôt fait dans l’espace avec mon corps en pratiquant le kathakali qui, je le répète, s’apparente à une écriture gestuelle grâce à son langage des mudras. Cependant, je ne nie pas qu’il y ait, chez moi, une pudeur à écrire sur l’Inde. Peur des clichés? Ou peut-être, j’accumule sans le savoir, une matière indienne qui va un jour prendre forme dans un livre… V. R. — Oui, mais je voudrais que vous en parliez. L. T. — Eh bien, j’aurais envie de faire parler une vache, par exemple. (rires) Sans blague, la liberté des vaches qui se promènent dans les rues des grandes villes indiennes, mêlées au trafic, mangeant n’importe quoi, du plastique au papier journal… c’est quand même fascinant. J’ai le sentiment qu’une vache indienne aurait d’étonnantes choses à raconter. Sans oublier, évidemment, toute la charge symbolique que possède la vache dans l’imaginaire indien. J’ai aussi souvent imaginé comment pourrait se comporter une vache québécoise égarée par magie dans la circulation de Calcutta! Y. R. — D’abord sur la question de la censure, je vais reprendre ce que Monique disait. Je ne crois pas qu’un écrivain doive se censurer. Il est redevable de la vérité de sa perception. Je n’ai pas l’impression que je connais l’Inde. Tout ce que je connais, c’est une part de réalité qui m’a été révélée par l’Inde. Je n’ai absolument pas la prétention de connaître l’Inde, mais mon ambition à moi, ce ne serait pas de faire parler les vaches, ce serait plutôt de faire parler les Indiens, parce que j’ai eu finalement très peu de contact avec eux, sauf des contacts usuels, quotidiens. Et je trouve que cette difficulté de communiquer avec les Indiens, le côté, je dirais, imperméable des Indiens fait aussi partie de mon expérience de l’Inde : c’est comme si en leur présence, j’avais été renvoyé à moi-même, comme si les Indiens étaient un miroir qui me réfléchissait. Je ne connais pas les Indiens, je ne connais pas vraiment l’Inde. Tout ce que je connais, je le répète, c’est ce que l’Inde m’a révélé, ce qu’elle a déposé en moi, et, à ce niveau-là, c’est sûr qu’il ne faut pas se censurer. Si j’ai perçu telle chose de
156 Écrire l’Inde au Québec : Mythes et réalités de l’Ailleurs telle façon, je n’ai pas la prétention que ce soit la vérité, mais je dois dire cette chose, je dois dire la vérité de ce que j’ai perçu ou la vérité de ce que j’ai cru percevoir, sinon, on n’écrit plus, on fait un reportage soumis à la rectitude politique, on écrit ce qui va être accepté par un public qui sait déjà ce qu’il veut entendre. M. J. — Mais, plutôt que de parler davantage de censure, je préfèrerais parler de cette crainte de trahir, par ignorance, ce que je voyais. Combien de voyageurs trahissent l’Inde parce qu’elle n’a pas répondu à leurs attentes de bipèdes pressés! J’aimais tellement l’Inde que je ne voulais pas en faire un mauvais croquis. De plus, j’ai vécu l’Inde du seul point de vue de la rue. C’est comme tenter de raconter une montagne en ne la regardant que d’en bas;dedécrireungéantennerestantquesursongrosorteil.Certainsd’entre nous ont découvert l’Inde en s’installant dans un ashram ou en passant par une école selon leur passion, ainsi chacun a son point de vue, sa perception. Mais pour en revenir à ce point de vue de la rue, j’aimerais le lier à mon incessante quête du dire. C’est la rue indienne, le volet intime de la vie publique dans la rue qui m’a aidée à vraiment me confier, à me débarrasser de cette pudeur occidentale envers les choses intimes. Les romans écrits en Inde m’ont souvent éloignée de ce JE si compromettant, de cette voix de l’intime qui n’est parvenue à s’affirmer que dans Des jours de chemins perdus et retrouvés ainsi que dans Le voyage a dit. Grâce à la rue indienne, j’ai appris à m’étaler, à parler de mon corps et de celui de mon compagnon. Dans la rue indienne, on entre constamment dans la vie intime des gens par le marchand de thé, prolongement de la cuisine dans la rue; par les barbiers et les masseurs, prolongement du corps dans la rue; par le sari, prolongement de la femme dans la rue; par l’enfant, prolongement de la famille dans la rue; par les charpoy (lits indiens en corde) prolongement de la chambre à coucher dans la rue. On vit si près des gens qu’on a l’impression d’être dans leur maison, tantôt comme invitée spéciale, tantôt comme membre de leur grande famille. L. T. — C’est l’Inde des villages que je préfère. J’ai eu la chance de vivre dans un village, Cheruthuruthy, là où se trouve le kalamandalam où j’étudiais le kathakali. C’est dans le déroulement des jours, au sein d’une pratique quotidienne, qu’on arrive peu à peu à pénétrer l’Inde. Mais, au début, il y a beaucoup de choses qui nous échappent. Nous ne savons pas comment interpréter les attitudes, les regards… les gens ne vont pas dire ce qu’ils pensent ou on croit les avoir saisis et puis, surprise! Ils pensaient juste lecontraire.Parexemple,cemouvementdelatêtequelesIndiensfontàtout moment, j’ai pris des années avant de saisir si ça voulait dire oui ou non. Pour atteindre l’autre dans sa subjectivité, il faut d’abord passer par la couche sociale et familiale, très importante en Inde. Le quant-à-soi est difficile. Il y a beaucoup de non-dits. Des secrets? Sans doute. Des tabous? Certainement. Je crois que plus la foule nous entoure, plus le besoin est
157 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes grand de trouver en soi un lieu où brûle, juste pour son propre regard, une bougie. Y. V. — Ce geste-là est tout à fait extraordinaire. Ce mouvement qui n’est ni oui ni non. L. T. — Juste de savoir si c’est oui ou non. Si on peut le faire ou ne pas le faire. Vaut-il mieux se présenter en retard ou à l’avance? Ou bêtement à l’heure? Bref, les codes culturels… mais c’est Vijaya qui devrait prendre la parole pour nous expliquer le côté obscur des Indiens. V. R. — Enfin, vous avez droit à vos impressions, bien sûr. (rires) Ce qui est plus complexe, c’est ce rapport, enfin ce pont-là d’une culture à une autre. À cause des raisons historiques, nous sommes plus ouverts à l’Occident que le contraire. En arrivant ici, le choc culturel pour un Indien urbain éduqué est beaucoup plus dans les nuances, beaucoup plus dans les subtilités. Ce n’est pas le grand choc auquel vous, vous avez à faire face quand vous venez en Inde pour la première fois. Vos réactions sont compréhensibles, car nous nous exprimons plus avec des gestes. Dans une civilisation qui a perfectionné le rationalisme, est-ce qu’il y a de la place pour l’ambiguïté? Je ne sais pas. C’est une question que je vous pose. Est-ce qu’ilyadelaplace pour l’ambiguïté sauf dans l’imaginaire? Aux dires des Occidentaux, les Indiens vivent dans une ambiguïté complexe. Il faut comprendre qu’il y a des cultures où les questions n’ont pas de réponses. Et ce constat, que toute question n’a pas de réponse, est inacceptable selon le rationalisme occidental. Sans vouloir tomber dans le piège de l’essentialisme, puis-je constater que l’Indien s’incline devant le grand mystère? Nous sommes peut-être dans l’autre extrême : dans un état de résignation. L. T. — Je dis souvent que la ligne droite n’existe pas en Inde. Ça résume peut-être ce que tu veux dire. On ne doit pas s’attendre à une réponse parce qu’on pose une question. Ce serait trop simple ou pas assez compliqué! Y. V. — C’est une culture très féminine, comparée à la culture occidentale, qui est encore très patriarcale et qui se transforme un peu. Mais la culture indienne est vraiment une culture du féminin. Toute cette dimension du panthéon indien, où il y a beaucoup de dieux, mais il y a aussi cette Shakti qui est derrière tout et qui anime tout et toute cette dimension (Larry parlait des différents corps tantôt) et toute cette myriade de mystères, en fait, vous en parlez bien, Vijaya, je pense, de tout cet inconnu, en fait, ce mystère profond de la réalité que l’Inde reconnaît et que les Indiens reconnaissent dans leur vie quotidienne et avec lequel nous, on a encore beaucoup de mal. Je pense qu’au Québec, on n’est pas très rationalistes, on a quand même un petit fond amérindien assez fort qui nous rend... V. R. — Je généralise aussi.
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Y. V. — Oui c’est ça. Mais l’Occident, en général, je pense que c’est encore marqué par le patriarcat, la ligne droite et tout ça. Et je pense que l’Inde, vraiment, échappe à ça, dans cette dimension très féminine de la culture. Membre du public (voix d’homme) — Merci beaucoup pour ces magnifiques récits. Je voudrais vous poser une question. À mon avis, quand on sent une autre réalité, on sent que cette réalité est autre, cela passe souvent par un tiers, comme disait Bakhtine. C’est très important dans les récits orientalistes. J’aime beaucoup cette observation d’un orientaliste qui voyageait à travers l’Égypte, et qui a écrit dans son carnet : « Quand tu traverses l’Égypte avec un guide, c’est le guide qui voit l’Égypte. Et vous, vous voyez le guide. » C’est capital, cette figure intermédiaire qui présente une autre culture. Est-ce qu’ilyaeuunetelle figure dans votre cas? J. P. — J’imagine qu’Yvon Rivard pourrait répondre longuement à cette question. Je pense surtout à l’importance donnée à cet égard à la figure de mère dans Les Silences du corbeau. Y. R. — Oui, la figure de mère, et plus précisément celle de Mère, la compagne de Sri Aurobindo. Vous parliez de la capacité d’accueil de l’Inde, d’assimiler une autre culture, de la digérer. Je trouve que le philosophe Aurobindo est un très bel exemple de ça, non seulement parce qu’ilaétudiéenAngleterre,maissurtoutparcequ’ilaparfaitementassimilé la culture grecque, qui est la source même de notre culture. Héraclite, entre autres. Il a écrit un petit livre merveilleux sur Héraclite. Et toute sa pensée consiste à faire une sorte de synthèse de l’Occident et de l’Orient, de la pensée grecque et de la pensée indienne. Donc, pour moi le tiers dont vous parlez, le guide, que j’avais lu pendant dix ans avant d’aller en Inde, c’est bien sûr Aurobindo, qui avait un pied dans l’Occident et, pour rester dans le nonsense, deux pieds en Orient. C’est lui qui a été mon guide. Vous avez raison : il y a toujours un guide, que ce soit un philosophe, un ami qui nous accueille là-bas, sinon ce serait sans doute cacophonique et dangereux de découvrir seul une culture et d’être projeté dans une culture sans aucun guide, comme vous dites. Et c’est sans doute pourquoi, au fond, on découvre d’autant mieux une autre culture si on y a accès par quelqu’un qui l’a découverte avant nous, qui nous la redonne d’une certaine façon. Surtout quand il s’agit d’une culture complètement autre. Ce qu’on entend dire souvent, contre les gens qui sont allés en Inde, ou contre les produits d’une certaine contre-culture, c’est que ces gens-là étaient noyés dans une culture très riche qu’ils n’arrivaient pas à assimiler, faute d’un guide ou faute d’y être resté assez longtemps, ou, je dirais, faute d’une culture-mère assez forte. Quand j’ai lu le petit livre d’Aurobindo sur Héraclite, ça me révélait Héraclite et ça me révélait l’Inde. Alors là je me dis que, oui, il y a possibilité d’abattre les pseudo-frontières entre les cultures, mais que ça prend beaucoup de travail; je ne sais pas, par exemple, combien de temps Aurobindo a mis pour assimiler la culture grecque. Et sans doute, si on veut
159 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes faire la même chose, il faut faire beaucoup plus que lire quelques livres ou passer quelques mois en Inde. Y. V. — J’avais aussi un tiers dans mon rapport avec l’Inde. J’ai été disciple d’un gourou indien pendant neuf ans. C’était une femme qui venait de la tradition du shivaïsme du Cachemire. Et ç’a été pour moi une occasion extraordinaire d’apprendre, de découvrir la culture par l’entremise de sa philosophie et aussi de ses pratiques de yoga. Et ç’a été la découverte par exemple de nombreux mantras et de toute une culture. On avait, par exemple, des (transcription approximative) pandits qui venaient de Varanasi qui nous apprenaient le Rudram, qui est un texte vieux de 4 ou 5000 ans. Et c’était très impressionnant pour moi de voir des gens qui, par la tradition orale, ceux de la caste des Brahmanes, se transmettent de génération en génération leur savoir, depuis des siècles. Et on avait accès… Il y avait… c’était un côté Disneyland spirituel, bien sûr, que j’ai vu et qui fait que je me suis éloignée de ça, mais j’ai appris beaucoup. J’ai appris beaucoup à travers cette démarche-là et ça m’a donc permis de saisir un aspect de cette culture indienne parce que la réalité est tellement multiple qu’effectivement, il faut avoir un guide qui nous aide à cerner certains éléments. Y. R. — Juste un tout petit mot. Un autre exemple de ça. Tout à l’heure, j’ai mentionné que j’avais découvert l’Inde par Guy Lafond. Ce poète vient de terminer la traduction de Cavitri.Jene sais pas si vous savez ce que cela représente, c’est l’épopée d’Aurobindo, des centaines de pages! Lafond a doncconsacrédixansdesavieàtraduireCavitri.Àceniveau,ilestclairque les échanges entre cultures ne sont plus du tourisme. C’est là-dessus, au fond, qu’on doit tabler si on veut avoir une véritable connaissance de l’autre. J. P. — Je constate que les expériences avec l’Inde sont souvent débordantes. Il est difficile d’en discuter en se situant uniquement sur le plan esthétique, puisqu’elles touchent également à d’autres dimensions (philosophiques, sociales, culturelles) de l’existence. J’aurais toutefois une question « littéraire » pour Yolande Villemaire. Cette question porte sur l’influence du modèle épique indien dans votre écriture. J’ai relu, il y a quelques jours, votre roman magnifique, Le Dieu dansant et ce qui m’a frappé, c’est la présence du style épique dans ce texte. Il s’agit d’un roman, c’est vrai, mais on peut lire aussi cette œuvre plus profondément en faisant attention à sa dimension épique. Quand on parle des épopées dans le contexte indien, on pense tout de suite aux légendaires Râmâyana et Mahâbhârata. Des références directes à ces deux monuments littéraires se retrouvent d’ailleurs dans le roman, mais l’idée d’inter- textualité est plus généralisée, il me semble, allant jusqu’à la reproduction de la structure de ces épopées elles-mêmes. D’ailleurs, ce qui fascine la
160 Écrire l’Inde au Québec : Mythes et réalités de l’Ailleurs critique, surtout occidentale (puisque de son point de vue ce phénomène est beaucoup moins évident que pour un lecteur indien), c’est ce fameux emboîtement incessant de récits dans ces œuvres qui constitue peut-être, à un niveau plus élevé, un trait tout à fait spécifique de la culture et de la pensée indiennes. Larry a fait mention de l’existence de plusieurs couches du corps, mais il y a aussi des couches de conscience. Il existe des écoles philosophiques hindoues qui en décèlent un bon nombre, en fait on n’en finit plus. Par rapport à votre texte, ceci donne un effet de lecture, dirais-je, paradoxal, car il oblige le lecteur à une certaine forme de silence dans la réception de l’œuvre, qui témoigne simultanément d’une grande richesse du monde représenté. Y. V. — Cet emboîtement des récits est la structure même des Mille et une nuits de la culture orientale, en effet, et cet enchâssement, cette mise en abyme est une figure qui m’a toujours fascinée. J’ai trouvé au cours de mon séjour en Inde des clés d’écriture qui m’ont permis d’approfondir mon travail sur le texte comme objet sonore, en prose comme en poésie. Rimbaud l’a écrit dans son « Sonnet des voyelles », le a est noir. Je l’ai vu, à force de chanter des mantras en sanscrit, pendant des heures. Le a est bel et bien noir! Je me rappelle du cours d’un vieil érudit sur les voyelles du sanscrit. Il expliquait qu’on peut arriver à voir dans la lettre a l’essentiel de la réalité. Alors, toute la théorie de la « Matrikashakti » (la Mère du langage) est une théorie qui vient d’un texte du Viveka Chudamani. Je ne le prononce peut-être pas correctement là, ça fait quelques années. Et c’est que… vous parlez des récits dans les récits, c’est une fascination pour le Râmânaya, qui a imprégné tout le livre. Je suis totalement fascinée par le Râmânaya. Je l’ai lu à plusieurs reprises. Je l’ai joué. Je l’ai raconté. J’en ai fait des décors, etc. Et j’envie Larry qui a dansé « Hanuman ». C’est un personnage que j’adore, le grand singe blanc, il est tellement extraordinaire. Donc la « Matrikashakti » est la clef même de l’enchâssement. Ce que ça dit, c’est que — ça veut dire la mère, la mère du langage —, c’est que dans chacune des lettres de l’alphabet réside la texture même de la réalité. J’ai toujours été fascinée par l’enchâssement depuis La Vie en prose, en 1980, un de mes premiers romans, c’est cette dimension de l’enchâssementquim’intéresse,maisdanslalangue.Alorsjeneparlepasle sanscrit,jelechantais,maisdelààleparler,c’estpaslamêmechose.C’était des répétitions surtout. C’était une langue qui m’a fascinée, j’ai quand même étudié certains textes parlant de cette langue-là. Alors, c’est cette dimension-là, peut-être plus que la dimension épique, c’est la dimension de l’enchâssement dans la technique de la langue même, et du sanscrit en particulier. M. J. — Merci bien pour cette réponse. Je m’aperçois que le temps file… Avant de vous quitter, j’aimerais vous offrir un présent. Je suis une païenne de la poésie, parce que, chaque fois que je récite des poèmes, j’utilise des
161 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes objets qui résument le dire et conduisent directement au cœur du poème. Je crois que c’est une influence de l’Inde, de son côté tactile et tangible, qu’on retrouvedanslesritesetcérémonies,commemouillerlemuseaudelavache en bronze; installer des petits lits pour les dieux dans un recoin d’un temple, déshabiller le dieu, ouvrir le lit lors d’une cérémonie, le matin, rhabiller le dieu, fermer le lit lors d’une autre cérémonie; pousser la balançoire de Krishna inlassablement. J’ai donc apporté, en guise de cadeau, des verres pour tous ces thés bus dans des verres. V. R. — Vous voulez les poser sur la table? M. J. — Dans chaque verre vous trouverez des petits riens : un bout de tissu fleuri pour résumer les saris colorés des femmes; un animal en plastique pour vous rappeler l’importance des animaux en Inde; une odeur, une pincée de garam masala (épices mélangées); un carré de sucre, symbole de partage, pour évoquer ce goût universel des hommes. Ce cadeau, que je vous offre à la manière simple et poétique des Indiens, est inspiré d’un fait : un soir, je parle avec une petite fille aux longues nattes. Parler est un bien grand mot, car en réalité, je ne parviens qu’à prononcer un mot en hindi bandar (singe), puis je compte jusqu’à cinq : ek, do, teen, char, panch… mais, c’est comme si on avait parlé toute la nuit. Le lendemain, la petite fille m’offre un bout de tissu enroulé dans un ruban, puis elle s’en va heureuse, et moi aussi… (elle distribue les cadeaux aux participants et au public). V. R.— Une dernière question avant de clore la séance. Si vous aviez à écrire votre prochaine œuvre sur l’Inde, est-ce que vous adopteriez une autre approche? Quels sont vos projets d’avenir concernant l’Inde? L. T. — J’aimerais écrire un film qui se passe en Inde. Ou une pièce de théâtre. Ou les deux. Pourquoi pas? Y. V. — J’aimerais bien écrire sur l’Inde contemporaine, enfin, celle que j’ai connue il y a une dizaine d’années, parce que ça se passe au Moyen Âge indien, mon livre. C’est très difficile pour moi de parler de l’Inde contemporaine. C’est plus difficile. V. R. — Monique, vous avez quelque chose à ajouter? M. J. — Je ne sais pas. Chose certaine, je trouve que la poésie est beaucoup plus adaptée au voyage. On travaille le poème pendant une semaine ou deux. Ensuite on a l’impression d’avoir fini. Et ce sont des instants qu’on transporte. Tandis qu’avec le roman, on transporte des personnages. Parfois, les personnages deviennent trop lourds. Parfois, ils deviennent paresseux. Ils ne veulent pas rencontrer les Indiens. (rires) Ça devient vraiment malcommode. Malgré ses difficultés, le roman est tentant parce qu’il permet de sortir de l’autofiction pour aller vers l’Autre. Et si je retournais en Inde, ce serait pour explorer un aspect culturel : la nourriture, les premiers contacts avec le tchai indien, le sucre, le lait, les grains de
162 Écrire l’Inde au Québec : Mythes et réalités de l’Ailleurs cardamome. Le marchand de thé pourrait m’ouvrir des portes en ce sens. Il ne me reste plus qu’à repartir, qu’à le suivre pour en savoir plus long sur sa vie. Y. R. — Oui, j’aimerais retourner en Inde. Et si j’écrivais à nouveau sur l’Inde, j’aimerais laisser davantage la parole aux Indiens, si j’avais l’occasion de mieux les connaître et de percer ce mur dont on parlait tout à l’heure. Sinon, j’aimerais amener un Indien dans les forêts au nord de La Tuque et écrire ce qui risque de lui arriver. (Rires). V.R.—Noustenonsàremercierlesquatreécrivainsinvitéspourcettetable ronde d’avoir consacré la soirée pour ce premier évènement littéraire sur l’Inde. Espérons que le succès de cette tentative nous encouragera à organiser d’autres rencontres de ce genre afin de poursuivre ce véritable dialogue de cultures. Applaudissements.
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Research Note
Note de recherche
Serge Granger1
La recherche historique sur les relations entre l’Asie et le Canada d’avant 1850
Résumé Cette note de recherche souligne le manque de recherches historiques sur les relations entre l’Asie et le Canada d’avant 1850 malgré les liens établis par le colonialisme franco-britannique. Par ces liens tissés au cours de l’histoire, plusieurs domaines de l’activité humaine ont accentué la mondialisation de la culture rapprochant l’Asie au Canada. Peu d’études historiques abordent les relations entre le Canada et l’Asie dans les domaines religieux, commercial, politique et/ou littéraire. L’auteur vise donc à exposer les différentes facettes des relations Canada-Asie et comment ce vaste terrain d’étude demeure relativement inexploité.
Abstract This research note underscores the lack of historical research on the relationship between Asia and Canada prior to 1850, in spite of the ties formed by Anglo-French colonialism. Because of these historical links, many spheres of human activity are now influenced by a globalized culture that has drawn Asia closer to Canada. Few historical studies have dealt with Canada-Asia relations with regard to religion, trade, politics and/or literature. The aim of this research note is to explore the various aspects of Canada-Asia relations and the extent to which this vast field of enquiry has, to date, remained largely unexplored.
Les recherches historiques sur les relations entre l’Asie et le Canada d’avant 1850 sont pratiquement inexistantes. À quoi peut-on attribuer ce manque flagrant de recherches sur un sujet tout aussi étonnant que passionnant? Plusieurs raisons s’offrent à nous : les sources éparpillées aux quatre coins du monde rendent la recherche impraticable ou fortement périlleuse, les connaissances des sources asiatiques nécessitent des compé- tences linguistiques extraordinaires, le nombre restreint d’Asiatiques au Canada avant 1867 a laissé peu de traces écrites et l’historiographie canadienne sur l’Asie se penche naturellement sur l’histoire de l’immigration asiatique apparente après la Confédération. Néanmoins, l’Asie était bien présente au Canada avant 1850, soit par l’entremise du colonialisme franco-britannique, soit par celle de la mondialisation de la culture.
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Le colonialisme franco-britannique en Asie et ses répercussions au Canada Comme le mentionne Alice Jean E. Lunn dans sa thèse de doctorat, Développement économique de la Nouvelle-France 1713-1760 (1986), le statut colonial de la Nouvelle-France limitait les échanges commerciaux entre le Canada et l’Asie. Le mercantilisme, une caractéristique de la politique coloniale française, restreignait les visées économiques des colonies et entraînait plutôt leur subordination à la métropole parisienne (237). Lorsqu’ils avaient l’occasion d’échanger avec l’Asie, certains marchands français et canayens répondaient avec enthousiasme, comme dans le cas du ginseng, mais la plupart des lois restreignaient la fluidité des échanges entre l’Amérique et l’Asie.
Aucune étude historique n’examine le rôle de la Compagnie des Indes orientales au Canada. Fondée en 1664 par Jean-Baptiste Colbert (1619-1683), ministre de Louis XIV, Roi de France, la Compagnie des Indes possédait des comptoirs à travers le monde, y compris le Château Ramezay à Montréal et Pondichéry en Inde. De l’Inde, les navires voguaient sur Canton dans le sud de la Chine. La ville de Lorient en Bretagne fut créée pour devenir le centre opérationnel du colonialisme français dans le monde, surtout l’Asie. En 1719, John Law introduisit le papier monnaie en France et fusionna la Compagnie d’Occident (Montréal) avec la Compagnie orientale des Indes. Des efforts louables furent entrepris pour accroître le commerce entre l’Asie et la France, une exposition se tint à Lorient en 1738, mais, signe des temps, la Compagnie mit fin à ses activités en 1769 après la guerre de Sept ans (1756-1763), coupant ainsi la Nouvelle-France du réseau colonial français. La presque totalité des études sur le commerce se limite à la compagnie des Cent associés ou bien au commerce de la fourrure (Jean Hamelin, Économie et société en Nouvelle-France, 1960). Aucune étude n’indique comment les produits asiatiques se rendaient en Nouvelle-France. Par contre, Pierre Berthiaume (Relation des avantures de Mathieu Sagean, Canadien, 1999) a examiné le coureur des mers, Mathieu Sagean (1655-1710?), qu’on croit être le premiercanayenàs’êtrerenduenIndeetenChine(138-155).Sageanaurait quitté Surat (Inde) le 14 mai 1698 et serait parvenu à Tainan (Taiwan) et Xiamen (Fujian) trois mois plus tard. Berthiaume suggère que Sagean aurait inventé ses voyages au fil de rencontres avec des marins portugais et espagnols.
Le commerce entre la Nouvelle-France et l’Asie demeura relativement restreint durant la période coloniale française, puisque l’élite, peu nombreuse, importait en petite quantité les produits asiatiques. À titre d’exemple, de la porcelaine de la Compagnie des Indes, appartenant à l’épouse du seigneur de Terrebonne fut offerte à Madame Elizabeth de Ramezay en 1743, propriétaire du Château Ramezay qui le vendit à la Compagnie en 1745. Les principaux produits asiatiques importés étaient la
168 La recherche historique sur les relations entre l’Asie et le Canada d’avant 1850 soie, le thé, la porcelaine, les laques et le papier peint de Chine. Plusieurs plantes, notamment les fleurs ornementales d’Asie, pénétrèrent le continent nord-américain. Le coton, les toiles imprimées et les épices, dont le poivre, provenaient du sous-continent indien. Malgré tout, si le monopole des importations de produits luxueux était restreint, il n’en demeurait pas moins une prérogative évidente, comme l’atteste un édit royal de 1733 prohibant tout navigateur, marchand et marin de rapporter des textiles et tissus asiatiques en Nouvelle-France. (Arrest du Conseil d’Estat du Roy le 9 mai 1733).
Curieusement, le réseau jésuite favorisait le commerce entre la Nouvelle-France et la Chine. En 1715, à Caughnawaga (Kahnawake) près de Montréal, le père jésuite François Lafitau (1681-1746) découvrit du ginseng, qui fut exporté vers la Chine. Lafitau écrivit son Mémoire présenté à son Altesse Royale Monseigneur le Duc D’Orléans, Régent de France, concernant la précieuse plante du gin-seng de Tartarie, découverte en Amérique par le père Joseph- François Lafitau de la Compagnie de Jésus, missionnaire du Sault St-Louis (1718) en signalant que les Mohawks se servaient du ginseng depuis des siècles. Lafitau fit parvenir des spécimens à Pétrus Jartoux (1668-1720), qui, à ce moment, était employé par l’empereur chinois Kangxi (1654-1722). La Compagnie des Indes sous-estimait l’importance du potentiel économique du ginseng comme produit d’exportation vers la Chine. C’est pourquoi, jusqu’aux années 1750, la Compagnie des Indes permit à ses officiers et marins d’apporter du ginseng à Canton à titre privé. De 1749 à 1751, les commerçants français de La Rochelle ordonnaient à leurs associés du Québec d’acheter du ginseng pour l’exporter vers la Chine. Les propos de l’académicien suédois Kalm furent recueillis dans le livre d’Hospice Verreausur le mémoire de Lafitau : « During my stay in Canada, all the merchants at Québec and Montréal, received orders from their correspondents in France, to send over a quantity of gin-seng, there being an uncommon demand for it in this summer. » (41) Le commerce s’épanouit jusqu’en 1754, moment où le prélèvement démesuré du ginseng fit pratiquement disparaître la plante. Des profiteurs commencèrent à envoyer du ginseng de mauvaise qualité, ce qui mena les Chinois à mettre fin à leurs achats.
La présence britannique au Canada (1760-1867) accrut les possibilités de commerce avec l’Asie. Premièrement, l’Angleterre remplaça les politiques de la France par des politiques commerciales plus libérales, moins restrictives. Deuxièmement, ce changement multipliait les occasions de contact entre le Canada et l’Asie, car l’empire britannique possédait un réseau colonial imposant pour le commerce et le transport. Comme le souligne R. T. Taylor dans Canada in the European Age 1453-1919 (1987), l’empire britannique, déjà bien établi en Orient, intégra le Canada (476), qui bénéficiait des traités que signait l’empire ou que celui-ci imposait aux pays asiatiques, à son réseau colonial.
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La ville de Québec occupait une place stratégique dans le dévelop- pement du transport vers l’Asie avant le milieu du XIXe siècle. Sans chemin de fer, les navires devaient la plupart du temps accoster à Québec pour décharger les produits et les passagers qui arrivaient d’Asie. Avec l’accroissement de l’élite d’origine britannique à Québec et dans le reste du Canada, les produits asiatiques furent popularisés, ce qui fit monter la demande. En 1824, le commerce du thé, à lui seul, transforma l’East India Company en un puissant lobby qui cherchait à obtenir des gouvernements du Haut et du Bas-Canada le monopole de l’importation du thé afin de contrer la contrebande américaine. Une bonne partie des cargos en provenance d’Asie furent acheminés plus tard au nouveau quai East India Wharf (1847), situé à l’embouchure de la rivière St-Charles dans le port de Québec.
Les liens militaires qui protégeaient les possessions franco-britanniques dans le monde rapprochaient également le Canada et l’Asie. Malheureusement, aucune étude dans le domaine de l’histoire militaire ne s’est penchée sur les relations entre l’Asie et le Canada avant 1850. Au lendemain de la guerre de Sept ans (1756-1763), une multitude de bataillons et de militaires purent quitter le Canada et se rendre en Asie ou viceversa.Cefutlecasdu60e régiment,quiparticipaàlaprisedeQuébecet qui servit en Inde, lors de la première guerre du Punjab (1845-1846) et de la révolte des Cipayes. Dans le sens contraire, le 76e régiment, surnommé l’Hindoostan, quitta l’Inde pour se rendre à Chambly, en 1814, durant les guerres napoléoniennes. Plusieurs autres militaires firent la navette entre l’Asie et Québec durant les guerres de conquêtes britanniques en Inde ou en Chine. Des navires de la flotte marchande, comme le Cornwall de la Somes Lachlans & Co et le Java de Pirie Pirie & Co, partirent de Québec pour se rendre à Canton, en Chine, afin d’épauler les forces britanniques durant la première guerredel’opium(1839-1841). Également, desnatifsdeQuébec, comme le capitaine Mountain (1799-1856) et le major Montizambert (1813-1848), s’embarquèrent sur les mers d’Orient. Mountain servit dans la première guerre de l’opium et succomba à la maladie à Cawpore, en Inde, tandis que Montizambert s’enrôla dans le 30e régiment britannique et servit en Afghanistan. Plus extraordinaire encore fut l’aventure d’Edmond- Gustave Joly de Lotbinière (1823-1857), frère du premier ministre québécois Henry Joly (1878-1879). Il s’était enrôlé dans l’armée britannique dès 1849 et partit faire la guerre en Crimée et au Cachemire, nouvellement acquis des autorités sikhs par les Britanniques. Posté pendant cinq ans (1850-1855) dans les environs de Peshawar afin de protéger la passe de Khyber d’une invasion afghane, il retourna en Inde en 1857 pour rejoindre son 32e régiment, assiégé à Lucknow pendant la révolte des Cipayes. Ayant succombé pendant le siège de Lucknow, ce Canadien français anglican devint le seul francophone du Canada décoré de la médaille de la Mutinerie indienne.
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La mondialisation de la culture Évidemment, des livres parvenaient au Canada, et les œuvres d’écrivains et de penseurs orientalistes furent largement diffusées, comme le souligne Marcel Trudel dans sa thèse de doctorat, L’influence de Voltaire au Canada (1945). « Puisqu’on goûte à ce point les œuvres de Voltaire, on a dû inévitablement se rapprocher des goûts et des idées de Voltaire. Est-ce à lui qu’il faut attribuer cette habitude de définir longuement les qualités et les vices : amitié, flatterie, préjugés, opinions? La préférence pour certains sujets historiques : la Chine et ses empereurs qui sont toujours des sages, Pierre Le Grand? Les contes à l’orientale dont Bagdad forme l’arrière- scène? Voltaire avait mis tout cela à la mode. » (84). Nous pourrions répondre à Trudel, qui ne bénéficiait pas, à l’époque, des technologies de recherche électronique, qu’un recensement exhaustif des publications orientalistes parvenues au Canada depuis sa fondation démontre que presque tous les classiques orientalistes européens y sont présents en version originale. Du premier Coran traduit en langue française par sieur de Ryer aux classiques d’Anquetil Duperron sur le Zoroastrisme, la bibliothèque orientale de Herbelot, la morale de Confucius et la découverte de l’Hindoostan, les bibliothèques de Montréal conservent plus de 200 publications sur l’Orient datant de 1650 à 1850. Un dictionnaire français-chinois (1740?) écrit à la main se trouve même aux Archives nationales du Canada.
Le réseau jésuite permettait aux missionnaires d’œuvrer en Nouvelle-France et en Asie. L’historien Li Shenwen mentionne dans Stratégies missionnaires des jésuites français en Nouvelle-France et en Chine au XVIIe siècle (2001) que les relations des jésuites permettaient la création d’un véritable réseau mondial unissant la Nouvelle-France et l’Asie. Le collège La Flèche en France produisait un nombre important de missionnaires, qui créèrent un réseau international d’information sur le monde non occidental. Dans les premiers moments de la colonisation, un jésuite français quitta la Nouvelle-France pour se rendre en Chine en 1650. Adrien Greslon (1618-1696), qui vécut 43 ans en Chine, écrit Histoire de la Chine sous la domination des Tartares. Il peut être considéré comme le premier sinologue à fouler le sol canadien. Par contre, Li Shenwen passe sous silence l’influence philosophique de ce réseau sur les premières polémiques religieuses au Canada. Monseigneur Laval autorisa la circulation du livre Défense des nouveaux chrétiens et des missionnaires de la Chine, du Japon et des Indes (1687) du père jésuite Le Tellier tout en permettant à Alexandre Noël de critiquer, dans son Apologie des Dominicains missionnaires de la Chine (1700), les pratiques jésuites sur les rites chinois. Jusqu’en 1715, la querelle du Pape et de l’empereur chinois au sujet des rites de ce pays eut des répercussions littéraires en Nouvelle- France. Un bon nombre des publications qui en résultèrent font partie de la collection des Archives nationales du Québec. À titre d’exemples, mentionnons Mémoires pour Rome, sur l’état de la religion chrétienne
171 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes dans la Chine (1709); Lettre à messieurs du Séminaire des missions étrangères sur ce qu’ils accusent les jésuites de ne s’être pas soumis sincèrement au nouveau décret touchant les affaires de la Chine (1710); L’État présent de l’église de la Chine adressé à monseigneur l’évêque de *** (1710); Commandement de N. S. P. le pape Clément XI : d’observer pleinement, ... ce qui a été décidé par Sa Sainteté dans l’affaire des cultes ou des cérémonies de la Chine (1715). En ce sens, les missionnaires contribuèrent à la mondialisation de la culture entre le Canada et l’Asie, comme ce fut le cas de Pierre d’Incarville (1706-1757), professeur en humanités et rhétorique en Nouvelle-France, de 1730 à 1739, qui devint botaniste directeur des jardins impériaux de Beijing en 1742 et correspondant chinois de l’Académie des sciences de Paris.
En plus de permettre le culte des ancêtres au sein de la pratique catholique, ces jésuites de la cour de Pékin avaient créé tout un émoi philosophique en traduisant des annales chinoises plus vieilles que le déluge. Leurs travaux étaient souvent censurés à Paris avant que leurs textes puissent prendre le chemin des Lettres édifiantes et curieuses et ensuite être distribués en Nouvelle-France. Même le premier livre à tenter d’expliquer la présence amérindienne en Nouvelle-France fut contraint dans son cadre méthodologique par la chronologie chinoise. En 1724, LafitaupubliaMœursdessauvagesamériquainscomparéesauxmœursdes premiers temps (1724), où il expliquait que les Amérindiens de la Nouvelle-France étaient originaires de la Tartarie chinoise. Vingt ans plus tard, François-Xavier de Charlevoix écrivit Histoire et description générale de la Nouvelle-France avec le Journal historique d’un voyage (1744) après avoir publié Histoire et description générale du Japon (1736), et confirma la thèse selon laquelle les Amérindiens étaient originaires d’Asie.
Le lien jésuite demeura également présent dans la littérature publiée au Canada, malgré la dissolution de la compagnie de Jésus. Parmi les jésuites les plus célébrés se trouve François Xavier (1506-1552), missionnaire au Japon et qui finit ses jours en Chine. À lui seul, plus de 30 neuvaines, parfois plus de 400 pages, seront rééditées, ce qui s’avère une présence continuelle depuis l’arrivée de la presse au Canada. Les premières presses de Brown & Gilmore imprimèrent la première édition en 1772, et d’autres livres touchant le christianisme en Orient parurent au milieu du XIXe siècle. L’édition contribua substantiellement à faire connaître et à organiser des œuvres caritatives comme la Sainte-Enfance introduite aux indulgences. Ainsi, la Sainte-Enfance poussa les Québécois à investir dans les missions, notamment celles de la France en Chine, protégées plus tard par le traité de Tianjin (1858). Ce mouvement explique en partie l’action massive des missionnaires québécois en Chine et dans le reste de l’Asie, sous protection française ou anglaise et parfois sous celle des deux pays.
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Les philosophies asiatiques passèrent également la frontière du Canada. Libéraux, républicains et ceux qui s’opposaient au monopole du clergé sur l’éducation lisaient abondamment les Encyclopédistes, comme Voltaire (1694-1778), et ceux qu’ils avaient fortement influencés, comme LaMennais (1782-1854). On peut aussi affirmer que l’orientalisme fit son entrée au Canada avec l’arrivée de l’imprimerie à Montréal. Fleury Mesplet, un voltairien convaincu, dirigea la première presse montréalaise avecLaGazettelittérairepourlavilleetdistrictdeMontréal(1778).Laune du premier numéro portait sur l’orientalisme. En octobre 1835, L’Écho du Pays, un périodique axé sur l’éducation, fut parmi les premiers journaux à citer Confucius : « Si le prince veut conduire ses peuples uniquement par des ordonnances, et les contenir par les châtiments, ils sauront éviter le châtiment; mais ils ne sauront pas rougir du vice. » La publication de l’éthique confucéenne reflétait une partie du lobby séculaire de la société québécoise des années 1830 et celle qui s’opposa au clergé dans la gouvernance du peuple.
Conclusion Nous avons brièvement exposé les relations qu’entretenaient l’Asie et le Canada avant 1850 pour démontrer l’effet du colonialisme européen sur le pays et la contribution de la mondialisation de la culture dans l’histoire internationale. Puisque le nombre d’études historiques sur cette relation demeure limité, il reste encore beaucoup à faire pour comprendre ce vaste sujet. Il va de soi que cette relation était mineure, mais elle a, somme toute, été bien présente dans la construction du Canada et dans sa mondialité avant l’arrivée d’Asiatiques au pays. Finalement, la relation Asie-Canada n’a pas faitqu’intégrerlamondialisation:elleenestaussidevenueundiffuseur.
Note 1. Serge Granger enseigne l’histoire canadienne au Centre d’études françaises et francophones de l’université Jawaharlal Nehru. Il a publié Le Lys et le lotus. Les relations du Québec avec la Chine de 1650 à 1950 (2005).
Œuvres citées Arrest du Conseil d’Estat du Roy le 9 mai 1733 « Qui fait deffenses à tous Armateurs, Négocians: envois des étoffes et toiles peintes des Indes, de Perse, de la Chine, ou du Levant. » Berthiaume, Pierre. Relation des avantures de Mathieu Sagean, Canadien, Montréal: Les Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 1999. Charlevoix, Pierre-François-Xavier. Journal d’un voyage fait par ordre du roi dans l’Amérique Septentrionale, Paris : Chez Rollin Fils, Libraire, 1744. Hamelin, Jean. Économie et société en Nouvelle-France, Québec : Presses de l’Université Laval, 1960. Lafitau, François. Mœurs des sauvages amériquains comparées aux mœurs des premiers temps, 4 tomes, Paris: Compagnie de Jésus, 1724. Li, Shenwen. Stratégies missionnaires des jésuites français en Nouvelle-France et en Chine au XVIIe siècle, Québec : Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 2001.
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Lunn, Alice Jean E. Développement économique de la Nouvelle-France 1713-1760, Montréal: Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 1986. Neuvaine à l’honneur de S. Francois Xavier, de la Compagnie de Jésus, apôtre des Indes et du Japon, Québec: Brown & Gilmore, 1772. Taylor, R.T. Canada in the European Age 1453-1919, Vancouver: New Star Books, 1987. Verreau, Hospice. Nouvelle édition du mémoire de Lafitau adressé au Duc D’Orléans, Montréal : Typographie de Sénécal, Daniel et Compagnie, 1858.
174 Open-topic Articles
Articles hors-thème
Daniel Chartier
« Au-delà, il n’y a plus rien, plus rien que l’immensité désolée1.» Problématiques de l’histoire de la représentation des Inuits, des récits des premiers explorateurs aux œuvres cinématographiques2
Résumé Dans cet article, l’auteur trace l’évolution historique de la représentation culturelle des Inuits, à partir des récits des premiers explorateurs arctiques au début du XIXe siècle, jusqu’aux œuvres cinématographiques documentaires, ethnographiques et de fiction qui en ont permis la cristallisation et le renversement à la fin du XXe siècle. Il démontre que cette image des Inuits relève de siècles de discours, dont une partie seulement — et transmise récemment dans l’univers occidental — a été produite par les Inuits eux-mêmes. Les premiers discours européens la situent dans une dimension mythologique à la source de laquelle se trouvent les hyperboréens de l’Antiquité. Alimentée par la méconnaissance des territoires arctiques — le pôle n’a été atteint qu’autour de 1910 — et par une superposition de textes issus de diverses cultures, la figure de l’Inuit traverse les XIXe et XXe siècles, d’abord dans les premiers récits des explorateurs, puis dans les ouvrages encyclopédiques du XIXe siècle, les recherches ethnographiques, et finalement dans les œuvres cinématographiques, en passant par la publicité et les arts visuels. Peu à peu, soutenue par une prise de parole postcoloniale, la figure de l’Inuit s’est dégagée de ces représentations pour permettre au personnage d’accéder pleinement, dans les œuvres, au statut de sujet.
Abstract In this paper, the author traces the historical development of the cultural representation of the Inuit based on the writings of the first Arctic explorers at the dawn of the 19th century, as well as on the documentary films, ethnographic studies and fictional works that both helped crystallize its history and reverse its direction at the close of the 20th century. The author demonstrates that our vision of the Inuit stems from centuries of views and opinions held concerning this people, of which only a part — and that only recently transmitted to the western world — has been produced by the Inuit themselves. The first European thinking on the Inuit accords them mythical status, which they share with the Hyperboreans of Antiquity. Fed by a lack of knowledge of the Arctic — the North Pole was not reached until around 1910 — and by the accretion of texts emanating from different cultures, the vision we have of the Inuit wended its way through the 19th and 20th centuries, starting with the first writings of the explorers, and gradually expanded upon in 19th century encyclopaedic works, ethnographic research, and also in
International Journal of Canadian Studies / Revue internationale d’études canadiennes 31, 2005 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes films, advertising and the visual arts. Ever so slowly, and strengthened by finding their voice in our post-colonial age, a clearer vision of the Inuit has emerged from these representations to allow this people to take centre stage, with its own voice, in works of fiction.
Le Grand Nord, décrit par les géographes, les ethnologues et les scientifiques, appartient, dès qu’on le considère du point de vue de la représentation culturelle, au domaine du discours. En tant que tel, il est constitué de textes, d’images et de figures dont on peut retracer l’histoire dans différentes œuvres, issues elles-mêmes de traditions formelles distinctes. De manière générale, ce Nord (ou cette idée du Nord, comme le présente Sherill E. Grace3) constitue un espace tant imaginé qu’imaginaire qui propose une structure matricielle inspirée à la fois du mythe et de la fiction. Pour autant que les contraintes de l’éloignement, de la difficulté physique et de la rareté puissent être respectées, le romancier ou le scénariste peut développer des histoires qui s’inscrivent dans une trame qui fait fi du temps historique, des référents géographiques et, dans une certaine mesure, de la réalité de ceux qui y vivent. En contrepartie, la liberté que permettent les figures et éléments du Nord (la blancheur, l’immensité et la désolation arctiques, par exemple) réduit la possibilité des genres et des types de fiction qui peuvent y prendre place : on y trouve peu de drames psychologiques, peu de théâtre, de rares ascensions sociales, mais souvent des romans d’aventures et de science-fiction4, des récits ethnologiques et scientifiques, ainsi que des contes populaires. De la même manière, rapidement, la tradition littéraire et filmique a fixé les traits d’un petit nombre de figures caractéristiques du lieu, parmi lesquelles se trouvent peu de femmes5.
Dans les œuvres cinématographiques, nous retenons cinq figures dominantes du monde imaginaire polaire : le prospecteur, la « police montée », le monstre, le père Noël et l’Inuit. Tous ces personnages se manifestent très tôt dans l’histoire du cinéma et ils perdurent au cours du XXe siècle. Si l’imaginaire du prospecteur renvoie au Klondike, à l’Alaska et au Yukon, il a trouvé son illustration railleuse dans la figure de Charlie Chaplin dans The Gold Rush en 1925. La figure bonasse et bienveillante de la « police montée », issue du cinéma western américain et de son confrère canadien-anglais, a trouvé dans la série télévisée Due South6 son persévérant descendant. Quant au père Noël, il s’appuie sur une tradition européenne ancienne, et les paramètres de sa représentation sont définis en fonction à la fois d’un postulat mercantile états-unien et d’un respect des tonalités chromatiques — entre le bleu froid de l’extérieur et le rouge chaud de l’intérieur bourgeois — associées aux espaces arctiques. Le monstre7 polaire, inspiré par la découverte au tournant du XIXe siècle de corps entiers de mammouths congelés dans les glaces8, apparaît dès les débuts du cinéma, notamment dans À la conquête du pôle de Georges Méliès en 1912, puis dans des productions de série B de l’après-guerre9. Enfin, la présence
178 Problématiques de l’histoire de la représentation des Inuits, des récits des premiers explorateurs aux œuvres cinématographiques de l’Inuit est marquée par de grandes œuvres qui sont autant de balises dans l’histoire du genre : Nanook of the North, en 1922, et le premier long métrage de fiction inuit, Atanarjuat, en 2001. Ces cinq personnages (auxquels on pourrait en ajouter quelques autres : le travailleur minier, l’infirmière, le chasseur, l’explorateur, l’artiste de la nature, etc.) constituent à leur manière une chronique de l’évolution des récits littéraires et filmiques qui concernent l’Arctique.
L’objectif de cet article est de tracer l’évolution historique de la représentation culturelle des Inuits à partir des récits des premiers explorateurs arctiques au début du XIXe siècle jusqu’aux œuvres cinématographiques documentaires, ethnographiques et de fiction qui en ont permis la cristallisation et le renversement à la fin du XXe siècle. Il s’agit donc moins d’analyser les œuvres dans la spécificité formelle du genre auquel elles appartiennent que d’identifier les marques de l’évolution de la figure de l’Inuit dans ces mêmes œuvres.
Cette image des Inuits relève de siècles de discours, dont une partie seulement — transmise récemment dans l’univers occidental — a été produite par les Inuits mêmes. Les premiers discours européens la situent dans une dimension mythologique à la source de laquelle se trouvent les hyperboréens de l’Antiquité. Alimentée par la méconnaissance des territoires arctiques — le pôle n’a été atteint qu’autour de 191010 — et par une superposition de textes issus de diverses cultures, la figure de l’Inuit traverse les XIXe et XXe siècles d’abord dans les premiers récits des explorateurs, puis dans les ouvrages encyclopédiques du XIXe siècle, les recherches ethnographiques et finalement dans les œuvres cinématogra- phiques, en passant par la publicité et les arts visuels.
Pour les auteurs et les lecteurs au sud de l’Arctique, la rigueur du climat fait de l’Inuit un personnage qui rejoint les valeurs de l’ascèse; « ces naïfs spectateurs d’un stoïcisme instinctif11 », comme les décrit un auteur du XIXe siècle, auraient naturellement et naïvement atteint un niveau spirituel que l’Européen tente culturellement d’atteindre. L’opposition entre la nature et la culture est caractéristique de toute cette conception du Nord, un territoire qui tend, à mesure que l’on s’approche du pôle, à une désolation graduelle, qui exclut pour les sudistes12 toute idée de culture. Aussi n’est-il pas surprenant que le stoïcisme prétendument naturel des Inuits soit encore repris aujourd’hui. Par exemple, le philosophe Michel Onfray écrit en 2002 dans un essai sur l’Esthétique du pôle Nord que, d’un point de vue philosophique, la dureté du climat arctique, la nécessité de vivre au jour le jour sans capitaliser et, surtout, le mode de vie austère des Inuits les rapprochent d’un idéal occidental : Depuis toujours, l’objectif philosophique existentiel se propose de réaliser ce qui, au pôle, fonctionne d’évidence : la concentration sur le seul nécessaire, la conjuration du superflu, la réduction du
179 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes
besoin à sa possible satisfaction, la mise en perspective du désir et de la réalité impérieuse, le modèle de l’idéal ascétique, la passion pour le renoncement et le contentement du peu, la morale prenant ses leçons dans la nature. L’Inuit connaît naturellement les joies éthiques proposées culturellement, en réaction aux logiques d’abondance, par la philosophie occidentale.13 Même si les liens entre les Groenlandais et les Scandinaves se sont maintenus dans le millénaire et que quelques expéditions ont établi de premiers contacts14, les Inuits ont conservé, du point de vue de la culture européenne, leur statut de peuple inaccessible et mystérieux. Aussi, quand en 1818 John Ross découvre le premier, sur la route qui tend vers le pôle, ceux qu’on appelle alors les Esquimaux polaires, il soulève une curiosité tant scientifique que culturelle qui ne cessera de croître tout au long du siècle, alimentée par la quête du pôle Nord — qui prendra plus d’un siècle — et par l’encyclopédisme et le positivisme qui feront des Inuits un objet ethnographique de premier choix.
Les illustrations que rapporte Ross15 servent à documenter un imaginaire qui fixe rapidement les figures partagées ensuite par le discours scientifique, littéraire et visuel. Accompagné de son guide sud-groen- landais, John Saccheus, Ross part à la rencontre de ces Inuits de l’extrême arctique, ce qu’illustrent des lithographies et des aquarelles largement diffusées, dont certaines sont réalisées par Saccheus et Ross : la scène de la première rencontre [Figure 1], qui situe majestueusement les bateaux amarrés à la banquise et des personnages bienveillants; le portrait d’Ervick, le premier Esquimau polaire rencontré par Ross, qui pose pour l’aquarelliste comme Nanook posera pour la caméra, et enfin ce village inuit composé d’igloos superposés par le regard exotique dans un assemblage qui ressemble à une banlieue londonienne. Celui-ci est sis au
Figure 1 - Scène de la première rencontre avec les Esquimaux polaires. Lithographie d’après une aquarelle de John Saccheus (1818)
180 Problématiques de l’histoire de la représentation des Inuits, des récits des premiers explorateurs aux œuvres cinématographiques pied d’une montagne sur laquelle on peut deviner le protecteur drapeau anglais, dont les effets bénéfiques sont manifestés par les bras ouverts du personnage de l’explorateur.
Les expéditions à la conquête du monde polaire, puis de l’Antarctique, se multiplient au XIXe siècle et soulèvent un intérêt soutenu du public, puis des États; toutes s’inscrivent dans une trame narrative tragique, où les hommes luttent contre le froid, le désespoir, la rareté et parfois, la désillusion. La plus connue de ces équipées est celle qu’entreprend Sir John Franklin dans les années 184016 et qui s’avère un cruel échec pour tout l’équipage. Dans les années, puis les décennies qui suivent sa disparition, desdizainesd’expéditionsselancentversl’Arctiquecanadiendansl’espoir de retrouver les survivants17 ou leurs restes, alimentant du même coup le mythe du Grand Nord et de sa rudesse impossible à surmonter. Ce n’est qu’un siècle et demi plus tard, en 1984, que l’on retrouve gelés et presque intacts les corps des marins de Franklin. La glace et le froid, qui tuent sans ménagement, suscitent l’effroi par leur pouvoir de stopper jusqu’au temps, arrivant à momifier naturellement l’homme entouré de ses équipements.
Peu de femmes participent aux voyages polaires et moins encore à la trame narrative du monde arctique. Pourtant, quelques années seulement après le voyage de Ross paraît à Londres un étonnant recueil de poèmes intitulé A Peek at the Esquimaux18, suivi d’une « pastorale polaire », signé « ALady » et accompagné de magnifiques illustrations en couleurs qui déjà esthétisent les images rapportées par Ross et réifient les types inuits. On retrouve dans ces illustrations la pureté des formes des personnages et une tonalité chromatique qui sera invariablement reprise par la suite : un décor aux tons pastel, qui insiste sur le bleu, le violet et le blanc, et des personnages aux chaudes couleurs brunes et rouges [Figure 2]. Le signe du froid arctique et son opposé, la confortable chaleur, trouvent ainsi leur expression figée, qui pourra ensuite être utilisée dans le vocabulaire du système discursif du Nord.
À ces images réifiées s’articule un discours textuel teinté d’un scientifisme qui n’exclut toutefois pas les stéréotypes, le racisme et les applications colonialistes. En parallèle des récits des explorateurs, souvent aussi richement illustrés, paraissent à la fin du XIXe siècle plusieurs synthèses encyclopédiques du monde polaire, qui assouvissent dans des récits parfois élégants une curiosité ethnologique et géographique. Ces sommes condensent le discours sur le Nord en général et les Inuits en particulier19. Parmi celles-ci, on retient dans la « Bibliothèque des merveilles » de la Librarie Hachette l’ouvrage de Lesbazeilles Les merveilles du monde polaire, paru en 1881, avant la découverte du pôle.
Quand il décrit les Inuits, ces « hyperboréens par excellence20 », Lesbazeilles souligne que, compte tenu de la rudesse du climat, « on s’attendrait à trouver en eux des êtres […] dénués de toutes les qualités »,
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Figure 2 - Homme inuit. Tiré de A Peek at the Esquimaux, by A Lady (1825)
alors qu’au contraire, « on rencontre chez ces pauvres gens des traits de caractère, des dispositions morales qui partout feraient honneur à l’humanité21. » Cependant, le portrait que trace Lesbazeilles des Inuits est loin d’être mélioratif; il en relève d’abord le caractère répugnant : « Il faut, écrit-il, être décidé à surmonter une forte impression de dégoût pour entrer dans la demeure d’un Esquimau. Une malpropreté extrême y offense la vue et l’odorat22. » L’auteur relate la réaction du lieutenant Bellot alors qu’il pénètre pour la première fois dans un igloo : Un de ses compagnons lui montra une ouverture, haute de deux pieds à peine, cachée par une peau : c’était la porte. Comme il s’en approchait, des émanations chaudes et fétides arrivèrent jusqu’à lui, il sentit faiblir son courage, mais enfin il prit son parti et il entra après avoir rampé, sur une longueur de deux mètres, dans une sorte d’égout aux murailles humides : ses pieds s’enfonçaient dans une boue détrempée d’eau, de sang, d’huile et de graisse. Il se croyait préparé à tout par ce qu’il avait lu, par ce qu’on lui avait dit de ces sordides habitations; il se trompait, il n’avait supposé rien de semblable à ce qu’il vit.23 La description qu’il trace de l’Inuit s’apparente à celle d’un monstre, ce dont témoignent bien les illustrations qui accompagnent le texte, dont celle d’« Un jeune esquimau » représenté sous les traits d’un affreux petit homme [Figure 3]. Ils ont une grosse tête, écrit l’auteur, un visage large, aplati et même creusé à la racine du nez, des pommettes saillantes, de petits
182 Problématiques de l’histoire de la représentation des Inuits, des récits des premiers explorateurs aux œuvres cinématographiques
Figure 3 - « Un jeune esquimau ». Tiré des Merveilles du monde polaire (1881)
yeux noirs, une grande bouche laissant voir des dents qui, à force de servir à racler et à couper des peaux, à tirer sur des courroies, sont tout usées, des cheveux raides et peu abondants, pendants chez les hommes, relevés en chignon chez les femmes, peu ou point de barbe.24 Autre figure dominante du monde polaire, les missionnaires, qui prennent au tournant du siècle le relais des explorateurs auprès des Inuits, accentuent cette vision défavorable, qui rejoint leur désir d’œuvrer comme des martyrs auprès de ces déshérités. Leur apport négatif à l’image des Inuits relève d’une stratégie discursive qui leur permet de justifier un projet évangélique. Dans son roman missionnaire intitulé L’épopée blanche, Louis-Frédéric Rouquette écrit : « Ce sont les plus misérables, les plus pauvres, les plus abjects. Ils errent de la corne de l’Alaska au Labrador, des îles Herschell à la Terre de Baffin. Leur domaine est désolation. […] C’est pourquoi les oblats devaient tenter le salut de leurs âmes. »25 Décrits par les missionnaires comme superstitieux, orgueilleux, menteurs, sales, im- moraux, cupides et cruels26, les Inuits auraient cependant besoin d’être protégés des Blancs et mis en apartheid dans des quartiers isolés27. Peu à peu, la rencontre avec l’Inuit devient un geste tabou et les mouvements de dialogues illustrés par les figures de Ross s’évanouissent. Alors qu’il séjourne en Alaska au début du siècle, l’un de ces missionnaires, le père Lacouture, décide de briser cet interdit et d’aller à leur rencontre. Toutefois, il est vite ramené à sa réalité, où l’Inuit ne peut prendre place aux côtés des Blancs. Il consigne l’aveu de cette rencontre dans son journal : Ce qui m’intéresse surtout, c’est d’aller les voir dans leur quartier spécialement réservé pour eux. […] J’avoue qu’ils m’ont fait bonne impression : j’ai découvert que c’était du monde comme les
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autres et qu’ils ont de l’esprit s’ils ne sont pas instruits.J’ai peur de les aimer.28 Au tournant du XXe siècle, une autre image des Inuits aura cependant raison de cette défaveur dans l’imaginaire littéraire et visuel, et c’est d’ailleurs celle qui donnera à cette figure sa plus vaste extension, allant du discours publicitaire aux premières œuvres cinématographiques. Stimulés par l’expansion coloniale à laquelle le débat sur le récit de la conquête du pôle par l’Américain Peary donne un réel enthousiasme, inspirés par l’émergence d’un modèle du héros américain masculin et guidés par le sauf-conduit de l’ethnographie, qui leur donne droits et privilèges, les publicistes, cinéastes et muséologues américains remodèlent au début du siècle la figure de l’Inuit. Ce dernier devient alors un homme téméraire et ingénieux, quoique naïf, près de la nature et infantilisé qui, à l’opposé des peuples qui se querellent et des Amérindiens qui commencent à réclamer des terres, entretient avec les Blancs un rapport de soumission bon enfant. Les Inuits, ou « Esquimaux », commencent alors à jouir d’une bonne presse, notamment dans les musées, les cirques et les œuvres pour la jeunesse. Ils ne tarderont pas non plus à faire leur entrée au cinéma muet. L’un des événements emblématiques de cette période est le transport par Robert Peary d’un groupe d’Inuits à New York, en 189729. Exhibés aux foules avec l’assistance des scientifiques du American Museum of Natural History, ces hommes succomberont cependant rapidement aux maladies qui leur étaient inconnues, sous les yeux attristés des milliers de visiteurs. Alors qu’ils meurent les uns après les autres, leurs cerveaux sont disséqués et leurs os exposés dans les salles attenantes aux survivants. L’un d’entre eux, Minik, survivra cependant à ses compatriotes et réclamera jusqu’en 1993 la translation du corps de son père des vitrines du musée à sa sépulture. Il écrira dans son journal en parlant des ethnologues et muséologues:«You’re a race of scientific criminals. »30
Au début du siècle, d’autres transports d’Inuits seront ainsi organisés et des expositions en carton pâte sont construites dans les foires pour les exhiber au public. On voit dans une photographie de 1909 un « village eskimo » construit pour montrer les Inuits dans leur décor [Figure 4]. À l’intérieur, ces derniers « jouent » en fonction des images stéréotypées qui leur donnent sens dans la culture populaire. On retrouve dans les archives de la Bibliothèque du Congrès américain trois vignettes cinémato- graphiques de Thomas A. Edison réalisées en 1901 lors de la Pan American Exposition de Buffalo, qui donne idée de ces jeux. Ces courts films31 font voir des Inuits s’amusant comme des enfants à saute-mouton dans un décor de faux glaciers.
Peu à peu, l’Inuit devient dans l’imaginaire populaire un personnage sympathique pour les enfants32, notamment parce que sa figure épurée reprend les principales caractéristiques associées à l’idéal américain : courageux, travailleur, ingénieux, libre, pacifique, honnête et ayant le sens
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Figure 4 - Photographie de « Eskimo Village » à l’Exposition Alaska-Yukon- Pacific (1909)
des responsabilités familiales33 : « Les Sauvages sont de grands enfants34 » comme l’écrit en 1927 Alexandre Huot dans un roman d’utopie politique de réconciliation entre les Blancs et les Autochtones. C’est cette figure de personnage adorable, toujours heureux malgré les difficultés, qui est reprise dans le cinéma naissant35 et qui trouvera son expression en 1922 dans le « documentaire36 » de Robert Flaherty, Nanook of the North, tourné sur la côte de la Baie d’Hudson, dans le nord du Québec37. Le succès mondial du film est tel38 que Nanook devient rapidement la figure type de l’Inuit au cinéma et dans la culture populaire. Dans son analyse des suites de Nanook dans la culture américaine, Shari Huhndorf constate que : Nanook of the North became a kind of watershed, the point after which no imagination of the Far North was without the full panoply of stereotypes born in the later nineteenth century, developed in the 1900s and 1910s, and brought to fruition in Flaherty’s work. The film also spawned what one prominent observer has labeled “Nanookmania”, a marketing craze that produced dozens of trademarks including Eskimo Pie ice cream. A few years later, two major Hollywood studios capitalized on Eskimos’ popularity, producing two feature films with Arctic themes: Universal’s Igloo (1932) and MGM’s Eskimo (1934)39. Dans la publicité du film Nanook of the North, les personnages sont décrits comme des enfants, qui aiment glisser sur les icebergs, jouer avec leurs chiots et prendre leur bain à la mode esquimaude. L’anthropologue Asen Balikci remarque que ce film intensifie les caractéristiques associées
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à la représentation de l’Inuit, issues de la littérature de la période victorienne40.
Comme le veut l’usage, le film s’ouvre sur une carte géographique du Nord canadien. Ce dispositif visuel n’a pas pour effet de situer le lieu de l’action, mais il permet au contraire, une fois la carte remplacée par les scènes filmées, de faire abstraction de toute référence toponymique. Le procédé est caractéristique des films de l’Arctique : une fois énoncé le fait que le territoire où se situe l’action est loin et inhospitalier, le cinéaste est affranchidetoutecontraintehistoriqueoutopologiqueetilpeutglisserdans un temps universel et cyclique, dominé par le passage des saisons. Pour NanookoftheNorth,l’intertitredudéparténoncelesparticularitésdulieuet de la figure de l’Inuit : « Aucun autre peuple ne pourrait survivre dans la désolation des terres et à la rigueur du climat; pourtant, bien que dépendant des animaux, sa seule source de nourriture, vit en cet endroit le peuple le plus heureux du monde — le téméraire, l’adorable, le nonchalant peuple inuit. » [Figure 5] Dans ce contexte, malgré la volonté affichée de Flaherty, la réalité des Inuits41 a cédé le pas devant le spectacle — réussi — d’une figure qui rejoint l’imaginaire populaire42.
Dans les décennies subséquentes, quelques productions filmiques tentent de se défaire du regard exotique sur les Inuits, avec cependant plus
Figure 5 - Extrait de Nanook of the North (1922)
186 Problématiques de l’histoire de la représentation des Inuits, des récits des premiers explorateurs aux œuvres cinématographiques ou moins de succès. C’est le cas de l’étonnant film couleur Eskimo Summer de 1944, l’un des premiers documentaires arctiques réalisés par une femme, Laura Boulton. Le commentaire du film, sans laisser la parole aux Inuits — sauf pour leurs chants —, tente de se jouer des stéréotypes qui en fondent la figure. Le documentaire s’ouvre une fois encore sur une carte, et son commentaire insiste sur la distance qui sépare le spectateur des Inuits. Cependant, une fois cette précaution énoncée, le propos tombe tout de suite dans le temps cyclique des saisons, qui fait fi de toute historicité possible pour le peuple inuit. Ici, la naturalisation du mode de vie inuit passe par des comparaisons qui visent à neutraliser les différences; l’une d’entre elles, le fait de manger de la viande crue, reprise sans cesse dans toute construction discursive sur les Inuits pour sa nature profondément aculturelle, se veut banale : bien sûr, les Inuits mangent cru, mais comme vous le faites vous-mêmes avec les huîtres.
Au cours des années 1950 et 1960, l’Office national du film du Canada tourne bon nombre de documentaires sur le mode de vie des Inuits de l’Arctique. L’objectif est en partie politique : pendant la Guerre froide, le Canada voit sa souveraineté menacée par le grand nombre de soldats américains dans l’Arctique, alors que le pays lui-même n’occupe pas le territoire. La solution préconisée sera radicale pour le peuple inuit : le déplacement forcé de populations vers l’Extrême-Nord en 1953 et une violente sédentarisation dans des villages à partir de 1962. Les effets de ces mesures ont profondément bouleversé la vie inuite. Comme le constate Asen Balikci, pendant cette période, les films se veulent objectifs dans leur volonté de présenter la réalité inuite telle qu’elle est vécue, mais ils gardent sous silence tous les problèmes liés à son mode colonial, comme le taux très élevé de mortalité infantile, les épidémies et la violence43. Balikci, anthropologue de formation, a choisi dans les années 1960 de réaliser une série de documentaires s’inspirant de la technique de « reconstruction culturelle » où il situe les Inuits dans le contexte qui était le leur avant l’introduction du fusil en 1919. Sa série, intitulée Netsilik Eskimos (1963-1965) a permis de redéfinir la figure de l’Inuit d’un point de vue culturel. Il reprendra ce travail, cette fois en illustrant la vie contemporaine desInuits,dansunfilmintituléTheNetsilikEskimoToday,réaliséen1972.
Dans les années récentes, des productions réalisées par de jeunes cinéastes ont tenté de documenter et d’interpréter le rapport des Inuits à l’histoire. Ces films, à la fois ethnographiques et politiques, n’ont cependant pas le succès populaire des productions exotiques. Le film Les exilés du Nouveau- Québec, réalisé en 1995 par Patricia Tassinari, donne la parole aux survivants du déplacement de 1953 où sept familles du Nunavut ont dû s’exiler à 1 500 km plus au nord dans des postes désolés pour lesquels ils n’étaient pas préparés. Cette action coloniale tardive du gouvernement fédéral est dénoncée dans ce film comme une profonde injustice : le cinéma, en donnant la parole aux Inuits dans une perspective historique permet de
187 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes déconstruirelafigurepassived’hommedesglacesetilprendlaformed’une prise de position politique. « La terre de Baffin, écrit le philosophe Michel Onfray, ressemble à s’y méprendre aux pays pauvres, naguère dévastés par les Occidentaux, ravagés, occupés, exploités, réduits à rien.44»
Peu à peu, des cinéastes inuits produisent des films documentaires, dont Mon village au Nunavik45 et Si le temps le permet46, qui s’intéressent tant à la vie sociale d’un village qu’au rapport de la jeunesse face à l’héritage préchrétien de la première moitié du XXe siècle. En parallèle, on note pendant la période la parution en 2002 du premier roman inuit du Nunavik chez un grand éditeur, Sanaaq de Mitiarjuk Napaluk47 et, dans certaines œuvres d’auteurs québécois, une exaltation des Inuits qui évoque parfois une survalorisation mythique48. Dans ce travail de réintroduction de l’Histoire dans le monde inuit49, les films produits par une compagnie de production autochtone, Isuma, sont vite devenus une référence et un modèle. La série Nunavut. Our land (1994-1995) présente l’histoire du village d’Igloolik en 1945 et 1946. La simple mention de cette période, au début de la série, permet de situer le mode de vie inuit dans une trame historique.
La sortie en 2001 du premier long métrage de fiction inuit, Atanarjuat, produit par Isuma et réalisé par le cinéaste Zacharias Kunuk, a désigné un changement fondamental dans la représentation des Inuits, puisqu’elle signifie un renversement du pôle d’observation et un élargissement des objectifs de la production filmique. En effet, non seulement le film cherche-t-il à développer un point de vue inuit au cinéma, mais son projet déborde l’œuvre cinématographique et vise tout autant à instaurer un mode de production communautaire, à préserver et à renforcer la culture inuite, à défendre un projet social, à prendre la parole dans le monde extérieur des communications, à proposer une remise en question des caractéristiques de la représentation des Inuits, mais aussi une réécriture d’un récit qui se veut, pour la première fois, inscrit dans une historicité propre au peuple inuit. Cette temporalité permet de faire référence aux bornes historiques qui constituent les moments propres du déroulement du monde valorisé par la culture et l’histoire des Inuits.
Les critiques ont noté que l’un des traits novateurs de ce film est qu’il cherche à présenter la culture inuite de l’intérieur50. Toutefois, comme le remarque Thierry Roche, l’un des problèmes des « films de la production amérindienne courante » est que, « hormis la nature du discours, plus militant, et le fait que certains sujets sont traités de “l’intérieur” », ils s’apparentent, « d’un point de vue formel […], aux productions occidentales.51 » Atanarjuat se distingue cependant par la nature de son projet esthétique qui déborde vers des applications sociales, historiques et médiatiques. Il se différencie aussi par la tradition filmique dans laquelle son réalisateur a voulu l’insérer : alors que les sources historiques du cinéma américain relèvent davantage du spectacle populaire, et que celles
188 Problématiques de l’histoire de la représentation des Inuits, des récits des premiers explorateurs aux œuvres cinématographiques du cinéma européen, du moins nordique, remontent à la photographie52, Kunuk a tenu à ce que le cinéma inuit soit fidèle à une ascendance sculpturale. L’anecdote veut que Kunuk, lui-même d’abord sculpteur, ait vendu ses sculptures dans les galeries de Montréal pour pouvoir s’acheter sa première caméra vidéo, un geste de métamorphose — de la sculpture au cinéma — dont le récit s’apparente aux légendes mêmes qui feront la trame de ses films. Au-delà de ce geste, son film s’appuie sur les techniques de la vidéo numérique pour « renforcer la sensation d’être sur les lieux pour le public, malgré l’exotisme de l’environnement53. » Le directeur de la photographie de ce film, Norman Cohn, explique que la caméra numérique « permet aux gens d’oublier toute la distance et de s’identifier à notre histoire et à nos personnages comme s’ils étaient simplement comme nous.54 »
« Like a sculptor who makes images with stones, I wanted to make images with a camera55 », disait Zacharias Kunuk. Au moment clé d’Atanarjuat, alors que l’une des femmes du héros le trahit en invitant les autres à l’accompagner pour cueillir des fruits de manière à laisser l’homme seul face à ses ennemis, on note d’abord la simplicité des dialogues et de l’humour, mais aussi le rôle de la caméra, qui donne aux personnages une stature qui s’apparente à des sculptures humaines entre lesquelles le spectateur se sent familier.
Le projet social et esthétique d’Isuma, qui vise essentiellement une prise de parole des Inuits, n’est pas étranger aux autres prises de parole postcoloniales : le projet a sollicité tout un village — celui d’Igloolik —dont lalégende seveut l’histoire etlavoie desurvie etderayonnement. À l’image de la culture traditionnelle, les producteurs ont insisté pour impliquer le plus possible la communauté56 : sur les lieux de tournage, […] les artisans du film ont créé, selon les mots du producteur, une « culture de production » inuite caractérisée par sa bonne humeur, son audace, sa patience et sa flexibilité. En 1999 pendant les six mois de tournage en extérieur dans la région d’Igloolik, les acteurs et techniciens ont vécu dans des campements et des conditions semblables à celles des personnages du film. Ils vivaient dans la toundracommeleursancêtresilyaplusieurscentainesd’années.57 La distribution et l’équipe de production presque entièrement inuites ont permis de poser les bases d’une industrie cinématographique locale, tout en donnant des emplois à un village exposé à un taux de chômage très élevé et à un désœuvrement malfaisant. Le film a aussi permis une renaissance du savoir traditionnel, nécessaire aux reproductions historiques des costumes, outils et pratiques des personnages, tout en l’illustrant dans une œuvre contemporaine qui puisse servir aux générations futures. Le film a aussi permis une nouvelle approche du chamanisme et des croyances sacrées inuites, qui font l’objet de tabou dans les villages, où l’effet des missionnaires catholiques et protestants se fait encore lourdement sentir.
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Kunuk admet ainsi : « Je n’ai jamais assisté aux manifestations du chamanisme. J’en ai seulement entendu parler. Filmer ce phénomène est une façon de le rendre visible58.»
Si le film renverse certaines des représentations sudistes sur les Inuits, il s’appuie paradoxalement sur ces dernières pour arriver à retrouver le passé de ce peuple jusqu’à récemment sans écriture, mais doté d’une culture orale. Pour retrouver les costumes anciens, les artisans ont étudié les dessins laissés dans les journaux de l’expédition navale britannique de l’Admiral William Parry à Igloolik en 1822. Les artistes ont aussi un rapport ambigu face aux productions documentaires du début du XXe siècle, dont Nanook of the North, puisqu’ils y voient tant une image stéréotypée de leurs ancêtres que l’une des seules sources pour arriver à reconstituer leur passé.
La cohorte culturelle de Zacharias Kunuk, qui est aussi celle de la chanteuse et cinéaste Elisapie Isaac, de l’écrivaine Mitiarjuk Nappaaluk et du cinéaste Bobby Kenuajuak, appartient à une première génération sédentaire et lettrée chez les Inuits. Le saut générationnel, de grands- parents nomades et chasseurs à de petits-enfants urbains et cinéastes, est considérable59, et il ne se fait pas sans heurt. D’ailleurs, Kunuk a plusieurs fois dénoncé les difficultés administratives posées par les organismes qui financent la production cinématographique au Canada60.
La reconnaissance internationale du film Atanarjuat au Festival de Cannes en 2001 a permis une prise de parole postcoloniale nouvelle dans un système de représentation du Nord qui donnait à voir des Inuits sans qu’onpuisselesentendre.Laméconnaissancedesterritoiresarctiquesetde leur population a longtemps permis une distance imaginaire qui, si elle a suscité des figures fantastiques, — des monstres sortis des glaces et du père Noël jusqu’à l’Inuit souriant dans son igloo —, a aussi produit des stéréotypes tenaces. « Nobody, even in southern Canada, dit Kunuk, knows this part of the world. » Le succès populaire du film, tant à Igloolik61 que dans le monde, tend à une réévaluation de la figure de l’Inuit, qui ne peut passer sans une dénonciation politique de colonialisme culturel et économique. En ce sens, la représentation des Inuits au cours des deux derniers siècles témoigne éloquemment des avancées, des reculs et des silences de l’histoire culturelle occidentale. La figure de l’Inuit, d’abord issue de la culture européenne et inscrite dans une dimension mythique, est tributaire tant des changements méthodologiques en ethnographie que de l’évolution des discours politiques sur les Autochtones. Aussi, n’est-il pas étonnant qu’il ait fallu attendre un renversement postcolonial pour arriver à dégager l’imaginaire de la réalité, alors que la figure culturelle de l’Inuit s’est lentement détachée de l’Inuit lui-même, enfin devenu sujet.
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Notes 1. Louis-Frédéric Rouquette, L’épopée blanche, Paris, J. Ferenczi et fils, éditeurs, 1926, p. 195. 2. Cet article s’inscrit dans le cadre d’un projet de recherche, « La constitution et la réception d’un imaginaire nordique comparé dans la littérature québécoise », financé par le Fonds québécois de recherche sur la culture et la société (FQRSC), le Conseil de recherches en sciences humaines du Canada (CRSH) et l’Université du Québec à Montréal. Il est rendu possible grâce à des recherches menées au sein du Laboratoire international d’étude multidisciplinaire comparée des représen- tations du Nord. Je remercie Maude Paquette et Amélie Nadeau pour leur travail de soutien à la préparation de cet article. Une version préliminaire a été présentée sous forme de communication lors du IIIe Congrès des canadianistes polonais et de la IIIe Conférence internationale des canadianistes d’Europe centrale, tenus à Cracovie (Pologne) en mai 2004, sur le thème « Lieu et mémoire au Canada : perspectives globales ». 3. Sherill E. Grace, Canada and the Idea of North, Montréal et Kingston, McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2002, 341 p. 4. On peut considérer le roman fantastique de Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus (1817) comme un précurseur de cette veine en ce sens qu’il joue avec l’espace arctique comme lieu de l’éloignement d’où peut advenir l’étrange. Dans la littérature québécoise, pensons au roman de science-fiction Les voyageurs malgré eux (1994) d’Élisabeth Vonarburg, qui pose un Nord irréel, contrôlé par des forces mystérieuses. 5. L’examen du corpus d’œuvres dont l’action se situe dans le Nord (défini de manière plurielle) permet de constater la faible présence des femmes, non seulement parmi les personnages, mais aussi parmi les figures caractéristiques du lieu (l’infirmière dans les chantiers et les mines, la tenancière de bordel au Yukon et en Alaska, la femme convoitée dans les postes isolés peuplés d’hommes) et même parmi les écrivains qui écrivent ces œuvres. Dans la plupart des cas, la femme fait figure d’exception et la narration joue avec ce statut pour en particulariser la présence dans le Nord. 6. Fred Gerber [et coll.], Due South (Canada, 1994-1998). 7. « L’abominable homme des neiges », issu de la haute montagne (l’un des trois lieux de la « nordicité », selon Louis-Edmond Hamelin), est le proche parent de ces monstres. On le retrouve au cinéma dans Jerry Warren, Man beast (États-Unis, 1956), Val Guest, The Abominable Snowman (Angleterre, 1957) ou plus récemment, dans Docter, Peter et Silverman, David, Monsters Inc. (États- Unis, 2001). 8. Sur ces monstres gelés, qui ont inspiré des scénarios de cryoconservation, on lit dans Les merveilles du monde polaire de E. Lesbazeilles : « Une autre découverte encore plus étonnante est celle qui fut faite plusieurs fois, non plus seulement de débris de squelettes, mais d’animaux entiers, avec la peau et la chair, conservés dans la glace pendant des séries de siècles impossibles à évaluer. En 1799, c’est Cuvier qui raconte le fait, un pêcheur tongouse remarqua sur les bords de la mer Glaciale, près de l’embouchure de la Léna, au milieu des glaçons, un bloc informe dont il ne put reconnaître la nature. L’année suivante, il s’aperçut que cette masse était un peu plus dégagée, mais il ne devinait pas encore ce que ce pouvait être. Sur la fin du troisième été, le doute n’était plus possible : le flanc de l’animal et l’une des défenses étaient tout à fait sortis des glaçons. Ce ne fut que la cinquième année que, les glaces ayant fondu plus complètement que de coutume, l’énorme
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bête vint échouer à la côte sur un banc de sable. Au mois de mars 1804, le pêcheur enleva les défenses, qu’il vendit cinquante roubles. Ce fut seulement deux ans après, et la septième année de la découverte, qu’un membre de l’Académie de Saint-Pétersbourg, M. Adams, qui se trouvait à Yakoutsk, fut informé de ce fait et se rendit sur les lieux. Il y trouva le corps du mammouth, mais malheureusement fort mutilé. » (Paris, Hachette, coll. « Bibliothèque des merveilles », 1881, p. 80.) 9. Parmi ceux-ci, mentionnons : Christian Nyby et Howard Hawks, The Thing from Another World (États-Unis, 1951), Eugène Lourie, The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (États-Unis, 1953), W. Lee Wilder, The Snow Creature (États-Unis, 1954) et Nathan Hertz Juran, The Deadly Mantis (États-Unis, 1957). 10. Les débats sur cette question persistent toujours, mais la découverte du pôle est réclamée par l’Américain Robert E. Peary en 1909. Il publie le récit — contesté — de sa découverte dans un livre intitulé The North Pole (New York, Cooper Square Press, 2001 [1910], 385 p.). Sur les débats concernant cette découverte, voir Dennis Rawlins, Peary at the North Pole. Fact or Fiction?, Washington et New York, Robert B. Luce, 1973, 320 p. et Jean Malaurie, Les derniers rois de Thulé, Paris, Plon, coll. « Terre Humaine/Poche », 1989, 840 p. 11. Eugène Lesbazeilles, Les merveilles du monde polaire, Paris, Hachette, coll. « Bibliothèque des merveilles », 1881, p. 212-213. 12. C’est ainsi que Louis-Edmond Hamelin désigne les habitants du Sud, en opposition aux « nordistes ». « Sudistes : citoyens qui portent peu d’intérêt au Nord. Vivent généralement dans le sud des pays froids ou au sud du Nord » (Louis-Edmond Hamelin, Le Nord canadien et ses référents conceptuels, Ottawa, Secrétariat d’État, coll. « Réalités canadiennes », 1988, p. 42. 13. Michel Onfray, Esthétique du pôle Nord, Paris, Grasset, 2002, p. 73-74. 14. L’importance de ces contacts fait l’objet de débats, dont les implications politiques demeurent considérables. Dès 1963, l’ouvrage de Tryggvi J. Oleson, Early Voyages and Northern Approaches 1000-1632 (Toronto, McClelland and Stewart, 1963, 211 p.) propose une hypothèse en ce sens. Auteur amérindien, Bernard Assiniwi tente de resituer le contexte historique de la rencontre entre Autochtones nord-américains et Vikings dans La saga des Béothuks (Montréal, Leméac et Arles, Actes Sud, coll. « Babel », 1996, 517 p.). 15. Sir John Ross, A voyage of discovery, made under the orders of the Admiralty, in His Majesty’s ships Isabella and Alexander, for the purpose of exploring Baffin’s Bay, and inquiring into the probability of a North-West passage, Londres, J. Murray, 1819, 252 p. 16. Le roman récent de Sten Nadolny, La découverte de la lenteur (Paris, Grasset, coll. « Les Cahiers Rouges », 1998 [1983], 359 p.) présente l’aventure arctique de Franklin. 17. Knud Rasmussen fait ainsi état de sa découverte des restes de Franklin :«Àun endroit indiqué par les Esquimaux, je trouvai une masse d’ossements blanchis qui étaient indubitablement les derniers vestiges de l’expédition Franklin. Il est certain qu’aucun Blanc n’avait visité ces lieux avant nous. Ce fut pour nous un pieux devoir de rassembler ces ossements, de les recouvrir d’un petit monticule de pierres sur lequel furent hissés deux pavillons, l’anglais et le nôtre. » (Du Groenland au Pacifique. Deux ans d’intimité avec des tribus d’Esquimaux inconnus, Paris, Plon, 1929, p. 295.) 18. [A Lady], A Peek at the Esquimaux; or, Scenes on the Ice, Londres, H. R. Thomas, 1825, 58 p. 19. François Trudel propose dans son article intitulé « Le “Noble Sauvage” est inuit : la construction d’une figure de l’Ungava au XIXe siècle » (Études inuit Studies,
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vol. 2, n° 2, 1996, p. 7-38) une analyse d’un personnage inuit, Caghannack, repris comme figure littéraire dans le roman de R.M. Ballantyne, Ungava. A Tale of Esquimau Land (1857). 20. Eugène Lesbazeilles, 1881, p. 149-150. 21. Eugène Lesbazeilles, 1881, p. 195. 22. Eugène Lesbazeilles, 1881, p. 158-160. 23. Eugène Lesbazeilles, 1881, p. 158-160. 24. Eugène Lesbazeilles, 1881, p, 149-150. 25. Louis-Frédéric Rouquette, 1926, p. 165. 26. Le révérend père Duchaussois écrit en 1921 : « L’orgueil, le vol, le mensonge, le goût de l’homicide, ajoutons l’immoralité, ne seraient cependant pas les plus grands obstacles à l’évangélisation des sauvages riverains de la mer glaciale. La barrière jusqu’ici infranchissable a été la superstition avec la sorcellerie. » (Aux glaces polaires. Indiens et Esquimaux, Lyon, Œuvre apostolique de Marie Immaculée et Ville La Salle, Noviciat des Oblats de Marie Immaculée, 1921, p. 438.) 27. Le père Lacouture s’en désole : « Les Esquimaux doivent vivre dans un quartier séparé et protégé par des soldats… contre les vices des Blancs! C’est une honte pour notre civilisation païenne! » (Père Onésime Lacouture, s.j., Mon séjour en Alaska, 1910-1913, [Québec], [s.é.], vol. 1, 1978, p. 64.) 28. Père Onésime Lacouture, s.j., 1978, p. 65. Je souligne. 29. « In the fall of 1897, a ship called Hope docked in New York City harbour; its arrival changed forever the lives of its passengers and captivated an entire nation. On board were six Polar Eskimos – one woman (Atangana), three men (Qisuk, Nuktaq and Uisaakkassak) and two children (Minik and Aviaq) – brought by Arctic explorer Robert Peary at the behest of anthropologist Franz Boas and other officials of the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH). […] On a single day following the Hope’s arrival, twenty thousand people visited the ship, anxious to glimpse the elaborate furs expected by curiosity seekers. Nor did New Yorkers’ attention soon wane. Housed in the museum’s basement, the Eskimos drew throngs of eager visitors who crowded around a ceiling grate installed above their living quarters. » (Shari M. Huhndorf, « Nanook and His Contemporaries : Imagining Eskimos in American Culture, 1897-1922 », Culture Inquiry, vol. 27, no 1, automne 2000, p. 122-123.) 30. Il poursuit : « I know I’ll never get my father’s bones out of the American Museum of Natural History. I am glad enough to get away before they grab my brains and stuff them into a jar! » (cité par Shari M. Huhndorf, automne 2000, p. 146, repris de Kenn Harper, Give me my father’s body. The Life of Minik, the New York Eskimo, Iqaluit, [s.é.], 1986, p. 142.) 31. Chacune dure environ 30 secondes. Thomas A. Edison : Esquimaux Game of Snap-the-Whip (États-Unis, 1901), Esquimaux Leap-Frog (États-Unis, 1901), Esquimaux Village (États-Unis, 1901). 32. « In elementary schools all across America, children were taught that the Eskimos were lovable, happy-go-lucky people : theirs was a kindergarten culture. America loved the Eskimos, and teachers could capitalize on this sentiment to provoke curiosity and empathy among children. » (Asen Balikci, « Anthropology, Film and the Arctic Peoples. The First Forman Lecture », Anthropology Today, vol. 5, no 2, 1989, p. 5.) 33. Asen Balikci en donne une description complète, avec toutefois cette réserve qui avait choqué les puritains américains : l’Inuit, ce « primitive protestant », chasse le caribou, qui a le malheur, pour les enfants, d’être très près du personnage
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« Bambi » de Walt Disney. « The confrontation was immensely cruel […]. The American public could not accept such a senseless contradiction. » (1989, p. 7.) 34. Alexandre Huot, L’impératrice de l’Ungava, Montréal, Édouard Garand, coll. « Le roman canadien », 1927, p. 17. Réédité en 2005 : Montréal, Imaginaire Nord, coll. « Jardin de givre ». 35. Voir à ce sujet Ann Fienup-Riordan, Freeze Frame. Alaska Eskimos in the Movies, Seattle et Londres, University of Washington Press, 1995, 234 p. 36. Dans son analyse de deux séquences du film, Gianfranco Bettetini soulève l’ambiguïté du genre et de la perspective de ce film, qui ont toutes deux des implications esthétiques et politiques : « S’il est vrai que les choix idéologiques du réalisateur visent, dans le cas de ce film, à réinsérer le mythe du “bon sauvage” dans la dimension anthropologique et géographique d’Esquimaux qui étaient ses contemporains, l’analyse des premières séquences nous amène à suspecter la disponibilité de son discours de chercheur » (Nanook of the North [G. Flaherty]. « Analyse de deux séquences », Cinémas et réalités, travaux XLI, Centre interdisciplinaire d’études et de recherches sur l’expression contemporaine, Saint-Étienne, Université de Saint-Étienne, 1984, p. 137). Gianfranco Bettetini juge de plus que la clef de lecture du film « n’est pas celle de la désignation documentariste, mais celle d’un divertissement subjectif élaboré ici à partir d’un matériau qui réduit son rapport de signification avec l’objet, pour l’essentiel, à un acte de dénotation. » (p. 141). 37. Au moment où Flaherty séjourne à la Baie d’Hudson, le capitaine Joseph-Elzéar Bernier, le plus illustre des explorateurs du Québec, navigue dans l’Arctique pour établir la souveraineté canadienne sur ce territoire. Dans ses voyages des années 1920, Bernier est accompagné de George H. Valiquette, qui capture le territoire et les Inuits en photographie et sur pellicule cinématographique. Les films qu’il produit pour le Canadian Government Motion Picture Bureau présentent l’un des rares témoignages de cette période : Arctic Expedition (1922 et 1925), Back to Baffin (1925), Hudson’s Strait Expedition (1927), etc. Sur Bernier, voir : Kenn Harper, « Bernier, Joseph-Elzéar », Mark Nutall [éd.], Encyclopedia of the Arctic, vol. I : A-F, New York et Londres, Routledge, 2005, p. 239-240. 38. Parfois présenté comme à l’origine du documentaire au cinéma, le film est l’occasion de préséances historiques. Peter Ian Crawford note que « la Finlande se vante également de posséder un film classique comparable à Nanook, Images de l’Arctique de Sakari Pälski (1917) qu’on crut perdu et qui fut retrouvé par hasard en 1970. C’est un film sans son sur les Tjukts de la péninsule Tjukotka, Nord Est de l’Union soviétique. » (« L’œil nordique. Le film ethnographique dans les pays nordiques », Journal des anthropologues, vol. 47-48, 1992, p. 34.) 39. Shari M. Huhndorf, « Nanook and his contemporaries. Imagining Eskimos in American culture, 1897-1922 », Critical Inquiry, vol. 27, no 1, automne 2000, p. 124-125. 40. « Several attributes of the Eskimo stereotype, already present in the Victorian literature, were dramatically intensified in this way in Nanook. More than ever, the Eskimos emerged as happy, lovable, clean, courageous, family people endowed with great ingenuity. » (Asen Balikci, 1989, p. 7). 41. De même, on a tenté de saisir les réactions des Inuits au film de Flaherty : « In Nanook Revisited, a 1990 documentary exploring Flaherty’s relationships with “his” Eskimos, some contemporary Inuit people give their own accounts of the explorer’s expeditions, suggesting alternative (anticolonial) ways for interpreting particular scenes in the film. » (Shari M. Huhndorf, automne 2000, p. 144.)
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42. En 1994, une coproduction franco-canadienne, Kabloonak (Claude Massot, 1994) tentera de décentrer l’action de Nanook en présentant le rôle du cinéaste dans l’élaboration de cette image, devenue une icône du cinéma. Toutefois, le film n’arrive pas à se dégager du fait divers, et il ne constitue pas encore la réponse postcoloniale qui arrivera par d’autres moyens. 43. Asen Balikci écrit : « […] in the 1950s, filming in the North started in earnest. Amongst the wide variety of documentaries produced at this time, two of the most important were Angoti and Land of the Long Day, directed by Doug Wilkinson for the National Film Board of Canada. These films were shot in bright daylight and were constructed around strong storylines implying how well the primitive Eskimos were adapting to encroaching modernity. […] The Eskimos in these films emerged as fully content. Not a word was uttered about the hidden aspects of colonialism, the extremely high infant mortality rate, the ravages of the tuberculosis epidemics taking place at the time, or the deaths from starvation that had taken place near the filming location only a few years before. » (1989, p. 7-8.) 44. Michel Onfray, 2002, p. 128. Pour lui, le drapeau canadien est inapproprié sur cette terre : la « feuille d’érable, écrit-il, [est] inconvenante et incongrue dans ce pays où il ne pousse plus un seul arbre depuis au moins trois mille kilomètres au sud. » (2002, p. 124.) 45. Réalisé par Bobby Kenuajuak en 1999. 46. Réalisé par Elisapie Isaac en 2003. 47. Montréal, Alain Stanké, 2002, 303 p. 48. C’est le cas de certaines œuvres de Jean Désy, ou encore des livres pour la jeunesse publiés dans la collection « Grande nature » chez Michel Quintin ou aux Éditions du Soleil de minuit. Par exemple, Daniel Beauvais écrit dans Ajurnamat! On n’y peut rien! : « J’avais bien des raisons d’éprouver une attirance certaine pour le peuple inuk : un peuple qui avait migré courageusement pendant des centaines d’années, à travers tout un continent. » (Saint-Damien, Éditions du Soleil de minuit, 2002, p. 41.) 49. Voir à ce sujet Daniel Chartier [éd.], « Les modernités amérindiennes et inuites », Globe. Revue internationale d’études québécoises, vol. 8, no 1, 2005, 253 p. 50. Zacharias Kunuk disait en entrevue en 2003 : « With Atanarjuat, we wanted to do it because our culture has never really been exposed from the inside. » (Kimberly Chun, « Storytelling in the Arctic Circle. An Interview with Zacharias Kunuk », Cineast, vol. 28, no 1, janvier 2003.) 51. Thierry Roche, « Le cinéma des Indiens d’Amérique. Réflexions II. Temps, espace et langage », Journal des anthropologues,no 57-58, 1994, p. 149. 52. « The thing that these two outstanding directors [Alf Sjöberg et Ingmar Bergman] have in common, however, not only with each other but with most of the other directors and actors connected with Swedish film-making, is their theater background: and this is a significant key to the high artistic standards (and occasional over-theatricalization) of the industry. Whereas Hollywood had its roots at least partly in the tradition of vaudeville and circus entertainment, Swedish film-making developed from the efforts of photographers, particularly Charles Magnusson who became head of Svensk Filmindustri, and from adult theater. » (Anne Morissett, « Sweden: Paradise and Paradox », Film Quarterly, vol. 15, no 1, automne 1961, p. 23.) 53. [Igloolik Isuma Productions], [Dossier de presse], Igloolik Isuma Productions, 2001, p. 6. 54. Norman Cohn cité dans [Igloolik Isuma Productions], 2001, p. 6. 55. Dimitri Katadotis, « Northern Exposure », Hour, 18 octobre 2001.
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56. « Atanarjuat, though, is more than merely a first; its creation amounted to a collective cultural endeavour for Kunuk’s community. Local artists and elders were mobilized to construct the film’s set and props from such household items as oil lamps to hunting implements and dogsleds. » (Dimitri Katadotis, 2001.) 57. [Igloolik Isuma Productions], 2001, p. 6. 58. [Igloolik Isuma Productions], 2001, p. 4. 59. « The film’s director, Zacharias Kunuk, now 44, was the first of his family to live in a permanent settlement – the community of Igloolik, population 1,200 – and he belongs to the first generation of Inuit to read, write and make films. In just one generation his culture has gone from oral storytelling to cinema: a leap that for European cultures is bridged by centuries of literature. » (SF Said, « Northern Exposure », Sight and Sound, vol. 12, no 2, février 2002, p. 22.) 60. Kunuk dénoncé ces politiques : « How oppressed can a race of people be? Because you’re in English, you get a bigger budget. Because you’re French, you get a bigger budget. Because you’re an aboriginal, you get the lowest budget. In the land of freedom, that doesn’t sound right at all. » (Kimberly Chun, 2003.) 61. Norman Cohn témoigne du succès du film dans le village où il a été tourné:«We had three showings. 1,500 people came and there are only 1,200 people in town. So they loved the film. If your parents were continually represented as the drunken Indians in the John Wayne movies, it would be a great relief to see them represented in a dignified way, as you know they really were. » (SF Said, 2002, p. 25.)
196 Daniel McNeil
Finding a Home while Crossing Boundaries: Black Identities in Halifax and Liverpool
That there is an African people, that there is a West Indian people, this I do believe … [but] when someone talks to me about that “Negro people,” I try to understand what is meant. Then, unfortunately, I understand that there is in this a source of conflicts. Then I try to destroy this source. Frantz Fanon (1955)
The blacks here haven’t even learned to come together and that’s the main problem here in Nova Scotia — we’re not together. They don’t have a leader because all the leaders in Nova Scotia is looking out for their self. Make me a leader and I’ll holler for you as long as I’m trying to make it, but after I make it, I’m looking out for me …
There’s a couple of people [in Nova Scotia], Wanda Barnard and Carolyn Thomas and them fellas talking the African whatdoyoucallit … but I’ll walk down this street with you now, we’ll see an African and he won’t speak to me. I don’t know what it is. Now when I look at him, he’s 10 times blacker than me, so we’re all the same. It’s the same as West Indians. All my life I knew West Indian people … but they don’t socialize, we don’t socialize as people, we’re different.
We discriminate amongst our own, so why can’t the white man discriminate? Even in Toronto, they’re not getting along. Billy Downey (2002)
Abstract Numerous historians have insisted that black Baptist churches were invaluable institutions for people of colour rooted to rural North American
International Journal of Canadian Studies / Revue internationale d’études canadiennes 31, 2005 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes
communities. This paper focuses on the politics of blackness in Nova Scotia after the provincial government — in the pursuit of integration, slum clearance, and prime waterfront land — bulldozed Africville and its Baptist church. I document how black intellectuals inspired by the memory of Africville have fashioned an “Africadia,” and attempted to offer individuals in urban areas access to mythic, revolutionary heroes who can condemn a national religion based on white “fakelore.” Yet alongside the literary productions of established artists and activists like George Elliott Clarke, I review oral history sources that show how working-class women and men in urban areas have engaged with rural black communities shaped by the Baptist church and Afro-Americocentrism. I conclude by comparing the narratives of black Scotians with those of Liverpool-born blacks, making it clear that a black identity rooted to marginalized communities in the United Kingdom and Canada has room for 1,001 colours of blackness, especially when individuals can care for “brown babies” and point to “tantalizingly tan” intellectuals drawing on Frantz Fanon in order to demand national cures for the outcast masses. Nonetheless, I also note how figures who claim to represent the oldest black communities in their nations can remain tied to the masculinist theories of Otto Rank, a wandering Jew from a working-class district of Vienna whom Fanon critiqued in Black Skin, White Masks, and provoke dreams of an exotic foreign identity somewhere else in the New World. Moreover, they can mirror Harold Cruse, a black intellectual obsessed with Jews, and interrogate the racial politics of Fanon’s West Indian and African people.
Résumé Bien des historiens ont insisté sur le fait que les églises baptistes noires ont été d’inestimables institutions pour la population noire enracinée dans les communautés rurales nord-américaines. Pour ma part, je m’intéresse à la politique de la négritude en Nouvelle-Écosse après la destruction d’Africville et de son église baptiste à coup de bulldozer, par un gouvernement provincial qui cherchait à favoriser l’intégration, à supprimer l’habitat insalubre et à acquérir des terres primées situées au bord de l’eau. Dans mon article, je décris comment des intellectuels noirs, inspirés par le souvenir d’Africville, ont façonné une « Africadie » et tenté de donner aux gens vivant en milieu urbain accès à des héros mythiques, révolutionnaires, capables de condamner une religion nationale basée sur une falsification du passé par les Blancs. À côté des productions littéraires d’artistes et de militants établis comme George Elliott Clarke, je passe cependant en revue des sources d’histoire orale qui montrent comment des femmes et des hommes de la classe ouvrière en milieu urbain ont tendu la main aux communautés noires rurales façonnées par l’Église baptiste et l’afro(américo)centricité. De plus, je conclus en comparant les récits de Noirs néo-écossais à ceux de Noirs nés à Liverpool, et je prends le temps de montrer clairement que dans une identité noire enracinée dans les communautés marginalisées du Royaume-Uni et du Canada, ilyadelaplace pour mille et une couleurs de négritude, surtout lorsque des individus sont bien capables de se soucier des « bébés bruns » et d’attirer l’attention sur des intellectuels « terriblement basanés » qui prennent appui sur Franz Fanon afin de demander des traitements curatifs nationaux pour les masses d’exclus. Néanmoins, je constate également comment des personnages qui prétendent représenter les plus vieilles communautés noires dans leur pays peuvent rester liés aux théories
198 Finding a Home while Crossing Boundaries: Black Identities in Halifax and Liverpool masculinistes d’Otto Rank, un juif errant issu d’un quartier ouvrier de Vienne que Franz Fanon a critiqué dans Peau noire, masques blancs, et provoquer des rêves d’identité étrangère exotique quelque part ailleurs dans le Nouveau Monde. Qui plus est, ils peuvent ressembler à Harold Cruse, un intellectuel noir obsédé par les juifs, et interroger la politique raciale des populations des Indes occidentales et de l’Afrique dont parle Fanon.
Frantz Fanon did not get to know many working-class people in Paris during the 1950s, but he was convinced that the few he met were unconcerned with the greatness of a black past: They knew they were black, but, they told me, that made no difference in anything. In which they were absolutely right … It is not because the Indo-Chinese has discovered a culture of his own that he is in revolt. It is because “quite simply” it was, in more than one way, becoming impossible for him to breathe.1 Billy Downey, like various other working-class people in Nova Scotia, knows that he is black,2 but he is unwilling to commit to black power and revolutionary violence because he has learned to put up with “hidden prejudice,” just like the “Asian groups and the Chinaman.”3 Nonetheless, Downey reflects other aspects of Fanon’s masculinist vision: whereas Fanon employed the term “fellah” to describe “peasants” that needed to be filled with ideas rather than fed heroes that act as leaders, Downey uses “fella” to describe his mates from rural areas and female leaders of a native middleclasswhohopetomanage,ratherthanliberate,theoutcastmasses.
Like contemporary guardians of Negro-ism in Nova Scotia, immigrants to Toronto in the 1960s and 1970s often claimed to honour Fanon’s Caribbean and African people by talking about poor “fellahs” from the Maritimes.Forexample,whenDavidTrotmanreadaboutthedestructionof Halifax’s most prominent black settlement in the name of integration and slum clearance, he didn’t ask whether the city council craved prime waterfront land. Instead, the Caribbean Canadian student told the Chair of the Ontario Human Rights Commission that black Nova Scotians were victims in need of responsible guides.4 Even when Caribbean-born writers like Odimumba Kwamdela believed that the Ontario Human Rights was a “white man’s trick,” they still emphasized how Scotian-born blacks needed to learn new skills to cope in an urban environment.5 Like Robin Winks, who derided Nova Scotia’s “conservative aristocracy of the faith” in The Blacks in Canada,6 and Canadian anthropologists under Frances Henry, who used tests designed for children to evaluate black adults who chose to stay in rural Nova Scotia,7 such Toronto-based writers tended to ignore honest intellectuals in Nova Scotia who were using the words of Afro-Americans like Malcolm X to formulate a war of position.8
As the twentieth century drew to a close, Winks stored his archival work on black Canadians in New York City, a place Kwamdela now calls home,9
199 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes while Trotman and Henry focused their research on a Caribbean diaspora and obtained tenure at York University in Toronto. Alas, Toronto-centric commentators not only failed to critique their earlier work on indigenous black Canadians, but also ignored the continuing battles Nova Scotians waged against institutional racism. Indeed, Jeffrey Reitz, a full-time sociologist at the University of Toronto and part-time contributor to the Globe and Mail, told readers of the International Migration Review that “the absence of a divisive immigration debate in Canada avoids racial polarization … enabling Canada to address its race problems in time to prevent serious social marginalisation of racial minority groups.10 Moreover, after journalists like Lawrence Hill asked middle-class blacks in North America to think about the tragic plight of individuals who aren’t invited to enter middle-class black communities,11 lead writers at the Globe and Mail continued to collapse any difference between “visible minorities,” “ethnic minorities,” and “immigrants.”12
Black Nova Scotians of mixed racial origins can easily expose the limited visions of such Canadian authorities and construct professionals of African descent, as well as white social commentators, as alien forces. To display how, this paper reviews George Elliott Clarke’s Odysseys Home and oral history sources that juxtapose rural black communities rooted to the Baptist church with contemporary desires to package black culture as “urban.” To conclude, I compare the narratives of black (American) Nova Scotians with those of Liverpool-born blacks influenced by Afro-Americo- centrism, making it clear that a black identity rooted to marginalized communities in the United Kingdom and Canada can continue to take inspiration from Frantz Fanon and produce “tantalizingly tan” intellectuals willing to demand a healthier nation for the wretched of the earth.13 I also note how figures that claim to represent the oldest black communities in their nations can also remain tied to the masculinist theories of Otto Rank, a wandering Jew from a working-class district of Vienna whom Fanon critiqued in Black Skin, White Masks,14 and who told his American students, “When the neurotic woman gets cured, she becomes woman. When the neurotic man gets cured, he becomes an artist.”15 Moreover, black Scotians and Scousers can mirror Harold Cruse, a black intellectual obsessed with Jews, and interrogate the racial politics of Fanon’s West Indian and African people while provoking dreams of an exotic foreign identity somewhere else in the New World.
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I Unless it has some collective or social basis — for instance, in religion … artistic creation is impossible. Otto Rank, Art and Artist (1932)16
The basic impulse behind all creativity is national or ethnic-group identity. Harold Cruse, Crisis of the Negro Intellectuals (1967)17
Just as New Negroes in Harlem inspired Otto Rank’s vision of a New World,18 black icons born in the United States conveyed freedom dreams to George Elliott Clarke’s “little community” in Nova Scotia. Yet when he went into self-imposed exile in North Carolina in the early 1990s, Clarke realized that “African America … is, like the American mainstream, solely self-absorbed,” and, rather than wander anywhere else, he returned to Canada and worked to unearth a literature that could be termed “‘African Canadian’ … Black Nova Scotian — or ‘Africadian.’”19 Ultimately, Clarke considered his archival work and creative artistry a “God-deemed task”20 — much like the “bounden duty” of Burckhardt’s cultural historian, DuBois’ New Negroes and Fanon’s native intellectual21 — to free his people from the apostles of death in the social sciences.22 And, in contrast to the sociologists who found no more than 30 people regularly attending Africville’s Baptist church,23 Clarke reminded his readers that “nothing in the province reflected me or mine save for the two dozen or so churches of the African United Baptist Association (AUBA).”24 Nonetheless, he has also penned missives designed to celebrate the secular deeds of B.A. “Rocky” Jones — “an Africadian community leader and proud black intellectual who has never shrunk from debate or controversy”25 — and the masculinist creeds of Harold Cruse.
Very little has been written about Rocky Jones and his commitment to anti-racist work in North America. So, in order to move beyond the snippets of information his daughter has stored at the Halifax North End library, I interviewed Rocky and recorded his memories of movements committed to civil rights and black power. Like Clarke, he pointed out that the Baptist church has always been at the centre of the black community, and went on to remark that it was “sort of schizophrenic because on the one hand it’s responsible for religious life but on the other hand the church was responsible for … [political] leadership.”26 Thus, Rocky moved from the interracial “brotherly love” of the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee to black cultural nationalism led by neo-Marxist revolu- tionaries willing to adapt the style and content of black preachers. He became friends with Stokely Carmichael and, after Stokely elaborated on the concept of black power at the Black Writers Congress in Montreal in
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1968 by drawing on Fanon,27 other Black Panthers came to Nova Scotia in an organized visit where they discussed Fanon’s work at a black family meeting held at Halifax’s North End library.28 Not surprisingly, traditional intellectuals who sought to represent responsible blacks did not welcome the Panthers and Rocky. Rev. W.P. Oliver, minister at the “mother church” of the AUBA, Cornwallis Street Baptist Church, denounced foreign, un-Canadian, or American demagogues.29 Or, to be more precise, Oliver attacked ideas that seemed radical since he represented the Nova Scotia Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NSAACP), modelled on the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and, after the black family meeting, he signed on to a Black United Front (BUF) “similar to the one … operating in the United States” whenhewasassuredthathissonwouldbeabletoruntheorganization.30
Disappointed that BUF had become a “buffer between the [black] community and the government and industry,”31 Rocky continued to develop various projects, inspired by black cultural nationalism, that were funded by “white allies” in the peace movement, many of whom were Quakers.32 Yet since journalists in the late 1960s lampooned black power movements in Canada when they worked with white individuals, Rocky rebuked Quakers when they applauded his speeches, and only asserted his support for white revolutionaries who would “shoot their own mothers” when blacks were not present.33 Bluntly put, he was all too aware that “coloured” Nova Scotians could tie a black community to questions of skin tone rather than radical politics when Rev. Oliver could be portrayed as a “true race man”34 and recent racial mixing was viewed with suspicion or outright contempt. After the black family meeting — and Sidney Poitier’s adamant defence of interracial marriage in Guess Who’sComing to Dinner (1967) — Rocky still finds it difficult to talk about the ways in which the events of the 1960s may have affected biracial individuals. There was a lot of concern that we were going to divide the community by black and white, so there were many women — white women — married to black men who didn’t know how this would affect them. Or many black women with white men who didn’t know how this would affect them. There were children of these relationships who didn’t know how — I mean, it created a certain instability in the whole community, because people had not called this before.35 Thus it should come as no surprise that Harold Cruse was also unable, or unwilling, to talk about children raised by parents deemed to be black and white in The Crisis of the Negro Intellectuals (1967). Just as Rocky saw class as a central issue in Nova Scotia36 and emphasized how a light- skinned person born in Nova Scotia would be more accepted than someone who was “dark-skinned from the Caribbean or Africa,” since he “had never heard the term mulatto” in the province,37 Cruse emphasised how a
202 Finding a Home while Crossing Boundaries: Black Identities in Halifax and Liverpool suburban upbringing would play a greater role in obtaining cultural capital than “light-skin and European facial features,” and used the “mulatto question” to embark on one of his many attacks on intellectual work that seemedtoreflectconditionsinAfricaortheCaribbeanratherthanAmerica. He wrote: The strong tendency within the Black Nationalist movement towards black skin chauvinism … cannot work politically in the United States. It has never worked in the West Indies either; it can only work in Africa, it seems. But, in the United States, the American Negro group is too large and mixed with too many racial strains for the ideology of black-skin supremacy to function within the group … The blacker the skin does not always denote the deeper racial pride. In fact, some of the darkest Negroes are the most “white-minded.” In America, the Negro group is more of an ethnic than a racial group — meaning a group of mixed African, Indian and white strains … Of course, the American-West Indian fusion of Black African-nationalists prefer their converts to be truly “black” both in pigmentation and ideology, and look rather doubtfully at others … [but] Mrs Garvey, a racial hybrid, was just as much a Black Nationalist as the great redemptionist. And in our own time, the two leading exponents of Black Power and Black Nationalism have been racial hybrids – Adam Clayton Powell and Malcolm X.38 Although Cruse went on to rebuke American blacks who romanticized “Ancient Egypt … Africa and pre-feudal tribalism,” contemporary Afro- centrists have excused Cruse’s attacks against Egyptocentrism in order to claim him as a cultural hero alongside Malcolm X.39 In contrast, Cruse’s attempts to portray Caribbean writers as “black Jews” have been the subject of an extended critique by Winston James,40 just as Rocky Jones’ verbal assaults on “an intellectual elite from the Caribbean” who took leadership positions and served their own interests at the expense of the (indigenous) black community were questioned.41
In a fashion similar to that of his black idols, George Elliott Clarke has questioned the racial politics of Caribbean and African immigrants that treat mulattoes as fifth columnists rather than black comrades.42 At a push, readers of Odysseys Home can also find Clarke sympathizing with Afro-Americocentrists who resist any droll wit in favour of preaching: “We must not only look to [scholars of Caribbean descent in] Birmingham, England, but to Birmingham, Alabama, as a site of historical struggle and contestation.”43 Yet many Caribbean Canadians who jeer Clarke’s nativism have somehow ignored the organic intellectuals available from both Birmingham camps.44 Moreover, even as Rinaldo Walcott considers Clarke’s “African Canadian” approach a means for black intellectuals to distance themselves from working-class blacks — clearly combining the insights of various scholars of Caribbean descent, most notably Hazel
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Carby and Paul Gilroy (scholars who have worked at the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies in Birmingham and Ivy League univer- sities) and Lewis Gordon45 — he doesn’t report on the ways in which they drew on Fanon’s concept of a native intellectual.46 Nor did he seek out Otto Rank’s commitment to working-class creative artists that could break the spell of the Freudian idea.47 Instead, he flirted with the bourgeois comforts of Freud in order to project an image of George Elliott Clarke as a nativist hangman, executing West Indians so as to save African-Canadian culture from a living death.48
To borrow one of Walcott’s favourite expressions, his own attempts to portray Clarke as a nativist are both wrong and right. Clarke clearly has room for an expansive vision of a polyconscious and multinational Canada that is home to various immigrant groups where, for example, he can be considered Portuguese in the Canadian battlefield of Waterloo, Ontario. Much like Rocky Jones, Clarke also feels that his travels throughout North America can inspire a connection with the African diaspora and a community beyond his family.49 Yet Clarke and Jones also reflect Cruse’s dreams of masculine chivalric heroes like Malcolm X, cool warriors who can venture forth to fight various demons and protect maidens, safe in the knowledge that they may return to a reinforced fort or, perhaps, a Maroon Hill.50 Whereas Clarke asks, “Are African Canadians always and only marginals and transients?”51 one might add, “Are African-Canadians doomed to quixotic adventures and exotic window dressing?” Moreover, Rocky Jones acknowledges that programs for the indigenous black and Mi’kmaq communities had to be imposed by white patrons52; can Africadian people establish effective alliances with other Native groups by simply acknowledging various racial “strains” and insisting that they didn’t just “arrive off the boat”?53
To provide ways in which we can think about answering such questions I return to the comments of Nova Scotians who were kind enough to share their time with me in the summer of 2002. As part of my research work, I talked with a wide variety of individuals in order to reflect the polyconsciousness within a black (American) Nova Scotia.54 Along with Rocky Jones and male figures who lived during the 1960s,55 I interviewed younger women and men of mixed racial origins who harnessed visions of the 1960s in order to develop a sense of self and a black community.56 The next two sections focus on the comments of Barbara Hamilton-Hinch, Leslie Reid, Kevin Koshinsky and Nicole Gardiner. All four individuals acknowledge that they have ancestors of different “races” and intimately express their knowledge of the ties that bind predominantly Christian rural communities. Read together, they also illuminate the ways black urban politics can be reduced to appearance rather than honouring black ancestors. Some readers may want to twin Leslie and Kevin because both are “white-skinned” African-Canadians who, in the summer of 2002, were
204 Finding a Home while Crossing Boundaries: Black Identities in Halifax and Liverpool without paid employment and felt uncomfortable about obtaining jobs through “race.” One may also associate Barbara with Nicole since they have both obtained employment through their supervisory roles in a black community. The next section, however, contrasts Barbara with Leslie because they grew up after the 1960s and began to play activist roles in a post-1972 environment. Thus, their narratives offer a useful link between the desires of Jones and Clarke for chivalric heroes and the attempts of Nicole and Kevin to engage with identity politics in the 1990s and the early 21st century.
II People rightfully take pride in their race and ethnic origin; they find their identity in their colour and sex. Justice McLachlin, Miron v. Trudel, Supreme Court of Canada (1995)
You don’t necessarily focus on these [racial] things on a day to day basis when you are carrying out your life … all the things you might do in a day normally if you are a healthy person not normally preoccupied with your racial identity. It would drive you crazy. And who needs that? Lawrence Hill, qtd. in Donna Bailey Nurse, What’s a Black Critic to Do? (2003)57
Barbara Hamilton-Hinch, one of George Elliott Clarke’s many cousins, is director of the Black Student Advising Centre (BSAC) at Dalhousie University. Our interview took place in her office. In various leadership roles she has pointed out the ravages of environmental racism and the need forallianceswith(other)Nativegroups.58 Nonetheless,shestillfeelslikean outsider: I can’t claim my little bit of Mi’kmaq, I can’t say my grandmother was half-Indian; they’ll look at me and say, so what? It doesn’t mean anything, it doesn’t give me status, due to the fact that I’ve been culturalized black and look black, so I can’t even fake the aboriginal — some of my sisters can. I can’t relate to the Native issues. I can appreciate them, but it wouldn’t be fair for me to join them in a march or protest that they put on, claiming that I’m Native and Aboriginal.59 Barbara’s desire to connect sufficiently dark-brown skin tones to black culture and politics can also explain her fears surrounding the rise of “light brown babies.”
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Just on the weekend I was at a birthday party for an older woman in the community, and she has eleven children; and of her eleven children, two of them married black; and all of her grandchildren, all are mixed; and of the mixed grandchildren, those who are able to marry, married white; and of those children who married white, their children now look pure white. So then where do they see the issues of racism and discrimination? And I’m seeing a lot of that, my poor husband said to me the other day, just look around, you don’t see any dark-brown babies any more in Nova Scotia, and you don’t, you truly don’t. You’reseeing a lot more mixed, and perhaps it’s helping to eliminate some racism. To a degree that’s happening, but it’s also creating another level of discrimination that a lot of these kids are facing, especially when it comes to their [racialized] identity.60 As a result, Barbara claims the reality of American television shows like Law & Order when they depicted white parents who were unwilling to raise a biracial child,61 and worried on behalf of light-skinned friends and family who may not always think in terms of race. In other words, she wants to side with Justice McLachlin’s vision of pride in colour and sex rather than Lawrence Hill’s desire to escape racial identity for a “normal” or “healthy” life. Yet while she reduces Hill’s comments to his white mother and middle-class upbringing in order to question interracial relationships that “water down” blackness,62 she also echoes Hill’s desire to show how a cultural connection to African people can trump visual markers used to signify race. So, on one hand, Barbara admonishes her own failure to help Beechville (the rural community of her youth, which is now surrounded by two industrial parks) and the Cultural Awareness Youth Group of Nova Scotia (an organization credited with saving her from an “identity crisis”).63 On the other hand, she finds legitimacy for her role as an educator by insisting on her connections to Mother Africa and a black North American culture rooted to the church, much as Lawrence Hill asks African- Canadians to save the continent of Africa and creates fictional alter egos that can serve as bourgeois role models for African-Americans.64
Leslie Reid’s narrative can usefully be read next to the attempts of Lawrence Hill and Barbara to justify their position in a black middle class. Although Leslie grew up in a rural Nova Scotian community in which most of the people were white, poor and “primarily” — but not “devoutly” — Christian, her Africadian father had a secure job as a cartographer and was a committed atheist who didn’t tolerate talk of race in their home. As a result, Leslie and her sister were first exposed to the illogic of race at school. They were read as “white” by their fellow students and were expected to laugh at racist jokes or were “punished for not being white, and that was really crazy-making. If you’re going to damn me, I want to be what it is you’re damning me for!”65 Yet because the Nova Scotian government considered
206 Finding a Home while Crossing Boundaries: Black Identities in Halifax and Liverpool one of their parents “black,” they were also offered cheques when they passed each grade. And this was supposed to be some kind of incentive, like we were supposed to have a harder time at school because of that, and if we were offered the $50 reward we’d work a little harder. We were extremely offended by it, and when we were older we even did things like refuse to cash the cheques. At first it was, “Yay, free money,” but after a while it was insulting, really insulting … So coming up on the last year of high school someone, I think probably from Dalhousie, came to our high school to approach the small black population there and say, you know, anyone who is interested in getting involved in our foundation course at Dalhousie, you can qualify for a scholarship and at least get the first year for free, the rest of it maybe if you do well. I considered it, and knew that I could get in on a scholarship, but I didn’t feel like I would have belonged, it was not my right to be there because my skin wasn’t brown. I felt like if I were to take advantage of that program I would be taking away from someone else who should be there, because the program really was for students that were disadvantaged in the first place, and my parents could afford to send me to school. I felt like I would have been lying to go, and if I did go, I wouldn’t be accepted by people who had brown skin,so after thinking about it I declined. All my white friends said, “Are you crazy? If someone offered to pay for my first year of university, I don’t care what for, I’d go,” you know? They saw having a black parent as some kind of meal ticket, you can cash in on this, you can get your school paid for, you can get all kinds of things. I just, I couldn’t sleep with it at night if I did that; I felt like I would have been doing something really, really wrong.66 When Leslie wanted to assert herself as an adult she continued to tick the visible minority box on governmental forms because “checking off white would have been a bigger lie.”67 Nonetheless, she has shied away from joining black community groups and tries to “classify people in terms of gender and money rather than colour.” She even felt uncomfortable in meetings for a black community group committed to helping low-income women because a black man asked her: “Are you sure you’re in the right room?” … The guy actually looked right at me and said, “Are you in the right room?” It’s that reaction; it’s you’re white, why do you even want to be here? … There was also another white woman in the class, so I actually felt like laughing at him, but on other days it’s made me angry. And I understand why it happens: because of the way I look, they assume both of my parents are white, and therefore I’m going to have a problem with anyone who isn’t. And you know, seven times out of ten that’s true, so I have to temper my anger with a little bit of understanding, but it still does hurt, to be viewed that way.68
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Consequently, Leslie displays her creative artistry by actively contributing to an Internet discussion group that discusses “multiple personality disorder” and Rank’s psychology of difference, finding a home in an online community beyond questions of colour. She also finds solace in MAD TV and Saturday Night Live, American sketch shows that are willing to pair individuals from different “races.”69 Yet as a parent she can still invest her hopes in having a brown-skinned baby. I guess I never forgot the genetics in my head, it doesn’t happen if my skin is white, it doesn’t matter if my partner’s white, the baby can still be brown. Because [my partner] comes from a family that’s horribly, horribly racist that he was crossing his fingers with me hoping that his child would be brown just to spite his family, and say “see, you know, this person’sof your blood too, and look.” Of course, she turned out to be pale as a ghost, just like the both of us.70 Leslie’s comments clearly expand on Lawrence Hill’s glib comparison of people longing to find acceptance in a middle-class black community with the human desire to bring a child into the world. The next section also exemplifies and complicates Lawrence Hill’s description of the ways in which he entered a black community through his work, while his sister became black “by having a black child.”71 To do so, I contrast Nicole’s emphasis on a black identity that can protect brown-skinned children with Kevin’s dreams of emulating black male leaders, and compare how the two indigenous Nova Scotians in working-class areas — who cannot hide their mixed racial origins and have no formal ties to African-Canadian churches or community groups — can assert a black identity by defining themselves against middle-class individuals of African and/or European descent.
III My mother supports me 100%; at 26 years old it’s embarrassing and humiliating, but I’m in school so she doesn’t care. My mom always, always wanted us to do better than what she did … People ask me who I am. “I’m black.” I don’t really identify with a mixed identity or a biracial identity. I know my mother’s white, but I’m not. I’m black. It’s my mom who’s white. It’s not me. Nicole Gardiner (2002)
Every failure, I can hear Mom saying, you’re not going to be any good, you’re not going to be any good, you’re not going to be anything. Sometimes I think I set myself up to be a failure, because sometimes I don’t think I deserve to succeed … Every success that I do, like getting my grade 12, going to university, that was a big
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“too bad for you, Mom, because I’m succeeding, look at me now, look how I’m succeeding.” But I’m doing it for me, not to spite her. I’m doing it for me because I want to be the best I can be, because I deserve it as a person, as a black man, as a member of the global community; I deserve success and I’m bloody well going to take it. And I put myself out there and I take that risk every day. Kevin Koshinsky (2002)
Like Leslie, Nicole had turned down a scholarship for students of African descent that would have financed her first year of study at Dalhousie University. However, she did so in order to go through the Transition Year Program (TYP) — a program Rocky Jones had established to provide black and Native students with the support to be successful in a university environment — and have them finance the entire period of undergraduate study.72 Nicole did not end up enjoying her experiences in the TYP program but she was able to find solace in the BSAC and, during our interview in their lounge, she described the sense of security she felt among black Scotians and her desire to look out for other black people.73 This did not mean that she made time to join her brother, who is “actively involved in community [groups]”;74 she believes many black Scotians are unwilling to commit to formal organizations,75 and criticizes organizations when they pursue religious objectives that cannot be achieved in the short-term.76 In contrast, her vision of a black community primarily revolves around protecting materialistic youngsters who are confronted by a police force that is unable to keep them away from drugs and violence.77
To do her part in an informal network of people committed to black youngsters, Nicole reprimands children who say things like, “that black crispy critter.” I’ll say, “Come here for a minute. Who you calling a black crispy critter? You wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for black crispy critters like that. Just because your mother’s light because her father was white — you don’t be like that.”78 Such determined opposition to colourism honours her father: My dad always taught me that I was black. That’s the one thing … I know my father overheard me — when I was really young, really stupid, I didn’t even know what I was talking about, really — he overheard me saying how I was brown, I wasn’t black; I’d rather be around brown people than black people. All of a sudden I got a slap, and he sat down and explained no matter what shade of black — just because I’m brown, somebody might be darker, darker brown so I think they’re black — it makes no difference, no matter how much colour you have, what features you have.79
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Nicole goes on to offer various pieces of evidence that can be made to fit stereotypes about light-skinned radicals who are only able to assert a black identity by disassociating themselves from a white “mentality.” Aside from desiring adarker skin tone,80 Nicole defines herself as arole model for black kids because, “you know, I guess I can do stuff that white people, I guess, could never, and I can identify with these children in ways that others can’t.”81 Yet the repetition of “guess” is significant, not simply because Nicole worries about her light-brown skin tone — as she reminded me, “the majority of Scotian people are light-skinned. My neighbourhood is full of black people with blond hair and blue eyes, and black people who are mistaken for white constantly”82 — but because she is wary about erasing white women like her mom from “the bosom” of “the [black] community:”83 My mom’s not good with black history, but anything she saw might have interested in, she’d pick that up. TV specials, she tried, I can say, she actively tried. I mean my mother didn’t have to raise me and my brother in a black community, but she did, you know. She said, “You know why I do not want to bring them up round white people? They’re not going to teach them anything.” Even after she kicked my dad out, she could have moved, but she didn’t.84 In this manner, Nicole praised her mom’s decision to stay in a black community for the sake of her children, rather than presenting her mother as an individual who had no desire to leave the multiracial community she had lived in all her life. Nicole also ignored the popularity of interracial relationships in the 1960s and 1970s so that she could contrast her mother with “white girls” in the 1990s who only enter black neighbourhoods to hunt down black men and obtain exotic babies. Whenmymotherdatedandmyfatherdated,itwasn’tpopular,they had issues, you know. To me, it’s the popular thing to do, I listen to young white girls say, “I’m going to have a baby from a black man.” And I say, “Why?” “Oh the kids are so cute.” “What are you going to do with the kid’s hair?” “I don’t know.” “Then maybe you shouldn’t have no kids, because if you don’t know what to do with the kid’s hair you going to have a kid with nappy hair. You’regoing to have kids because they’re cute? White kids are cute too!” Put bluntly, Nicole claims that the “whitest-looking person” can be accepted in a black community so long as he or she was raised in a working-class community with a sufficient number of black people and that he or she are not “complete idiots about race.” Yet her emphasis on the ways in which blackness is constructed is not used to build alliances with whites as much as it is used to distance herself from brown-skinned individuals who are not from working-class areas or who teach their children about the relations of power that enforce a one-drop law outside the home. So, despite claiming that there is no difference between working-class blacks of different skin tones, Nicole feels entitled to opine, “I grew up in a black
210 Finding a Home while Crossing Boundaries: Black Identities in Halifax and Liverpool neighbourhood, ’round black people; I imagine it’s different for black people who are brought up in a white neighbourhood: they’re always a little bit different, they’re less concerned about racism in general, they see less racism.”85 She also denounces a young mother of two [who is] raising her children to believe that they are biracial … She believes she’s raising her children to believe that there’s no such thing as racism in this world, there’s no such thing as prejudice in this world. I feel sorry for her kids ’cause one of these days her kids are going to wake up and her daughter’s going to go to school and someone’s going to tell her, “You’re not half,you’reblack.”She’sgoingtogetherfeelingshurt,she’sgoing to go somewhere else and it’s going to happen again. And then her mother’s going to have her heart broken because her daughter’s heart is broken, all because she wants to believe that, you know, there’s no racism, there’s no prejudice, that didn’t happen because of white people. I think the girl’s crazy; she grew up in a black neighbourhood, you’d swear she knew better but instead she’s got this idea [that] because she’s not racist or prejudiced nobody else in the world is, [that] there’s no such thing as systematic racism, the police aren’t racist, the police just do their job, black people do not get below-average health care, that’s just something we think. There’s seriously something wrong with that girl. Her girl, she’s my complexion and she’ll tell you, “I’m half-white,” and I feel so bad for this girl because she’s going to find out, “You’rehalf-white in your mother’s eyes, [but] you are black in everybody else’s eyes.” It’s going to be a shame, but I guess some people got to learn the hard way.86 Nicole’s construction of a black identity is clearly tied to her own experiences at a predominantly white school where, like Leslie, she faced racism, and was told that she was a “burned piece of toast.” Yet she also believes that individuals from countries with a “black majority” cannot quite understand the impact of Canadian-style racism “with a smile on its face.”87 Revealingly, she declares, “I’m black. No African nothing, it’s not Canadian, I’m just black,”88 and makes no real effort to include children withAfrican-bornparentsintohervisionofablackNovaScotianfamily. Well, I know in my neighbourhood Africans, I find, honestly, they tend to stay with themselves, like Africans will meet up with other Africans and have African babies, you know. But some of them will involve their kids in activities in the community and that helps us get to know the family better. But besides that, I don’t know; I got to know some of them so now I speak to them, talk to them, play with their kids or something, tell them if there is a special event in the community. Recently we’ve been trying to include them more, by showing the children in the neighbourhood different aspects of black culture, so we’ll have people from the neighbourhood come around and give a presentation on where they’re from, be it Dallas,
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Cleveland, Shelbyville, that’s been pretty good so far. As far as making them part of the community, I don’t know how much of the community they feel they’re a part of, ’cause I know, in our neighbourhoodanyway,theAfricanssticktogether,Africansstick with the other Africans who stick with the other Africans.89 So while Nicole argues that it “makes more sense that kids are going to be interested more in their own history than history that’s taken place, you know, 500 years ago in maybe a place they will never see,”90 she cites presentations on Dallas, Cleveland and an area that could pass as Bart Simpson’s hometown. In other words, Nicole turns her back on meeting new people in Nova Scotia and consumes the antics of the yellow-skinned Simpsons, representations of blackness in the all-American Bernie Mac show, comedies like Frasier with predominantly white casts, and interracial relationships depicted in the multicultural milieu of Ally McBeal.91 She even draws on televised images of New York in order to imagine how she might be perceived in Toronto. Spanish people — depending on how attractive you are — try to claim you. I’ve noticed that. I get my hair done and the Puerto Ricans would be like, “Oh, you look Puerto Rican,” the Cubans would be like, “Youlook Cuban,” the Dominicans would be, “You look Dominican” I tell them “I’m just black.”92 Nevertheless, Nicole can still use a biracial lens to tell Spanish-speaking individuals in Nova Scotia that they are “black.” Just as her “Spanish” boyfriend becomes “black” so that she can remind others, “I’ve never [really] dated outside my race,” one of her Spanish girlfriends obtains “black person’s eyes.”93 Even when a black/non-black binary fails, Nicole simply refuses to explore Spain’s Moorish history and defines Spanish people in the Americas against a European identity she equates with whiteness: Sometimes I like to think that I am Spanish. I like Spanish culture, I’m extremely interested in Spanish culture … People of colour Spanish, people from Central/South American Spanish … black people. Not even just black, not-Spaniards, not from actual Spain, not European Spanish.94 Kevin’s narrative also explores the tension between a biracial American lens and a coloured community in the Americas. However, whereas Nicole felt comfortable in the BSAC and used her private dreams of South American colour to serve a black public, Kevin did not feel that he was accepted by members of BSAC and hoped to forge a biracial community that could compete with black icons.
Kevin’s early life story conforms to many of the patterns established in Freud’s family romance, in which the child could negotiate Oedipal guilt by mimicking the tales of “lower class servant girls” and exalting his father95,
212 Finding a Home while Crossing Boundaries: Black Identities in Halifax and Liverpool as well as Rank’s Myth of the Birth of the Hero, in which the hero could negotiate birth trauma by finding — or inventing — a distinguished father and winning the love of his people.96 To begin our talk, Kevin described how he was placed in foster care as a young child, shifted about from home to home and, when taken up by a family, never adopted. Kevin even presents his foster mother as “quite a brutal lady” and, while fondly remembering a male father figure of uncertain ethnic ancestry, he acknowledged that “when you get older and you get to that rebellious stage that closeness doesn’t really do you any good, because your dad’s friends know and they’ll call your father; no matter what you’re always watched. It really wasn’t that comfortable.”97 Thus, Kevin went to Vancouver, BC: [He] bought a fake ID, and joined the [armed] forces. I loved it. I got to learn more about different people, different cultures, different religions, different communities. I seen the rich people, and really poor. Some of the poorest sites I’ve seen are in Tahiti, you see the people there in little more than shacks. They’re so poor that they can’t even afford clothes. You want to save them all, to stop that kind of life. It’s dirty, they’ve got more diseases, there’s starvation. I couldn’t even sleep, I have memories of them. I mean, these are your people, you can’t do anything about it. I mean, I was in a position of power, working for the government, yet I couldn’t do anything to help my own people out. I was so frustrated.98 YetwhenhereturnedtoNovaScotia,Kevindidn’tworktomentorchildren. Instead, he confronted his “real mom,” a sex worker in Halifax, about the ethnic ancestry of his “real dad.” She had told him that his dad might have been “Latin.” Kevin describes: We got into a really big argument, I confronted her and she finally admitted, “Yes, you have a black father.” “Thank you, that’s all I wanted to know.” Ever since then I’ve been trying to learn more about who I am, my heritage, my people. It’s weird because my attitude towards my people had never really changed, I never did see skin colour; you’re just another human being to me, and that’s the way I always thought. So when I found out I was half black, although it did fill in a couple blanks, it gave me an impetus to learn more as to who I was as an individual, and sent me on a journey as to who I am as a black man, what’s my role in my community.99 On discovering his African roots, Kevin adopted a “dark-skinned” advisor at Henson College as a role model and went on an “immersion course” into black culture.100 Part of this venture included learning about Kwanzaa — a celebration founded by the African-American cultural nationalistKarenga101 —andstandinguptomenheconstructsasuber-mas- culine dark-skinned “others.” He says: In the Derby 95% of people who go in there are extremely dark-skinned black. What had happened was, I was working as a waiter, and when I was putting beer down it spilled onto a black
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lady’sjacket.Shewasextremelyupset,herboyfriendwhowaslike 6 something, like 300 pounds solid muscle. I was extremely intimidated. I’d never had an error like that happen before; I was thrown off my stride. I apologized, I said, “Send the bill to me, I’ll pay for the jacket.” They seen the fact that I wasn’t going to back down; I wasn’t intimidated by them. I made an error, and I stood up like a man. I didn’t go over to the bouncers and seek cover, I stood there, whatever was going to happen was going to happen, but I was going to face it on my own. This guy saw that, and said, “Accidents happen, don’t worry about it.” For me that was a major success, because even though I made a mistake I was willing to pay the consequences, so I earned their respect.102 In trying to present the veneer of strength to dark(er)-skinned black males, Kevin clearly constructed “them” as foreign forces that can become allies. Yet he longed for love as much as respect, and resented dark(er)- skinned blacks who continued to keep him at a distance, as well as “white girls that … desire black men” and refused to see him as a swarthy Don Juan let alone a Moorish Othello worthy of marriage.103
To resolve his dilemma as a “black man in a white man’s body” without a “cultural identity,” Kevin hoped to “create a third category of ‘other’ … opening the doors to allow an uncategorized, unsubjugated individual to emerge and prosper.”104 His choice of words reveals how he has drawn on decolonization movements of the post-WorldWar II era in a manner similar to Deleuze and Guattari’s vision of schizoids, subject groups and subjugated individuals.105 Yet while Deleuze and Guattari combined the popular images of American blacks that influenced Rank with the warnings of Frantz Fanon and Richard Wright about enclaves of blacks who were “just as capable of nourishing a modern fascism as of freeing a revolu- tionary charge,106 Kevin hopes to fulfill Martin Luther King’s dreams of “being one people under one nation. The biracial community has to stand out and say, we are everything that you guys are not, we are the culmination of that dream.”107 Consequently, Kevin has difficulty committing to a multicultural, rather than a biracial, enterprise: There are people that are like me that are Asian and white, Asian and black, you know, there’s so many cultures out there … white and Asian, black and Asian, black and white, anything; so long as it’s two different cultures blended together, you belong to us. We want to be a global biracial community … It doesn’t matter where you are, you still face the exact same obstacles, in Portugal, in Madrid, in Russia, in China, as you do in Canada. It’s not a struggle of location; it’s a struggle of personalities. It’s the black culture versus the white culture versus the biracial community. We’re not fully black; we’re not fully white. We’re not fully this culture or that culture. We’re a blend of two or more cultures blended together.108
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Ultimately, Kevin’s international hopes can be traced to a working-class community in Dartmouth. Toward the end of our talk he emphasized his self-identity as a (straight) man’s man. Indeed, while Nova Scotian institutions are often caricatured as conservative and insular, Kevin believed that his provincial government had conceded too much to a gay lobby and was “so eager to be an open door for the rest of the world [that] they keep forgetting about the people that are already here.”109 In this way, he could question black men who steal from him by tying his working-class male identity to “white niggers” fighting colonization or a class war, rather than his African ancestry.110 In addition, Kevin concluded our talk with an interesting example of how he feels “race” is lived through “class”: Do you feel you’ve experienced racism in Halifax? Oh God, yes. I’ve experienced it in several different ways, being a biracial man. I’m rejected by the white people because I’m too dark. Can you give me some examples? If I go to a restaurant, and there was a yuppie white couple versus a poor black man, and I was in between them, then they would take the white couple first. Butwouldyousaythatisbasedonraceorsocio-economicclass? It’s a combination of both, because I’m biracial.111
IV Nova Scotia is more class conscious than race conscious, although race plays a major part. If you’re a professional, a black professional, then the larger community sees you different, or differently than the masses of black people … So when the West Indians came to Nova Scotia they were part of a certain class, and with that class there was a certain acceptance. Now, on the other side, I mean, I’ve no doubt that they faced racism, too, but not the kind of oppressive racism that we Nova Scotians faced, so when the jobs were available they had the qualifications, and coming from the same class as the people giving out the jobs, they got the jobs. Rocky Jones (2002)
Thus far, this paper has emphasized the voices of indigenous Nova Scotians who often associated my facial features, hairstyle, skin tone and clothing with forms of blackness that were both local and North American, until my accent betrayed my ties to Liverpool, Merseyside rather than Liverpool,
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Nova Scotia. As a result, our conversations often probed the idea of the nation as well as notions of race, class, sexuality and gender. After insisting thatIhad“moreAfricanfeaturesthannot,”BarbaraclaimedthatIwould have more difficulty being accepted by the white race than the black. They’d accept your British accent, but that just comes down to ignorance because they don’t believe there are black people in England. I think you’d have more difficulty going into a white community thing.112 In contrast, Leslie used my British citizenship to confront the prejudices of her Africadian father,113 and both Nicole and Kevin discussed how my accent seemed to represent a suspiciously “posh,” effeminate or queer lifestyle because they were not used to thinking about a black British culture, and linked Europe to whiteness.114
Yet in the course of my research I also talked to people who had immigrated to Nova Scotia from former British or French colonies. They did not ignore questions of race but tended to emphasize my connection to members of a Caribbean or African people who were able to become responsible national citizens. During our conversation in his law office, the Jamaican-born Gus Wedderburn announced: You’re the first PhD black kid that has come here to talk to me. I don’t know if we have any here in Halifax. The majority of black students in those universities are still West Indians, and Africans. The indigenous guy is not down. How you change that scenario, I do not know … I look at the Jews and I look at us from the West Indies, and your father from St. Vincent — they never sat back and wallowed in their poverty. That’s why you’re here today, doing your PhD. I have relatives in the West Indies, they were poor, [but] they never sat back. They decided, “I want a profession.”115 I met with Gus on many other occasions, often in suburban locations, and he continually discussed the need to shepherd black communities into respectability. For example, he presented the Africville community as a dump, just as he had done when he led the NSAACP in the 1960s.116 In addition, when he condemned television shows and “pimps” that encouraged young black men to “chase white girls,” he continued to call on white liberals to help solve black problems in a respectable Judeo-Christian manner — the same discourse he had employed in his paper to the New Brunswick Human Rights Agency in 1968.117 Thus, after resisting the simplistic binaries used by Canadian writers in the 1960s to promote Caribbean immigrants when they were “radical” and domestic blacks when they could be “submissive,” in its final section this paper not only addresses contemporary attempts to pit responsible African and Caribbean immigrants against blacks indigenous to Britain but also returns to the debatebetweenRinaldoWalcottandGeorgeElliottClarkeinCanada.118
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V [M]y mother deplored any “Uncle Tom”-ism, denouncing the Las Vegas “Rat packer” Sammy Davis Jr., as “nothing but a white man’s monkey.” But black U.S. cultural influences were usually irresistible for us. When James Brown brought his show to Montreal in 1970, my mother took the overnight train ride up from Halifax and brought me along … So I grew up “black (American) Nova Scotian,” really. G.E. Clarke, Odysseys Home (2002)
James Brown never said, “Say it loud, I’m mixed-race in a satellite of the US and proud.” Wayde Compton, Performance Bond (2004)119
You’re all influenced by black musicians from America, which kept our identity in tact [sic] because when you study black music it usually entails the study of racism as well. J. Nassy Brown, Dropping Anchor, Setting Sail: Geographies of “Race” and Identity in the Port City of Liverpool, England (1994)
C.L.R James is widely celebrated for his insights into the Caribbean and England during the early twentieth century. Nonetheless, when interviewed by the Jamaican Journal in the 1980s he said that there were no blackpeopleinBritaininthe1930s.120 Jamesmayhaveforgottenthepeople of colour documented in Britain in the 1920s and 1930s,121 or he may have ignored them to present himself as a pioneer. Yet it is also possible that James remembered that there were “coloured” individuals in Britain but simply linked them to a lumpen proletariat served by white religious paternalism, awaiting enlightenment from a synthesis of Marxist ideals and Garveyite racial pride. To be sure, when Caryl Phillips — a writer who has labelled James “the outstanding West Indian of the century” — couldn’t ignore individuals who claimed to represent the oldest black community in the UK, he just presented them as pitiable creatures.122 In a similar vein, Mike and Trevor Phillips gave respectable members of The Windrush generation an opportunity to pronounce, “No black person in Liverpool ever made anything of their lives.”123
Black Liverpudlians of mixed racial origins do not have a long- established Baptist church to call their own but have actively challenged Caribbean immigrants who seek to exclude them from respectable venues. For example, when “dark-skinned” professionals like Frederick Reese, director of the Merseyside Caribbean Community Centre, used light skin and racially mixed features to signify a lack of culture rather than cultural
217 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes capital,124 Liverpool-born blacks dismissed his “West Indian slave mentality,”125 and he was soon dismissed from his post. Yet Jimmy McGovern, a prominent white writer from Liverpool whose dramas are often deemed “gritty” because they are set in working-class areas, has only been able to present mixed-race individuals as victims. For McGovern, Liverpool 8 is “the Harlem of Britain” because it represents a multicultural ghetto filled with dilapidated homes and exploited residents, not because its cultural vitality can mould various creative artists.126 In a similar fashion, the second series of Cracker, McGovern’s popular TV crime series, depicted a mixed-race rapist as a victim of white racism. Not only does McGovern introduce us to Floyd Malcolm as he overhears a joke about the sexual prowess of black men, but he also describes how Floyd was driven to erase any sign of his blackness and bleach his skin. In doing so, McGovern treats the stigma of Floyd’s “race” in “Men Should Weep” as he had used Abbie Kinsella’s “class” in the previous episode (“To be a Somebody”). Just as Floyd sings African-American songs and affects a Jamaican accent when he performs the role of the black buck that white psychologists fear will rape their wives, Abbie becomes the racist skinhead journalists used to caricature working-class Liverpool football fans. While McGovern’s Freudian-lite approach highlights a sick society, it fails to unravel the dynamic ability of a mulatto culture to traverse borders and inspire creative artistry in the style of The Commitments (1991).127 In short, TV executives in the United States needed to do more than change the title of McGovern’s show to Fitz when they bought the rights to the show.128
Paul Gilroy, professor of social theory at the London School of Economics, is well versed in transatlantic communication and has offered his readers a means to condemn “racial conservationists who veer between a volkish, proto-fascist sensibility and the misty-eyed sentimentality of those who would shroud themselves in the supposed moral superiority that goes with victim status.”129 Nonetheless, his glib comment — “‘You’ll never walk alone” [the anthem of Liverpool Football Club] would always eclipse the strains of ‘Abide With Me,’[the song played for the royal family before the Football Association Challenge Cup final] never mind the pieties of ‘God Save the Queen’” in Merseyside130 — reveals his lack of empirical knowledge about Merseyside since it relies on Bill Shankley’s maxims about Liverpool and Liverpool reserves constituting the only two teams in the area, and fails to note the agency of Everton fans that vote with their feet and leave Christian churches that use “You’llnever walk alone” as a song of praise. Blacks who support Everton, Liverpool, or Tranmere were also able to remind J. Nassy Brown, an American anthropologist influenced by Gilroy’s vision of a Black Atlantic, how race mixing is only considered a national religion when it takes place in London.131 Nonetheless, she was still “blown away” by visiting London and finding a black woman “in a sharply tailored suit, briefcase in hand … dressed in a way that belies such a confident, gracefully employed air … effortlessly.”132 Alas, even when a
218 Finding a Home while Crossing Boundaries: Black Identities in Halifax and Liverpool popular mixed-race novelist such as Zadie Smith reminds her interviewers, “I barely know England. I’ve never been north of Cambridge,” reviewers continue to reduce multicultural Britain to Smith’s vision of London, and vice versa.133
Consequently, it is not surprising that Liverpudlians of mixed racial origins can turn to American sources as much as intellectuals tied to London. Some researchers who face the “objective social reality of not being white” have even refused to move beyond a biracial world view and simplyimbibedthelecturesofMolefiAsanteinordertodenounceGilroyas “too intellectual” or not wanting to be a “Black intellectual.”134 Asante’s Afro-Americocentrism has also been influential with figures in Nova Scotia,135 much to the chagrin of “Edson,” a “quintessential callaloo” from the Caribbean. Whether we talked at his home, at the BSAC or at a café, Edson repeatedly drew on Fanon’s manifesto to critique Egyptocentricism and Afrocentricism: One of these Afrocentric types was giving a lecture about black nationalism and stuff like that. So, you know, like, “Egypt had planes,” and “black people had planes,” and all this trash. So I ask, “Brother, don’t you realize that what you’re doing is mythical, and replacing white nationalism with black nationalism? You’re just reversing not, as you said [earlier], reconceptualizing. The guy — the place is packed with brothers and sisters, eh — the guy says, “Well, they’ve had white nationalism for 500 years, can’t we brothers and sisters have a little bit for a little while?” And the crowd broke up and laughed … it’s astounding, people can look at Ghana,thenMaliandSonghai,asthequintessentialblackempires, but everyone glosses over the fact that it’s black people conquering black people and they gloss over the cleavages. These are not societies that I necessarily want to replicate, whether in terms of the class hierarchies, the patriarchy and all this kind of stuff, and then you begin to go down into essentialisms.136 After condemning a “native bourgeoisie” that blindly followed an American society for people of black cultures, Edson outlined their failure to create a mythic African Nova Scotian community that could reach the people: On a fundamental level, people are more tied to their community identity, Preston, Lincolnville. Afew individuals might transcend that, but there exists no pan-African Nova Scotian identity. If you ask people, if you see how they act, they identify by being a member of East or North Preston, Cherrybrook, Whitney Pier (which is more working-class area, because it’s a very different community); they’re more tied to these communities. When Mandela was released there was a big party that transcended all of that.137
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Rather than dismissing Gilroy’s “mulatto consciousness” as out of tune with the African-American experience à la Asante, Edson reflected Gilroy’s insights about a black Atlantic in which Mandela suspends and refocuses “differences that might prove difficult and even embarrassing in other circumstances.”138
Yet whereas Mandela’s flamboyant shirts symbolize freedom in a black Atlantic, Malcolm X’s image is usually captured in the tight suits that James Bond — or Sidney Poitier — might wear to an interracial soirée rather than the loudly loose zoot suits he wore while serving the illicit fantasies of white men and women. Thus, Asante claims Malcolm in the hopes of regulating black youth,139 just as Jesse Jackson used Malcolm’s life story to talk about infantile citizens: Today the life of Malcolm Little, Malcolm X, Haj Malik El Shabaaz, is instructive in three poignant ways. His academic studiousness is a brilliant example to youth who, in many cases, define what is “cool” as non-academic. As we seek to reclaim our youth as a nation, we must transform their values to embrace academic excellence and civil participation … Second, Malcolm’s rejection of destructive behaviour is instructive as a set of values which places dignity above designer clothes … Lastly, Haj Malik El Shabaaz is a glowing example of the individual need to seek a higher understanding.140 Similarly, African African Nova Scotians influenced by televised images of Malcolm X can call for a messianic leader who can win over the hood from ignorance and “nihilism.” He must be somebody who smoked a lot of drugs, fought around, shot guns, ended up getting out of that, became a successful, educated person who can talk to these people and say, “Look,” you know, who understands exactly what’s going on. He can provide leadership and education but he must work with successful immigrants in order to do that, and explain these things to these people. I don’t see why some people think that I sold them as slaves, I never sold anyone as slaves because my grandfather worked in plantation too … Yes, the leader could be a woman, it could be a man, but I for some reason I just think that — I’m not sexist or anything — I think women are more likely to listen to me than men are to listen to women in society. If some girl goes down to Gottingen and calls out everybody and starts preaching, I don’t know, I don’t know if she’s going to get as much audiences as the guy, not because — my point is the leader has to get as many people interested as possible.141 Such desires to find mythic leaders can be linked to chivalric norms of medieval Europe,142 but one also needs to note how attempts to arouse mass attention are transformed to meet hegemonic norms of African-American
220 Finding a Home while Crossing Boundaries: Black Identities in Halifax and Liverpool masculinity. One of Nassy Brown’s informants in Liverpool linked conscious blacks in Britain to African-American men able to liberate “their women” from bondage to white civilization. To do so, Scott brazenly removed the term “half-caste” from its origins in the British Empire’s Indian adventures, or its apolitical and derogatory use by blacks born in the Caribbean or Africa,143 and related it to the ways white men in America defined sinful “high yellas”: In New Orleans, women were slaves so that they [whites] could put light-skinned, nice-looking black women in brothels in their own clubs … Then they [whites] classified these people — half caste, quarter caste, octoroons … it is only in recent years in these places we [blacks] have now begun to understand and say NO. If white people are white regardless of their skin colour, because amongst white races I see many different shades of white and yet white people turn around and say “we are white,” then we say “we are black” regardless of the different shades that we have — we say “we are black people.”144 Even when Karen, another one of Nassy Brown’s informants in Liverpool, asserted black female agency she ended up turning to Afro- Americocentric visions rather than decolonization movements in Africa or the Caribbean: I affiliated black Americans as being more kin to me than Africa. I joined the black women’s liberation group and I joined the Angela Davis march in this country, and was very political in my sense as a black person. Anything that emanated from there — from music to culture — was part of my culture!”145 Black women in Nova Scotia can also take pride in iconic African- American images from the 1960s. Amanda Carvery “just loved the pictures of these women [in the Black Panthers] with guns protecting themselves.”146 Moreover, after asserting her cultural connection to “modest” women in Africa and “underdogs” in Nova Scotia, Barbara takes solace in documentaries that show that women in the Black Panther movement “weren’t domestics.”147 She praised Viola Desmond as the “Canadian version of Rosa Parks,” reflecting crusades to empower black youth and tell them to venerate respectable citizens rather than question why they are told about Rosa Parks rather Claudette Colvin, “an ‘A’student, quiet, well-mannered, neat, clean, intelligent, pretty and deeply religious” who was also dragged off a bus by white racists but ignored by the NAACP because she was carrying a child outside of wedlock, “working poor” and dark skinned.148
Consequently, debates about skin tone in Nova Scotia and Liverpool are not only feminized but ushered away from the public sphere as masculine creative artists seek to build a native black community of 1,001 colours.149 The main issue for Rocky Jones is the need to develop mentors of African
221 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes descent — whatever their skin tone — who can help the indigenous community compete with the immigrants coming from “countries where they have black role models, in the bank, the President of the country, police officers, whatever.”150 Similarly, Ray Costello, a former school teacher in Liverpool, hopes to develop “positive imagery” that is local, not from “the United States or … remote African kings or other, often too distant, role-figures.” Nonetheless, in calling for black youngsters to be given positive “role models of their race,” Costello relies on a one-drop law associated with the United States so that he can claim the “African genes” of Albert Edwards Jones, a Buckingham Palace guard who was not “visibly black.”
Since torturous attempts to match colour with culture continue to characterize attempts to establish role models with sufficient amounts of melanin, I end with six degrees of separation that we might use to connect Kevin Koshinsky’s biracial vision to consumers of multiracialism. WhereasKevinseizedHalleBerry(1)asabiracialspokespersontomeethis own personal needs in Nova Scotia,151 Ray Costello (2) considered her a representative of black Liverpool.152 Following Costello, Sir Peter Blake (3) and the Liverpool Culture Company also chose to omit the fact that Judith Berry, Halle’s white mother, left the city when she was six years old, and enlisted the iconic image of Judith’s daughter and the famous face of Mike Myers (4) in their successful bid to become Europe’s city of culture for 2008. Yet George Elliott Clarke (5) has used the anglophile comic to symbolize Canadian whiteness in Hollywood, along with Keanu Reeves (6), an actor who identifies as multiracial (albeit one who is comfortable inhabiting the role of a Geordie (meaning from Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK) exorcist casually talking about “half-breeds” in Los Angeles).153
When scholars stumble across multiracial “fellas” trying to make sense of American drinking games and Hollywood stars, they may find it temptingtouseFreudandFanoninordertoridiculean“intoxicating”North American media or question an American society for people of black cultures.154 Yet when the ghosts of America’s mulatto-minded culture continue to haunt those who travel within a black Atlantic, it is also the bounden duty of honest intellectuals to reorient Freud by updating Rank’s study of mythic heroes, Cruse’s list of crimes committed in the name of a black people and, last but not least, Fanon’s conversations with working- class blacks.
Notes 1. Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks (New York: Grove Press, 1991), 224. 2. “I know I’m black. There’s nothing white about me. I know I’m black and I know [the white students] talked about me the same way they’d talk about any other black.” Billy Downey, TS, 106. [TS refers to the transcripts of conversations I had
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with Nova Scotians in the summer of 2002. The transcripts, along with the tapes, are stored at the Nova Scotia provincial archives. 3. Ibid., 111. 4. “[L]ife in Africville for the Canadian black is terrible. But coming to Toronto only brings minimum alleviation for his ills. It is here he realizes that while physical amenities in Toronto may be better than what is available in Nova Scotia, he is faced with the same social situation and restrictions compounded now by the inadequacy of his educational preparation.” David Trotman, “Blacks and Portuguese in Downtown Toronto (City of Toronto Archives, RG 76-3-0-942 47 [1971], 5). 5. Odimumba Kwamdela, Niggers, This is Canada (New York: Kibo Books, 2000), 26–30. 6. Robin Winks, The Blacks in Canada: A History,2nd ed. (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1997), 346. 7. Francis Henry, Forgotten Canadians: The Blacks of Nova Scotia (Don Mills: Longman, 1973). 8. Like Robin Winks, many Africadians were not aware of Gramsci’s writings in The Modern Prince and Other Essays (first translated into English in 1957) or Fiori’s biography of Gramsci (first translated into English in 1970) in the 1970s, but Gramsci’s description of a “war of position” usefully describes the ways “people’s intellectuals” tried to fashion a better world for their children. Moreover, the spirit of Gramsci’s ideas were often channelled via Malcolm X’s calls for people of African descent to create “a generation of young Black people who will know what they want … [who] will create a generation who will know how to get what they want.” Osei Amoah, A Political Dictionary of Black Quotations: Reflecting the Black Man’s Dreams, Hopes, and Visions (London: Oyokoanyinaase House, 1989), 17. Thus, Donald Mapp, a Philadelphia lawyer, was well aware that black Nova Scotians lacked the resources and the money of black American groups, but he drew on Malcolm X’s words to encourage his son to become a trained lawyer who could also condemn colourism and nepotism within his community. TS, 47. 9. Winks’ research notes for The Blacks in Canada are stored at the Schomburg Center in Harlem. Kwamdela moved to New York when he tired of a black community in Canada that was “but a joke compared to the Black community in the United States.” Odimumba Kwamdela, Soul Surviving up in Canada (New York: Deep Roots Books, 1998), 102. 10. Jeffrey Reitz, “The Institutional Structure of Immigration as a Determinant of Inter-racial Competition: A Comparison of Britain and Canada,” International Migration Review 22.1 (1998): 141. One can only assume that Reitz considered black Nova Scotia a “sideshow,” just as he considers Malcolm X and the Black Muslims to have been a “sideshow” to the “real business” of the US civil rights movement. Jeffrey Reitz, Commentary on Edward Curtis’ paper, “Malcolm X Between Religion and Politics: An African-American Islamic Struggle for Liberation,” Ross Johnson/Connaught Speaker Series, Munk Centre, University of Toronto. Friday, 28 February 2003. Reitz could benefit from the proud and humble words of Donald Mapp, a regular letter writer to the Nova Scotian newspapers: Malcolm X … was one of the smartest black men, way smarter than Martin Luther King; the only thing with Martin Luther King was he was a minister, so they followed him more, and he got more credit. Malcolm X was a smart cookie, boy, you let nobody fool
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you. I loved to hear him talk, he talked just the way I would like to; I would talk that way if I was educated. (TS, 56) 11. Hill has betrayed his commitment to bourgeois role models by depicting working-class blacks of mixed racial origins as tragic objects when they “don’t work, or don’t have work that makes them appear valuable in the eyes of the middle-class black community.” Lawrence Hill, Black Berry, Sweet Juice: On Being Black and White in Canada,1st ed. (Toronto: HarperFlamingo, 2001), 230. 12. “The Conservatives are polling visible minorities on same-sex marriage … the Tories see the same-sex message as a wedge they can drive between the Liberals and immigrant Canadians … appealing to the socially conservative attitudes of new arrivals” in “the ethnic press.” John Ibbitson, “Same-sex Will Smite Harper,” Globe and Mail, Friday, 18 February 2005, A4. 13. George Elliot Clarke, Odysseys Home: Mapping African-Canadian Literature (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002), 182; A. Compton, “Standing Your Ground: George Elliott Clarke in Conversation,” Studies in Canadian Literature 23.2 (1998): 143. 14. Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, 121. 15. Anaïs Nin, The Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1931–1934 (New York: Swallow Press,1966), 291. 16. Otto Rank, Art and Artist: Creative Urge and Personality Development, trans. C.F. Atkinson (New York: Knopf, 1932). 17. Quoted in George Elliott Clarke, “Treason of the Black Intellectuals,” Odysseys Home. 18. Nin’s romantic racism unveils some of the ways in which black bodies inspired Rank: I suggest Harlem … The Savoy. Music which makes the floor tremble, a vast place, with creamy drinks, dusky lights, and genuine gaiety, with the Negroes dancing like people possessed. Rank said he could not dance. “A new world, a new world,” he murmured, astonished and bewildered … All around us the Negroes danced wildly and gracefully … Rank could not forget Harlem. He was eager to return to it. He could hardly wait to come to the end of his hard days’ work. He said: “I am tempted to prescribe it to my patients. ‘Go to Harlem!’” (Anaïs Nin, The Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1934–1939 [New York: Swallow Press, 1967], 6) 19. Clarke, Odysseys Home,5. 20. Ibid., 202. 21. Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, trans. S.G.C. Middlemore (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1921), 11; W.E.B. DuBois, “The Talented Tenth: Memorial Address,” Boulé (October 1948): 3–13. Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (New York: Grove Press, 1968), 120. 22. Clarke is “weary of black people always being a subject only for sociologists, criminologists and morticians, their scalpel eyes slicing into us, their shrapnel voices exploding our dreams, their heavy metal hands ripping into us — with a crabby penmanship that dates back to the Dark Ages. In their minds, we are supposedly too poor to even have history. Or they consider our writing mere carping … Or they classify us as ‘exotics,’ as symbols of liberal progress, of white paternalism, of black suffering, of feminist rage. Or they pretend that ‘Black Canadian’ literature consists of two or maybe three writers, and, if pressed, will struggle to name Austin Clarke and Dionne Brand.” Clarke, Odyssey’s Home, 6–7; emphasis added. It is unlikely that a Canadian
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congregation reading Clarke’s Odysseys Home needed to ask who else might be the third member of the holy trinity of “Black Canadian literature.” 23. From a population of approximately 400. P. Stamadianos, Afro-Canadian Activism in the 1960s (Concordia: 1994). 24. Clarke, Odyssey’s Home,3. 25. Ibid., 204n1. 26. TS, 93. 27. Aside from his defence of violent insurrection, Fanon’s ideas about a “native intellectual” showing the “outcast masses” that we — the anti-royal “we”— work for them had a profound impact on the intellectual development of Rocky Jones and Stokely Carmichael. Whereas Fanon called on intellectuals educated in colonial universities to “put at the people’s disposal the intellectual and technical capital that it has snatched when going through the colonial universities,” Rocky took up the theory of déclassé — the idea that intellectuals educated in urban areas would go back to the countryside and educate and “politicize the people” — as his own. Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, 120. TS, 94, 101. Whereas Fanon insisted that the middle class is “a closed society in which life has no taste, in which the air is tainted, in which ideas and men are corrupt,” and believed that the “taints, the sickness and inhumanity of Europe have grown to enormous dimensions” in the United States of America, Stokely opined, “The goal of black people must not be to assimilate into middle-class America, for that class — as a whole — is without a viable conscience as regards humanity.” Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, 224–25; Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, 252. Stokely Carmichael and Charles Hamilton, Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America (New York: Vintage Books, 1967). 28. The meeting was held on 31 November 1968. For more on the family meeting see F. Boyd, “The Politics of the Minority Game,” and Rocky Jones, TS, 90–91. 29. “Black Nova Scotians … responded in a truly Canadian fashion, in a manner that was more orderly, organized and restrained than the black revolution in the United States.” F. Boyd, “The Politics of the Minority Game,” 11. Also see Rocky Jones, TS, 88, 91–92. 30. F. Boyd, “The Politics of the Minority Game,” 11. 31. TS, 94. 32. To give some examples of Rocky’s work, he has founded and/or led the Afro-Canadian Liberation movement, the Black Inmates Program, the Transition Year Program and IBM Program (to help indigenous, black and Mi’kmaq individuals enter law school). 33. In 1968 Rocky announced “Black Power is here and it is up to the whites to see we never have to use it in a violent manner. If we have to, we will.” “Nova Scotia Simmers Down,” West Indian News Observer, December. In 1969 the Globe and Mail also recorded his rhetoric of violence in voyeuristic pieces of journalism. See M. O’Malley, “A Tolerant People? Nice to Believe, We’re Really Just Polite Racists” and “Rocky the Revolutionary,” Globe Magazine, 15 February 1969. In 2002 Rocky acknowledged, “We sometimes had the rhetoric of armed revolution, but it was never a possibility; it was never a reality of the Canadian experience to ever think of it.” TS, 90. Also see Clarke’s wistful recollection of the 1960s when, “There was no righteously destabilizing Black Power activism, for our provincial community of less than 30,000 souls was too small and too conservative to tolerate more than casually militant rhetoric.” Clarke, Odysseys Home, 27. 34. F. Boyd, “The Politics of the Minority Game,” 11. 35. TS, 96.
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36. “I think Nova Scotia is more class conscious than race conscious, although race plays a major part. If you’re a professional, a black professional, then the larger community see you different, or differently than the masses of black people — you’re not really one of them, you’re more one of us, because you’re a professional, right, so there’s a class distinction.” TS, 98. Again, Rocky’s words exemplify and complicate Clarke’s belief “that minority-group blacks will face identity conflicts over ‘blackness,’ while majority-group blacks will struggle primarily around class and religious differences.” Clarke, Odyssey’s Home, 206n10. 37. TS, 97; emphasis added. 38. Harold Cruse, The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual (New York: Morrow, 1967), 556–57. 39. Molefi Asante, “Howard Cruse and Afrocentric Theory” in Harold Cruse’s The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual Reconsidered, ed. Jerry Watts (New York: Routledge, 2004). 40. Winston James, Holding Aloft the Banner of Ethiopia: Caribbean Radicalism in Early Twentieth-Century America (London: Verso, 1998). Aside from attacking Jews throughout his text, Cruse portrays West Indians as little more than “black Jews”: “aggressive. Efficient, acquisitive, calculating and clannish.” David Lowenthal and Institute of Race Relations, West Indian Societies (London: Oxford University Press for the Institute of Race Relations in collaboration with the American Geographical Society, 1972), 227. To give one example, Cruse locates Caribbean-Americans staying on the sidelines, “with an eagle eye open for every opportunity to lap up whatever crumbs the power structure tosses to the civil righters, or to profit from whatever barriers are breached to enhance middle- class status.” Cruse, The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual, 434. Cruse’s anti-West Indian sentiment reflects the power dynamics of the Harlem Renaissance documented in Nancy Cunard and Hugh Ford, Negro: An Anthology (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1970); Amritjit Singh and Daniel Scott, eds., The Collected Writings of Wallace Thurman: A Harlem Renaissance Reader (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2003); Louis Dantin, Fanny (Montreal: Harvest House, 1973), 51. 41. See J. Harewood, “Is There Really a Canadian Black Elite?” Contrast, 2 June 1977. 42. A group that is often defined broadly (anyone with a “visible admixture of Negro blood”) or perniciously (as “aristocrats-in-a-hurry and … Kerenskyite, reactionary defenders of the slaveholding status quo”), is, in Clarke’s hands, related intimately (to honour a cousin, Blair Arnold States, “who could pass for white but was culturally black, who was Canadian, but also profoundly African-American in his orientations”) and impishly (as “tantalizingly tan”). Thus, Clarke’s description of the treason of the black intellectuals offers an eloquent response to an unfortunate Toronto youth who proclaimed, “There are too many mulattoes here” after he had been invited to a Halifax meeting of the Black Youth Community Action. Clarke, Odysseys Home, 182–83, 83n1, 206n10. 43. Henderson, “Where, by the Way, is this Train Going? A Case for Black (Cultural) Studies,” Callaloo 19.1 (1996): 65. Clarke, Odyssey’s Home, 50. 44. See Cecil Foster, Where Race Does Not Matter: The New Spirit of Modernity (Toronto: Penguin Canada, 2005), 182–83. 45. Hazel Carby pointed out Cornel West’s reliance on Anglo-Victorian modes of respectability when he condemned the “shabby attire” of black intellectuals and,
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whereas West has talked about the “nihilism” of the “black poor,” Gilroy has asked intellectuals to point out the nihilism of economically privileged blacks as well. Hazel Carby, Race Men (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), 21. bell hooks, “Thinking about Capitalism: A Conversation with Cultural Critic Paul Gilroy,” Z Magazine, April 1996; Paul Gilroy, Small Acts: Thoughts on the Politics of Black Cultures (London: Serpent’s Tale, 1994). More pointedly, Lewis Gordon considers the recent history behind the term “African-American” catering to the concerns of the black pseudo-bourgeoisie: “it serves as a way of differentiating a certain class of blacks from the dismal global situation of most blacks. I don’t meet many working-class blacks who are ‘African Americans.’” Lewis Gordon, Bad Faith and Antiblack Racism (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanity Books, 1995), 1. 46. “The few working-class people whom I had the chance to know in Paris never took it on themselves to pose the problem of the discovery of a Negro past.” Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, 224. 47. Otto Rank, Art and Artist, 63. 48. Introduction, Rinaldo Walcott, Black Like Who? Writing Black Canada,2nd rev. ed. (Toronto: Insomniac Press, 2003). 49. Rocky moved between Montreal, Toronto and Halifax as well as various cities in the US. When he returned to Halifax he was disappointed that the Black Inmates Association — a group he established to help those without the ability to freely move around North America — often ran out of volunteers. The people who really got into volunteer work were people who had family in jail, and it seems that when that person gets out the volunteer kind of drifts away, when you’re continually changing volunteers it’s difficult in the long-term to keep something going; that’s my experience, anyway. TS, 98. Nonetheless, it is important to note that notions of family in Nova Scotia can include various uncles, aunts and cousins outside of one’s “blood” relatives. 50. George Elliott Clarke, “Cool Politics: Styles in Honour of Malcolm X and Miles Davis,” Jouvert 2.1 (1998). “The Afro-Canadian Liberation movement started in 1968 or ’69, something like that, and the ACL was very militant, cultural nationalist in its approach; we renamed Citadel Hill, ‘Maroon Hill’ in a ceremony.” Rocky Jones, TS, 100. 51. Clarke, Odysseys Home, 201. 52. There was “tension between the aboriginal leadership and the black leadership of the Transition Year Program. And the aboriginal leadership really wanted to support their own university, or their own program — there’s a program in Saskatchewan for aboriginal students — so there was a boycott at one point by the aboriginal community of the Transition Year Program. I felt that perhaps we had to have a program for black lawyers, and when we first started to talk about a program for law school, we talked about developing a black program, what happened was in speaking with the administration, the law profs, and trying to put that together, they made it very clear that politically that that program would not fly, but an integrated program the same as the IBM [indigenous, black and Mi’kmaq] program — then funding would be made available for it. So we shifted and made it a program for both communities. In that planning for the IBM program, the Mi’kmaq community was not involved so they didn’t really have an ownership.” TS, 99. 53. C. Nicholl, “Black Activist Blasts ‘Racist’ Attacks,” Halifax Daily News, Saturday, 26 November 1988.
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54. Many individuals were proud African Nova Scotians, but could also lay claim to Jamaica, Tanzania, Trinidad, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Cameroon, England and Manitoba. For an overview of the individuals interviewed see Daniel McNeil, “Afro(Americo)centricity in Black (American) Nova Scotia,” Canadian Review of American Studies 35.1 (2005). 55. Dr. Abucar (now deceased), a retired sociology professor; Frank Boyd, a historian of African-Canadian life; Billy Downey, an ex-nightclub owner and sleeping car porter; Donald Mapp, a “Philadelphia lawyer” for sleeping car porters and letter-writer extraordinaire; Raymond Sheppard, director of BCAANS (Black Community Advocates Association of Nova Scotia); Simon Union (pseudonym), a former executive in the Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission; Gus Wedderburn, the former head of the Nova Scotia Association for the Advancement of Colored People. 56. Amanda Carvery, an undergraduate student at Dalhousie; Edson (pseudonym), an educator and organic intellectual; Nicole Gardiner (pseudonym), an undergraduate student at Dalhousie; Barbara Hamilton-Hinch, director of the BSAC; Mark Holding-Obeng (pseudonym), a graduate student in criminology; Kevin Koshinsky, unemployed; Craig Murray (pseudonym), a journalist; Leslie Reid, mother; Angu Vifansi, entrepreneur. 57. Donna Bailey Nurse, What’s a Black Critic to Do? Interviews, Profiles and Reviews of Black Writers (Toronto: Insomniac Press, 2003). 58. As well as her role at the BSAC, Barbara has held leadership positions with the Black Educators Association and Cultural Awareness Youth Group. 59. TS, 161; emphasis added. 60. Ibid., 151–52. 61. “In Law and Order, when the [white] wife found out, [the father] actually wanted to pay [the woman of colour] because he didn’t want a mixed child, and those are real stories because a white man or a white parent may not know how to raise a biracial child without a black parent being present.” Ibid., 153–54. 62. “Lawrence Hill wrote that book … and I think his mum was white. I think it was a talk show, and he was talking about his experiences, and the question was, ‘Did he think his experiences would have been different if his dad was white’? I think in the end he married a white woman … And one woman made the point that the way a black mother raises her child is quite different to the way a white woman raises her child, because she’s a black woman, and her husband’s white, and she has two children, so she was talking about her sons and growing up biracial, and its completely different what they’re exposed to … And also with Hill, his family wasn’t poor, so he was protected.” Ibid., 153. On the idea that a black identity can be “diluted,” see ibid., 160, 166. 63. Ibid., 138, 164. 64. Lawrence Hill, “Can Black America Save Africa?” Walrus, February 2005. Lawrence Hill, Any Known Blood,1st ed. (Toronto: HarperCollins, 1997). 65. TS, 61–62. 66. Ibid., 64–65; emphasis added. 67. Ibid., 71. 68. Ibid., 66–68; emphasis added. 69. Ibid., 69. 70. TS, 63; emphasis added. 71. Hill, Black Berry, Sweet Juice, 230. 72. Ibid., 172. 73. Ibid., 173.
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74. Ibid., 166. 75. Ibid., 192. 76. “As far as Africville goes, most people are focusing on, where’s our church? Well, you know, where’s your money? Your land? Never mind your church, you were given $200 for prime real estate, government owes y’all big time, that was prime real estate property. People died as a result of them putting a dump next door, all kinds of those issues; right now, it’s all about the church. The Africville Genealogical Society is supposed to be working on getting some money, but, I mean, it’s not happening, and if it’s happening, it’s happening extremely slow. By the time it does happen the people who started it will probably be dead … It’s hard to say how long [organized groups] will last, you never know how long something’s going to last, just because people start with good intentions, it may not last past a year, so it’s really hard to say on stuff like that. Especially when you’re talking about Scotian people.” Ibid., 192. Nicole’s comments strongly relate to the generational conflict in Haitian communities in Quebec. See M. Potvin, “Second Generation Haitian Youth in Quebec: Between the ‘Real’ Community and the ‘Represented’ Community,” Journal of Canadian Ethnic Studies, 31.1 (1999): 52. 77. On one hand: “Whenever the police comes into my neighbourhood to arrest somebody and stuff, our whole neighbourhood comes in, we take pictures, we pull out video cameras; this is how ridiculous it’s got … If I have kids my kids probably won’t have anything to do with the cops and that’s horrible because cops are supposed to protect and serve, but I wouldn’t want my children anywhere around police. No, never, I don’t trust them. I never will.” On the other hand: “Black people can actually fight and the police will not interrupt, I’ve seen it. I’ve seen a girl get beaten up by a guy, naked, on Gottingen Street and four cop cars drove right by. Eventually another girl had to go and jump out on a cop car, just to get the cop to stop. Happens all the time … I’ve walked past, seen kids playing right there, people are smoking weed, selling crack over there, kids are on the ground right there. You know, they had a dogfight, right in the middle of the playground. I know that they’re trying to clean it up. Round Africville, they’d have certain areas where that stuff took place, it wasn’t just wherever.” TS, 188, 190–91. 78. Ibid., 176. 79. Ibid., 175; emphasis added. 80. Ibid., 193. 81. Ibid., 189; emphasis added. 82. Ibid., 168. 83. Ibid., 185, 187. 84. Ibid., 175. 85. Ibid., 178. On Nicole’s use of “always a little different” see Nella Larsen, Quicksand and Passing (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1928), 102; Naomi Pabst, “Always a Little Different: The Politics of Blackness” (UC at Santa Cruz, 2000). While Larsen and Pabst articulate the ways in which people of colour in majority white spaces can produce an effective opposition to racialist oppression, Nicole opines: If you’re a black family who lives in the suburbs in a pure white neighbourhood and never bring your family around other black people, well, then your children are going to reflect the values of the community they live in, and the school that your children go to and the functions they attend, which will probably be majority
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white. I’ve never had a black friend who didn’t grow up in a lower class neighbourhood because I really don’t have too much in common in the end. Everything is different, perspectives on everything, they don’t understand where I’m coming from, I don’t understand where they’re coming from. End up just being acquaintances, just saying hi when we walk down the street.” (TS, 195; emphasis added) 86. Ibid., 186; emphasis added. 87. “I don’t really know any Caribbeans at all. Jamaicans, Jamaicans are just pretty relaxed, chilled out people who say hi to everybody.” Ibid., 177. 88. Ibid., 180, 184. 89. Ibid., 177; emphasis added. 90. Ibid. 91. “I really don’t meet too many people. I’ve been in Nova Scotia for 26 years, so as far as I’m concerned, anybody I haven’t met now, I really don’t want to meet you.” Ibid., 175, 184. 92. Ibid., 186; emphasis added. 93. Ibid., 179–80. 94. Ibid. 95. “The family romance … serves on one hand the need for self-aggrandizement and on the other a defence against incest … Where does the material for creating the romance, adultery, illegitimate child and the like — come from? Usually from the lower circles of servant girls. Such things are so common among them.” Sigmund Freud, letter to Wilhelm Fleiss, 20 June 1898. 96. Otto Rank, The Myth of the Birth of the Hero: A Psychological Exploration of Myth, expanded and updated, trans. Gregory C. Richter, and E. James Lieberman (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004). 97. TS, 247; emphasis added. 98. Ibid., 244. 99. Ibid., 248. 100. Ibid., 246, 258. 101. Ibid., 256. 102. Ibid., 259; emphasis added. 103. “They look at me, and look at my skin colour, as far as they’re concerned, I’m white; I’m not black enough. Even if I tell them I’m half-black, they’re like ‘so what? Your skin’s white.’” Ibid., 252. 104. Ibid., 244, 248, 258. 105. “It is strange that we had to wait for the dreams of colonized people in order to see that, on the vertices of the pseudo triangle, mommy was dancing with the missionary, daddy was being fucked by the tax collector, while the self was being beaten by the white man.” Gilles Deleuze, and Felix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (New York: Viking Press, 1977), 96. 106. Ibid., 258. 107. TS, 249, 262–63. 108. Ibid., 251–53; emphasis added. 109. Ibid., 261–63. 110. On the idea of whites suffering colonization see Pierre Vallières, White Niggers of America (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1971). On the idea of white punks sharing the fate of blacks “in the ghetto,” see the comments of Joe Lyndon of the Sex Pistols:
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There’s no such thing as patriotism any more. I don’t care if it blows up … England never was free. It was always a load of bullshit … Punks and Niggers are almost the same thing … when I come to America I’m going straight to the ghetto … I’m not asking blacks to like us. That’s irrelevant. It’s just that we’re doing something they’d want to do if they had the chance. (C.M. Young, “Rock is Sick and Living in London,” 20 October 1977) 111. TS, 266. 112. Ibid., 156–57. 113. “The funny thing is that my father has a thing about British people, he has a humungous idea in his head that everyone who lives in Britain is automatically a racist, which is funny as I’m talking to you.” TS, 64. 114. Various African-American cultural producers have also failed to introduce their audiences to black British working-class cultures. Henry Louis Gates Jr.’s article “Blacks in London” in the Africana Encyclopedia is a particularly striking example of an African-American unable, or unwilling, to engage with representatives of a culture who do not happen to be middle class. After being told by Hall and Gilroy about the creative artistry of working-class individuals, Gates Jr. did not grant his readers access to the words of working-class individuals. Instead, he quoted a black bourgeoisie at length and remarked that working-class Londoners of African and Caribbean descent did not “sound black.” An Afro-Saxon butler was also used in The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air to mine laughs from the presumed incompatibility of “the Queen’s English” and a black body. In addition, a non-American black was useful for producers to erase the “house Negro” from an African-American identity in the 1990s, just as African- American actors are asked to affect Jamaican accents when they become servants for a rich white families in Hollywood films like The Wedding Crashers (2005). 115. TS, 37. 116. “[P]eople making a living picking up stuff from the dump. That was Africville.” TS, 35. 117. Ibid., 33, 38. “From Slavery to the Ghetto: The Story of the Negro in the Maritimes,” paper presented to the New Brunswick Human Rights Commission, 26 March 1968. 118. Similar debates have occurred in the US after African immigrants like John Ogbu and Caribbean immigrants like Thomas Sowell established differences in academic achievement between the children of immigrants labelled black and indigenous blacks, and then tried to explain these differences with reference to a vague conception of “culture.” Whereas Ogbu distinguishes between voluntary and involuntary immigrants in order to offer an explanation as to why black immigrants (and the children of black immigrants) might outperform indigenous blacks in academic achievement, Sowell contends that black Americans languish when they are encouraged to identify with a “redneck” culture. John Ogbu, Black American Students in an Affluent Suburb: A Study of Academic Disengagement, (Mahweh, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2003). Thomas Sowell, Black Rednecks and White Liberals (New York: Encounter Books, 2006). 119. Wayde Compton, Performance Bond (Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2004). 120. “British Marxists were not tangled up with black people because there were no black people in Britain then.” Pamela Beshoff, “Conversation with C.L.R James,” Jamaican Journal, 26. 121. “In Jamaica, as elsewhere in the United Kingdom, England differentiates between the full bloods and the half bloods.” Eric Walrond, a well-known West
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Indian novelist and journalist, in the Independent, 3 January 1925. In 1930, Muriel Fletcher’s report on the “half-caste problem” in Liverpool was popular with a few journalists because she provided them with an accessible study to announce “A Social Menace: Half-Caste Evil in Liverpool,” Liverpool Post and Mercury, 14 June 1930. Muriel Fletcher, “Report into the Colour Problem in Liverpool and Other Ports,” (Liverpool Association for the Welfare of Half-Caste Children, 1930). 122. Following his brief tour of Liverpool, Phillips announced that he couldn’t find “anything in the city about which Liverpool born Blacks might feel particularly proud.” Caryl Phillips, The Atlantic Sound,1st Amer. ed., (New York: Knopf, 2000), 109. 123. Mike Phillips and Trevor Phillips, Windrush: The Irresistible Rise of Multi-racial Britain (London: HarperCollins, 1998), 382. 124. Lewis Gordon, Existentia Africana: Understanding Africana Existential Thought (New York: Routledge, 2000), 112. See his comment: “If the working class should be careful of people who function as their bosses, why should dark- skinned people be any different in virtue of the historical, supervisory role of light-skinned people? It is not that black people are morally right in having such a suspicion; it’s simply that they may be no more unusual than any other group who is constituted as society’s bottom.” 125. A tabloid newspaper quoted Reese denigrating “Liverpool born blacks, the products of mixed marriages.” He was even used to replicate Thatcher’s fears about coloured immigrants “swarming” the white population: “The half-caste population is well over 50% of the non-white population of Liverpool. They are concentrated in Liverpool 8 and if they ever come together they would swarm over everybody else.” “When Blacks and Browns Fall Out,” The Daily Star, 7 May 1981; J. Nassy Brown, Dropping Anchor, Setting Sail: Geographies of “Race” and Identity in the Port City of Liverpool, England, (Stanford: 1994), 177. 126. Quoted in Ed Vulliamy, “We Can Work it Out,” London Guardian 20 October 2004. 127. An Alan Parker film that won transatlantic success with the trite comment, “The Irish are the blacks of Europe” and northern soul music. De Paor has usefully qualified the urge to tie Irish Republicanism in Northern Ireland to “Soul Power”: In Northern Ireland, Catholics are blacks who happen to have white skins. This is not a truth. It is an oversimplification and too facile an analogy. But it is a better oversimplification than that which sees the struggle in Northern Ireland in terms of religion … The Northern Ireland problem is a colonial problem and the “racial” distinction (and it is actually imagined as racial) between the colonists and the natives is expressed in terms of religion. (Liam De Paor, Divided Ulster [Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Books, 1971], xiii) 128. Some white English-born actors have also found themselves bamboozled by the meaning of the term “cracker” in the United States. For example, Domenic West, the lead actor in The Wire (an exploration of race, class, gender, crime and policing set in Baltimore, Maryland that far surpasses the quality and range of Fitz or Cracker), encouraged an arena filled with thousands of African- Americans to watch a “cracker” show. Fortunately for West, his co-stars were on hand to let the people know that he was a naïve Englishman. Feature Commentary, “Port in a Storm,” The Wire, episode 25.
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129. Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double-Consciousness (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), 101. 130. Paul Gilroy, Postcolonial Melancholia (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), 126. 131. J. Nassy Brown, Dropping Anchor, 311. 132. Ibid., 291. 133. “When viewed from its local scene by the British reader, it is the Britishness of Smith’s novel which stands out: a Guardian reviewer has declared White Teeth to be ‘perhaps the best novel … we have ever read … about contemporary London.’” Karen Westman, “Anatomy of a Dust Jacket: Deracination and British Identity in Zadie Smith’s White Teeth,” paper presented at the Globalization and the Image II MLA Convention, New York City, NY, 30 December 2002. 134. Mark Christian and Diedre Badejo, Multiracial Identity: An International Perspective (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000), 56. W. Ackah and Mark Christian, eds., Black Organisation and Identity in Liverpool, (Liverpool: Charles Wootten College Press, 1997). Mark Christian, “The Black Intellectual/ Activist Tradition: Notes on the Past, Present and Future,” Black Identity in the 20th Century: Expressions of the US and UK African Diaspora, (London: Hansib, 2002). Mark Christian obtained his BA in sociology and American studies at Liverpool Hope College and went on to complete his master’s in black studies at Ohio State University. He regularly contributes to the Journal of Black Studies edited by Molefi Asante. 135. See W. Benton, “The Evolution of Afrikan Consciousness: The Effects of R.A.C.I.S.M. on Afrikans in the Diaspora” (Halifax: Dalhousie University, 1997 [unpublished thesis]). Since Benton’s thesis was used by the African-Canadian legal clinic in their testimony to the Supreme Court of Canada regarding the role race should play in decisions regarding custody of mixed race relationships (see http://www.aclc.net/cases/kvvte.html), it would be amiss not to note that David Divine, the current James R. Johnston chair in African-Canadian studies at Dalhousie University, also adopts an Afrocentric approach and was instrumental in the attempts of the British Association of Black Social Workers and Allied Professionals (ABSWAP) to deny the possibility of a “mixed race” existence. Ten years after the National Association of Black Social Workers in the US declared, “the black child should not be placed with white parents under any circumstances,” ABSWAP looked to shape public policy in Britain by announcing: 12(b) It has been seen that children of mixed parentage, the so-called “mixed race” children of lighter skin, with physical characteristics approximate to that of white adopters, are the first to be placed transracially … Those who intend to adopt or foster black children should recognise that there are no “mixed race” children as such. They are perceived and related to by society as black … 12(d) The term [“mixed race”] is derogatory and racist. It is a conscious and hypocritical way of denying the reality of the child’s blackness and the ways in which society generally perceives black people. (“Black Children in Care,” ABSWAP’s evidence to the House of Commons Social Services Committee [March 1983]) 136. TS, 13. 137. Ibid., 16. 138. Gilroy, The Black Atlantic, 95–96.
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139. Asante’s effort to pitch a vigilante Afrocentric COPS show offers one of the most illuminating examples of his attempts to regulate inner-city blacks. In Malcolm X as a Cultural Hero he begins his anecdote by announcing, “A few years ago I observed about 10 young men in hot pursuit of one young fellow in the Richard Allen Projects in North Philadelphia.” The intrepid Asante stopped his car and ran after the young men. He intended to “break up what seemed to be sure violence perpetrated on the potential victim. Thinking as I was moving in their direction [a sure sign of a warrior-philosopher], I stopped running, walked and then stopped. What occurred to me was the fact that these young men were not Afrocentric and that it would make no sense to appeal to them on the basis of our African culture or common values, particularly since many of them probably did not believe they were Africans in the first place.” Molefi Asante, Malcolm X as a Cultural Hero and Other Afrocentric Essays (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 1993), 124. Alternatively, one could assume that they would be as unwilling to receive racial profiling at the hands of Asante as they would from the Philadelphia police department. 140. London Guardian, “Jesse Jackson, The Princely Paradox of Malcolm X,” 22 February 2005. 141. TS, 236–37. 142. Clarke, “Cool Politics.” 143. See Christian and Badejo, Multiracial Identity, 25. 144. J. Nassy Brown, Dropping Anchor, 157; emphasis added. 145. Ibid., 414; original emphasis. Also see Jackie Kay’s Adoption Papers (Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Bloodaxe Press), 27 for Angela Davis’ impact on a light-skinned black woman in Glasgow: Angela Davis is the only female person I’ve seen (except for a nurse on TV) who looks like me. She had big hair like mine that grows out instead of down. My mum says it’s called an Afro. If I could be as brave as her when I get older I’ll be OK. Last night I kissed her goodnight again and wondered if she could feel the kisses in prison all the way from Scotland. Her skin is the same too you know I can see my skin is that colour 146. TS, 142. 147. Ibid., 158, 152, 163. 148. Gary Younge, No Place Like Home: A Black Briton’s Journey through the American South (London: Picador, 1999), 225–26. Marita Golden has also asked why “the female icons of the movement, Civil Rights to Black Power, were light-skinned Angela Davis, Rosa Parks, Coretta Scott King, Kathleen Cleaver and Elaine Brown … but Fannie Lou Hamer was too black and too angry and too country to achieve the icon status her sacrifice and her work should have earned her.” Marita Golden, Don’t Play in the Sun: One Woman’s Journey through the Color Complex (Toronto: Doubleday, 2004), 14. 149. “I was involved as coordinator for the Black Student’s Network for a number of years, and often, at least once a year, there’d be a discussion on shadism, and that discussion was always a very gendered discussion, and I never understood why we had to have at least one a year; it was always a discussion proposed by
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females, and in which the speakers were female; it doesn’t take too long to realize that the obsession with shadism, in terms of societal thing, it’s very much a gendered thing, it’s very much a notion of beauty and attractiveness.” Mark Holding-Obeng, TS, 290. 150. Ibid., 97. The use of police officers is telling given Rocky’s later comment: “I’m presently being sued by the police for protecting two, three, young black girls, I mean, and speaking the truth. They will continue to move against any kind of dissent, that’s the way the system works; it cannot accommodate dissent, real dissent, meaningful dissent, they’ll try to crush you, so. The struggle continues.” Ibid., 101. 151. Ibid., 262–63. 152. Ray Costello, Black Liverpool, The Early History of Britain’s Oldest Black Community 1730–1918 (Liverpool: Picton Press, 2001), 21, 102. 153. George Elliott Clarke, “White Like Canada,” Transition (1997). Keanu is also considered “white” by Armond White, “History gets lost in the Matrix,” http://www.firstofthemonth.org/culture/culture_white_history.html. Both Clarke and White erase Reeves’ Chinese-Hawaiian father so as to place him squarely within a North American vision of whiteness that acts as a synonym for EuroAmericans or EuroCanadians. They don’t challenge the myth that “whiteness” only relates to people who refuse to acknowledge non-European ancestors. Reeves condemns “half-breeds” in Constantine (2005), a Hollywood film modelled on the Hellblazer comic book originally set in Newcastle. 154. Freud was thinking about alcohol when he described an “intoxicating media.” Nonetheless, American popular culture also seems to offer a service to individuals in “the struggle for happiness and in keeping misery at a distance.” Sigmund Freud, Civilization, Society and Religion: Group Psychology, Civilization and its Discontents, and Other Works, vol. 12, ed. Albert Dickson (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Books, 1985), 266. In addition, whereas Freud lampooned Rank’s American methods by comparing psychotherapy to the “white-washing of the Negro,” Fanon famously dismissed the “jazz howl hiccupped by a poor unfortunate Negro” used by whites faithful to expressions of “nigger-hood.” Otto Rank, Beyond Psychology: Published Privately by Friends and Students of the Author (Camden, NJ: Haddon Craftsmen, 1941), 272. Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, 195–96.
235
David Palmieri
Stuffing the Scarecrow: The Anti-Americanism of George Grant and Pierre Vadeboncœur
Abstract Anti-Americanism in Canada experiences upswings and downswings and, since September 11, 2001, has made a return, in spite of the wishes of historian Jack Granatstein who in 1996 declared that it was “dead as a dodo.” A comparative study of two examples of the genre, George Grant’s Lament for a Nation (1965) and Pierre Vadeboncœur’s Trois essais sur l’insignifiance (1983), demonstrates that English and French Canadian anti-Americanism share a similar foundation in their resentment and in their stress on the purity of their societies’ foundings. Both Grant and Vadeboncœur believe that American Protestantism is corrupt; they defend ideologies, Red Toryism and Quebecois separatism, that have hindered the development of a Conservative political tradition in Canada; and they admire France. Grant’s fascination with Céline brings to the foreground the similarities between Canadian anti-Americanism and European anti- Semitism. The increase in anti-Americanism in Canada since September 11, 2001 represents an inevitable turn toward nationalism after a twenty-year period of continentalism.
Résumé L’anti-américanisme au Canada connaît des hauts et des bas; or, depuis le 11 septembre 2001, il est réapparu en dépit des souhaits de l’historien Jack Granatstein qui déclarait en 1996 qu’il était « tout ce qu’il y a de plus mort ». L’étude comparative de deux exemples du genre, Lament for a Nation de George Grant (1965) et Trois essais sur l’insignifiance de Pierre Vadeboncœur (1983), montre que l’anti-américanisme canadien-anglais et l’anti-américanisme canadien-français reposent sur des bases semblables : leur ressentiment et leur insistance sur la pureté des fondements de leur société respective. Grant et Vadeboncœur croient tous deux que le protestantisme américain est corrompu; ils défendent des idéologies – le conservatisme libéral et le séparatisme québécois – qui ont fait obstacle au développement d’une tradition politique conservatrice au Canada; en outre, ils admirent la France. La fascination de Grant pour Céline met au premier plan les ressemblances entre l’anti-américanisme canadien et l’antisé- mitisme européen. L’accroissement de l’anti-américanisme au Canada depuis le 11 septembre 2001 représente un inévitable virage vers le nationalisme, après vingt-cinq ans de continentalisme.
The global rise of anti-Americanism in the eighteen months between the Islamist terrorist attack against Manhattan and Washington, DC on
International Journal of Canadian Studies / Revue internationale d’études canadiennes 31, 2005 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes
September 11, 2001 and the start of the Second Iraq War on 20 March 2003 had an enormous impact on Canada and effectively put an end to twenty years of friendly relations with the United States. Since 1774, when British Parliament passed the Quebec Act and successfully dissuaded French Canadians from joining the American Revolution, Canadian thought has moved back and forth between continentalism and nationalism, the latter perspective never straying far from its foundation in mistrust of “America.” In Yankee Go Home? Canadians and Anti-Americanism (1996), historian Jack Granatstein argued that Brian Mulroney’s re-election in 1988, and the Free Trade Agreement that was its immediate result, symbolized the definitive victory of continentalism. In effect, during the 1990s, Canadian anti-Americans found it difficult to make their case.1 However, the new forces at work since the revelation of American vulnerability are again pushing Canadian thinking, particularly in Quebec, away from conti- nentalism.
On 18 November 2002 in Montreal’s La Presse, editorialist André Pratt wrote,“Icontinuetobeastonishedbythescaleofthepresentanti-American current in Quebec. If we are to believe several of our readers, the terrorist menace has for all intents and purposes been invented by the Bush administration to justify its aggressive policies!”2 Anti-Americanism in Quebec has two sources: first, a native variant that emphasizes the province’s “colonial” status and, second, a French variant that stems from the influence on the Quebecois and francophones worldwide of France’s “obsession anti-américaine” as it manifests itself in newspapers like Le Monde.3
A one-sentence paragraph opens Canadian journalist Knowlton Nash’s book Kennedy and Diefenbaker (1990): “We were the original anti- Americans.”4 In Here: A Biography of the New North America (2001), New York Times reporter Anthony DePalma writes, “Canadians can be considered the original anti-Americans; their feeling of antipathy toward certain aspects of the United States date to the first days of the new republic.”5 Canadian historian Frank H. Underhill joked, “The Canadian is the first anti-American, the model anti-American, the archetypal anti-American, the ideal anti-American as he exists in the mind of God.”6 Canada is, in fact, an excellent laboratory for studying anti-Americanism. In the 1770s and 1780s, the Protestant Loyalists who rejected the United States’ new freedom from monarchy and established religion travelled, or were forced, into British North America — today Ontario, Quebec and the Maritime provinces — which led them into cohabitation with French-speaking Catholics. The two founding groups of the Canadian Confederation are, as Nash, DePalma and Underhill recognize, the world’s first anti-Americans.
Anti-Americanism in Canada is thus a tradition. Canadians can embrace or stand aloof from it, but the tradition will go on with or without them.
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Rooted in the eighteenth century, anti-Americanism begins in Quebec with France’s defeat in the French and Indian Wars, and in English Canada with Britain’s defeat in the American Revolution. These reverses led many Canadians to conceive of their nation’s origins as being purer than that of the “materialist” American republic, an enduring sentiment of moral superiority substituting for military victory.
The last sharp upturn in anti-Americanism in Canada occurred between 1965, the outbreak of the Vietnam War, and 1984, when Pierre Elliott Trudeau stepped down after fifteen years as prime minister. Two particularly virulent books that bracket this period offer insights into the enduring themes of Canadian anti-Americanism revived in the aftermath of 9/11: George Grant’s Lament for a Nation: The Defeat of Canadian Nationalism (1965) and Pierre Vadeboncœur’s Trois essais sur l’insignifiance (Three Essays on Insignificance) published in Montreal and Paris in 1983.
The following essay seeks to identify the perennial themes of the Canadian Confederation’s two anti-American traditions, specifically through these two books. It will not, however, place Lament for a Nation and Trois essais sur l’insignifiance in the context of their authors’ larger intellectual projects: in Grant’s case, his critique of technology and modernity; in Vadeboncœur’s, his articles in favour of Quebec’s independence, and his art and literary criticism.7 Lament for a Nation mourns the downfall of John Diefenbaker’s Progressive Conservative Party government in April 1963. Grant attributes its failure to the impossibility of conservatism in an era during which “American modernity” imposes uniformity and destroys local cultures.8 Trois essais sur l’insignifiance analyzes James Cain’s novel The Postman Always Rings Twice (1934), Judy Chicago’s feminist sculpture The Dinner Party, exhibited at the Musée d’art contemporain in Montreal in 1982, and a passage from Julian Green’s Journal set in Harlem in 1933. In them, Vadeboncœur identifies three phenomena that he believes to be typical of “America”: the “liquidation of culture,” “religion reduced to the level of bit player,”andthevictoryofanarbitrary“rawrealitywithoutphilosophy.”9
Grant was born in 1918 in Toronto. Vadeboncœur was born in 1920 in Strathmore on the island of Montreal. Coming to maturity in the 1940s, the English Canadian became a university professor, while the French Canadian worked for 25 years as a union official before committing himself in 1975 to writing full time. In his book Radical Tories, journalist Charles Taylor places Grant in the Red Tory tradition. A “Tory” because of his loyalty to English-Canadian Loyalism, Grant also became a hero to the new Left, a “Red,” in the 1960s during the Vietnam War because of his equally strong commitment to pacifism. Vadeboncœur published articles in the 1950s in Cité libre, at that time Quebec’s most important reformist
239 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes magazine, but he radicalized in the 1960s, becoming an indépendantiste,a socialist, and an admirer of the Cuban revolution. Les deux royaumes, his 1978 book on the loss of “spiritual” values, however, “disconcerted” some of his readers on the secular Left.10
Both Grant and Vadeboncœur revere Europe in their writings. As Canadians they struggle with their existence in North America, and their contradictory feelings about the continent stem from their lack of “groundedness,” expressed by Northrop Frye in his oft-quoted insight that the Canadian writer, instead of asking the question “who am I?” seems to be asking “where is here?”11
An admirer of Grant, Ian Angus has worked to formulate a uniquely Canadian philosophy. The difficulties in articulating it, to his mind, indicate a “deep danger” in the idea of such a national philosophy and in Canadian culture itself. The danger has two parts: The first is simply envy. We have never been at the top. Canadian culture is permeated with resentment of those who are and consists, in many secret ways, of strategies of self-promotion. The second is more subtle and may be called “the purity of origins.” Since we have never been in charge, we do not have to take responsibility for the way things are.12 In Angus’terms, Grant and Vadeboncœurare both resentful of the United States’ power and influence and convinced of the purity of English- and French-Canada’s origins.13 Grant combines his anti-Americanism with a preference for “Greek” over “Judaic” Christianity; his complex attitude toward Judaism brings to the foreground the relationship between European anti-Semitism and Canadian anti-Americanism. Vadeboncœur’s veneration of French art informs his resentment of the long reach of American culture.
Grant: A Fearful Hatred14 In his late teens and early twenties, Grant considered John Dewey and William James his favourite philosophers. He read Robert Frost and Hart Crane, and admired Franklin Roosevelt. However, in “Canada Must Choose: The Empire, Yes or No?” (1945), a pamphlet published when he was 27, Grant firmly rejected the continentalism of his youth and reintegrated into a Canadian nationalist perspective.15 The image that he formed of the United States at that time was set in stone. With the zeal of a reformed apostate, Grant would for the rest of his life reject pragmatism, modernity, liberalism, progressivism, corporations, capitalism, and technology, all of which to his mind became “American.”
Louis-Ferdinand Céline’s postwar novels D’un château l’autre, Nord and Rigodon fascinated Grant. Calling it “the greatest literary masterpiece
240 Stuffing the Scarecrow: The Anti-Americanism of George Grant and Pierre Vadeboncœur of this era,” Grant deeply admired the trilogy, which chronicles Céline’s odyssey through Europe in the final days of World War II.16 Yet the French novelist’s pre-war anti-Semitic pamphlets troubled Grant.17 Gerald Owen compares Céline’s “pacifist hatred” in these pamphlets to Grant’s “anti-nuclear anger” in Lament for a Nation, charitably adding that the Canadian, however, “did not leap into a lie, let alone into a wilfully lying fantasy as Céline did.”18 Nonetheless, Grant’s anti-Americanism plays the same obsessive role in his thought that anti-Semitism did in Céline’s: the bat in the belfry that won’t stop squeaking.
Grant’s anti-Americanism has political and religious components. In his view, a wise political philosophy served as a foundation for the conservatism of the Loyalists. That philosophy rejected the separation of church and state established by the founders of the United States, a secular nation, in Grant’s mind, whose moral shallowness has corrupted Protestantism, Catholicism and Judaism.
In Lament for a Nation, Grant argues that in the United States “skeptical liberalism” has replaced other liberal traditions based on the Church, constitutional government, and classical studies. In contrast, the Loyalists who established English Canada maintained their allegiance to the British Tory tradition with its noblesse oblige and stress on community over individual rights. According to Grant, the Loyalists were less followers of the liberal John Locke than of the Anglican theologian Richard Hooker who, in Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity (1593–1662), argued for a society made coherent through its religion, thus justifying an established church.19 Janet Ajzenstat writes that, in Grant’s view, “Canadians should be wary of liberal democracy because Canada is inherently a ‘Tory’nation.” A continentalist, Ajzenstat has opposed Grant’s conception of their nation’s history but admitted in 1998 that “one comes across his arguments constantly in the media and in the political statements of educated Canadians.”20
The ambivalent response of Canadians to Lament for a Nation began at its publication. Saturday Night said the book was flawed but served an admirable purpose. John Gellner wrote that Grant “has made some important and debatable points and, by overstating his case, he will shock thoughtful readers into giving some thought to a very great and very pressing Canadian problem.”21 Striking the same ambiguous chord, Alexander Brady felt that some points in Grant’s argument were “true, provocative, and brilliantly expressed.” The University of Toronto Quarterly reviewer, however, was “disturbed by the author’s exaggeration and distortion in the analysis and the stark black and white colours in which he pronounces judgment and disposes of Canada as a branch plant satellite.”22 The first reviews of Grant’s future classic often gave the book this kind of backhanded compliment. In Cité libre, philosopher Charles
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Taylor described Lament for a Nation as “one of those remarkable books that goes to the bottom of a problem without throwing much light on it.”23
In 1965, Grant participated “as a nationalist and a conservative” in a teach-in against the Vietnam War, organized by his nephew Michael Ignatieff at the University of Toronto.24 This event marks the beginning of Grant’s popularity with the nationalist Left. In the decade after its publication, the influence of Lament for a Nation slowly grew. The text that best explains why this occurred is poet Dennis Lee’s “Cadence, Country, Silence: Writing in Colonial Space.” First given as a talk at a writers’ congress in Montreal in 1972, the essay is a Grantean howl against continentalism. Paralyzed as an artist by his life in a space colonized by American culture, Lee credits Grant’s essays with giving him the tools to understand his and other Canadians’“self-hatred and sense of inferiority.” Lee felt liberated by Grant’s description of their Loyalist ancestors as men devoted to the “classical European tradition,” opponents of the “liberal assumptions that gave birth to the United States.”25
Grant and Lee’s caricature of the United States as a monolithically liberal society owes much to sociologist Louis Hartz’s 1955 book The Liberal Tradition in America and its 1964 sequel The Founding of New Societies. Hartz believed the nations formed by European immigration were “fragments,” their political cultures frozen in the historical era of their founding. The United States was a liberal fragment without a relevant socialist party because it lacked a feudal tradition, socialism resulting, in Hartz’s scheme, from a Marxist-type synthesis of feudalism and liberalism. According to Philip Abbott, The Liberal Tradition in America was “the dominant interpretive text in American political thought for a generation,” but in the late 1960s it came under severe attack “and by the 1990s was ‘pretty much dead.’”26
In Canada, Hartz’s theory was taken up by Gad Horowitz, whose 1966 article “Conservatism, Liberalism, and Socialism in Canada: An Interpretation” is, wrote H.D. Forbes, the best-known argument about the origins of Canadian culture, and “one of the few things in the field that practically everyone has read and remembers.”27 Horowitz labelled French Canada a feudal fragment and identified a “Tory touch,” a residue of the Loyalist migration, in English Canada.28 The presence of Toryism has thus led to the establishment of an enduring socialist tradition in English Canada, represented in politics by the New Democratic Party.
A continentalist school of thought has formed to combat the portrait of Canada’s origins advanced by Grant and Horowitz. Lament for a Nation and “Conservatism, Liberalism, and Socialism in Canada: An Interpretation” are not based on a study of primary documents. Grant and Horowitz deduce the presence of Toryism in Loyalist thought but do not provide empirical evidence to prove it.29 In The Origins of Canadian
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Politics (1986), historian Gordon T. Stewart provides an alternative view. A comparative study of Britain, the United States and Canada, and based on the work of J.G.A. Pocock and Bernard Bailyn, the book identifies “court” and “country” parties in the anglo-atlantic culture of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries organized around platforms of mistrust and faith in democracy. In the United States, the court/country party division manifested itself in the federalism of Alexander Hamilton and the Democratic-Republicanism of Thomas Jefferson. For Stewart, Canadian Tories were not disinterested paragons of “community” and “tradition” but court party men, many of whom were interested in using the government to enrich themselves, often through patronage.30 Ajzenstat calls these two parties the “liberal democrats” and the “civic republicans”; the former represented for her by Étienne Parent and Joseph Howe and the latter by Louis-Joseph Papineau and William Lyon Mackenzie, the leaders of the 1837 rebellion.31
It is significant that the first chapter of an important 1998 contribution to this school of thought is entitled “Liberal-Republicanism: The Revisionist Picture of Canada’s Founding.” If the evidence continues to mount demonstrating the ideological character of the Grant-Horowitz scheme of Canada’s origins, the “revisionist” interpretation may one day become the dominant approach. During the outbreak of anti-Americanism in the months after 9/11, however, the Grant-Horowitz paradigm continued to provide an intellectual frame for many Canadians.32
Under the influence of Hartz, in Lament for a Nation Grant argues that political differences among Americans are illusory. Canada’s neighbour, the “most progressive society on earth,” guided by “Jeffersonian liberalism,” desires for individuals “the emancipation of the passions.”33 In the United States, conservatism is impossible, and Americans who call themselves conservatives are in truth liberals.34
Grant also seems to be engaged in a frustrated dialogue with Russell Kirk’s The Conservative Mind (1953), which argues that American conservatism does indeed exist and that its founding text is Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790). In Kirk’s view, in the 1790s Alexander Hamilton and John Adams formulated American conservatism, which finds its greatest voice in Abraham Lincoln, struggles against the excesses of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, goes into eclipse during the New Deal, and is reborn in the 1950s.35 Arapid debatable rundown of American political history, this sentence, given its sympathetic tone, is also one that could never have been written by Grant.
Ernest Manning’s Political Realignment (1967), written like Lament for a Nation during Lester Pearson’s term as prime minister from 1963 to 1968, analyzes conservatism from a western-Canadian perspective. Unlike Grant, who mourns the passing of Loyalist conservatism, Manning planned
243 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes its adaptation to a new era. He proposed “a rationalized two party federal political system.” Manning felt that the Progressive Conservative Party, “for reasons not primarily of its own making,” was the vehicle for bringing together his Social Credit movement and other groups on the right.36 His proposal was realized in 2003 when Peter MacKay and Stephen Harper negotiated the merger of the Progressive Conservative Party and the Alberta-based Canadian Alliance to form the Conservative Party of Canada (CPC). The formation of the CPC is in part recognition by its leaders that the GranteanRedTorycurrentisriddledwithcontradictionsthathavehindered the articulation of a coherent conservative tradition in Canada.
In Lament for a Nation’s most famous sentence, Grant states that “the impossibility of conservatism in our era is the impossibility of Canada.”37 He calls Canada a branch plant society of the United States; for him, the new CPC, a political formation oriented more toward North America than Europe, would simply be branch plant conservatism. Western Canada, however, is not the Loyalist heartland of Nova Scotia and the southern halves of Ontario and New Brunswick, as shown by Kim Campbell’s angry reaction in the late 1980s to her reading of Grant’s classic. The future prime minister from British Columbia felt that the Canada “lamented by George Grant and others is a Canada whose history is a colonial history … a history in which central Canada has arrogated to itself the right to define what the roles of the components of this country will be.”38
The conflict at the centre of Grant’s thought — whether Canadian conservatism should be oriented toward its Tory past or toward the post-World War II American conservative revival announced by Russell Kirk — has been decided against his wishes. The resentment of Kim Campbell and many others has led Canadian conservatism to separate from the Loyalist homelands and take root in western Canada. I would argue that in the future conservative thought — using the CPC as its political vehicle — will develop the “terrestrial” identity of Canada based on its existence as a neighbour of the United States in North America.
The religious component of Grant’s anti-Americanism found expression in a 1959 lecture that dismissed American Protestantism as “secularized Calvinism,”39 and, in Lament for a Nation, that criticizes American Catholicism for not questioning “the assumptions of the society that permits it, except in the most general way.”40 Secularized or sold out, American Protestantism and Catholicism serve the empire.
In a 1969 essay, “In Defence of North America,” Grant argues that American Judaism is close to the American dream, but that it would be degrading “to say that it has been able to express its riches in American culture when the public contribution of Jews has been the packaged entertainment of Broadway and Hollywood, the shallow coteries of intellectual New York.” Different immigrant groups on the continent have
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“colored the central current of the American dream,” such as the large role Catholics play in politics or “Jews in communications and intellectual life,” but they have been making contributions to “traditions utterly differing from their own.”41 Eli Mandel — noting that Grant seems to have forgotten the contributions of English-Canadian Christians such as Innes, McLuhan, and Frye to “communications” — rightly condemns this statement as “not worthy of serious intellectual discourse.”42
Later,ina1983articleonCéline,Grantanalyzestheriseof“modernanti- Semitism.” He writes that the Jews were pouring into western Europe from the east, their religion setting them free from the straining loneliness which was consequent on the impersonal world of mass civilization. They could treat the public world [as capitalists and communists] without thinking of the consequences of destroying it, because they had a nation other than the nation which the public world manifested.43 In explaining the “mistake” of a “great artist,” Grant uses a language similar to that of Lament for a Nation, which censures the United States for being a “destructive nation.”
In Grant’s thinking, Christianity has Greek and Judaic roots, and he expressed his preference in an interview: But that does not mean there aren’t grave intellectual differences between Christianity and Judaism. Clearly, for myself, I’m on the side of Christianity that is farthest away from Judaism, and nearest to the account of Christianity that is close to Hinduism in its philosophic expression. I would accept what Clement of Alexandria said: some were led to the Gospel by the Old Testament, many were led by Greek philosophy. This same applies today when there are many ways into the apprehension of what is universal about Christ. What I object to in many modern theolo- gians (particularly the Germans) is that they make Christianity depend on the religious history of a particular people, as told in the Old Testament.44 Published two years before his death, Grant’s Queen’s Quarterly essay on Céline holds the key to the tortured amalgam in his thought of admiration for Judaism, disdain for the products of American-Jewish culture, disagreement with the argument of German theologians who make Christianity depend on the Old Testament, and his veneration of the French anti-Semitic novelist. At pains not to fall into anti-Semitism, Grant’s analysis nonetheless veers toward apology, especially when he asks his reader to “just read” and understand Hitler’s account of his loneliness in the decaying gaudy world of pre–World War I Vienna.45 The Jews were supposedlylesslonelythantheHitlersofEuropebecauseoftheirreligion.
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Grant’s analysis of Céline’s “paranoia” and “hate” concerning the Jews merits close attention. For him, the French novelist was a European pacifist who “thought that the Jews and the English were trying to push the French into war with the Germans, and that this should be avoided at all costs.” This observation leads Grant, a Canadian pacifist, into an “explanation” of anti-Semitism, which suggests that his identification with Céline is in part an effort to understand his own “paranoia,” a feeling which, he argues, is sometimes justified, and his own “hate,” which he rationalizes in asking: “Aren’t all of us, other than the saints, full of hates of one kind or another?” Grant writes: I must first state that it seems to me unimportant to take seriously the political judgments of most of us. They are caused mainly by necessity and chance — occasionally a little by good. They are betterunderstoodintermsofcomedythanbybehavioralscience.46 Avowedly anti-American and avowedly not anti-Semitic, Grant’s analysis of Celine’s obsession with the Jews reveals the rationalized paranoia and hate that lie behind his own obsession with the Americans.
Sometimes labelled Jewish, Hollywood has long been a favourite target of Canadian anti-Americans.47 However, in Grant’s view, pragmatism, not Hollywood, is the most “iniquitous” component of American culture. He considers the philosophy of William James as simply a manifestation of dying liberal Protestantism.48 In Trois essais sur l’insignifiance, Vadeboncœur also laments the degradation of “le protestantisme”inthe United States.49 In a review of William Christian’s biography of Grant, W.J. Hankey identifies the weakness in the argumentation of Canadians who adopt this point of view: There are blind spots. He [Grant] was not capable — as Canadians frequently are not, their relations being too exigent — of doing justice to the ambiguities in the American “experiment.” The United States is not just the imperial center of the engulfing secular tyranny, she is equally the most vibrant and creative actual Christian society, infinitely more so than the Britain on which Canada depended.50 Four months before he died on 27 September 1988, Grant, an anti-abortion activist, admitted that he was confused to find allies in the heartland of “secular liberalism,” and told his future biographer, “One of the things that really surprised me and made me understand that I really didn’t understand the United States was this revival of Pentecostal religion, because naturally I found myself on the same side of the issue about abortion.”51 After his youthful flirtation with American culture, Grant was blinded all his adult life by what he called “his deep ancestral antipathy to the United States.”52
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Vadeboncœur: A Profound Hatred53 On our arrival in New York, we went first to the business center, Manhattan. This vast temple dedicated to Mammon. What else could it be dedicated to? Isn’t it the idol’s soul palpitating with vertiginous rapidity, at ground level and in the air, in the noise of these trucks, cars and trains? Isn’t it money that pushes these passersby to walk rapidly, eyes fevered, hurrying to reach the one goal which they fear will flee before them, taking hardly the time to sustain their bodies, entering a restaurant only if they are sure to find a quick lunch? Isn’t it the spirit of the god of money that lives from top to bottom in these monstrous sky-scrapers with their categories of elevators, rapides, express, omnibus, loading and unloading every minute, where masses of salesmen, stenogra- phers, typists and telephone, telegraph, and wireless boys are unable to breathe?54 A French Jesuit published the above paragraph in 1922 in La revue canadienne. When Catholicism dominated Quebec, its clergy often promoted anti-Americanism. Since the Church’s collapse in the 1960s, intellectuals on the Left have been its messengers. Their secularized language, however, retains traces of Quebec’s clerical past. Pierre Vadeboncœur writes: Our skepticism concerning the United States of America and the severity that I am showing for a culture that represents, in its mass, an anti-metaphysics and an anti-morality, or an absence of metaphysics, of morality, of spirit, of spirituality, an incredible mediocrity — this skepticism, this severity strikes against such power! America imposes its power like a force that will lead to the end of the world; or simply, it has murdered in man too many things and man can no longer judge today what it has done to him.55 This example of leftist anti-Americanism from Vadeboncœur’s Trois essais sur l’insignifiance shares the word “spirit” with Father Tamisier’s article. The spirit —corrupted, according to Tamisier, by its connection to money, and of which Vadeboncœursees the complete absence in the United States — links the thought of the two men. Tamisier’s warning that the worshippers of Mammon may one day control the world is confirmed 61 years later by Vadeboncœur, for whom Mammon does rule, having left man mediocre, immoral, and spiritually murdered. The culture of the United States stands over the corpse of humanity, a smoking gun in hand.
The first readers of Trois essais sur l’insignifiance tended to have extreme reactions to its condemnation of America. Pierre Quesnel gave it a glowing review in the separatist Le Devoir, calling it “a beautiful book to meditate on.”56 Other critics defended the American artists it denigrates. Jean-Pierre Roy criticized Vadeboncœur’s “strange mythical conception” of James Cain as a novelist who was “inconscient,” while Rose-Marie
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Arbour defended Judy Chicago from a feminist perspective.57 More ambiguously, Gilles Marcotte offered Trois essais a hedging positive notice in L’actualité, criticizing the author’s lack of knowledge of American culture but praising him for discovering that our “present values resemble at times a denial of culture, of any possible culture.”58
The roots of Vadeboncœur’s 1983 anti-American tract can be traced to New France’s defeat in the French and Indian Wars. Officially recognizing the numeric and military superiority of the continent’s English-speaking Protestant majority, the Treaty of Paris in 1763 ended the dream of a French-speaking Catholic North America. Throughout the nineteenth century, French Canada’s priests and bishops engaged in an ideological war with the modernizing forces infiltrating their country from the United States and Europe. In 1837, Papineau and the Patriots, inspired by the American Revolution, declared war on their British colonial master, while in the 1850s and 1860s, les Rouges and the Institut Canadien battled an ultramontane clergy. Neither group fared well. The Patriots were militarily defeated, and Monsignor Bourget led a victorious campaign against les rouges that reached a symbolic end in 1869 when the Vatican placed the previous year’s “annuaire de l’Institut Canadien” on the Index. Liberals and anti-clericals had an impact on Quebecois culture throughout the nineteenth century, but their breakthrough came in the twentieth century when the Church’s hold on the popular culture began to wane, and then collapsed.
Vadeboncœur, educated before Catholicism’s fall, writes surrounded by its various ideological replacements on the political and cultural Left. The passage from clerical to leftist anti-Americanism in Quebec, however, required little change in the substance of its arguments. On each side of the divide, two perceived qualities of the United States are singled out for criticism: its materialism and its love of action for its own sake.
Trois essais sur l’insignifiance is, in essence, a reworking of the exemplary anti-American text of the clerical era, La revue Dominicaine’s special issue of 1936, “Notre Américanisation.” In that issue, Hermas Bastien wrote that “economics dominates” the United States.59 Striking the same note, Vadeboncœur condemns American culture because it has reducedhumanitytoits“economicmeaning.”60 FatherRaymond-M.Voyer is not far from that view when he writes that American Catholics are characterized by the stress they place on “action,” which leads them to neglect the “mystical” element of Christian life,61 a point that in turn resonates with Vadeboncœur, who states that “America is the daughter of the act, not of thought,” and, that by the “primacy of the gesture,” Americans have devised a culture that devastates other cultures and has earned them “their power and their inanity.”62
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The Dominicans and Vadeboncœur also share the conviction that American culture corrupts women. In 1937, Ernestine Pineault-Leveille wrote that “americanization has unbalanced women,” and that by transforming their character and soul it “menaces the stability of the family.”63 In Vadeboncœur’s Trois essais, feminism is American because, without a philosophical basis, it has entered into the “pragmatism of success.” The essayist feels that the women’s movement has inherited the “anti-spiritual spirit” of the American twentieth century.64 Seeing in its author a misogynist threatened by women, Rose-Marie Arbour calls Vadeboncœur’s argument in this essay “reactionary” and “pointless.”65
Vadeboncœur’s opinions do not issue from the Quebecois extreme. He has won virtually every literary prize the province has to offer, from the most prestigious government award, the Athanase-David Prize in 1976 for his writings up to that time to the Victor-Barbeau Prize in 2001 for his book L’humanité improvisée. Publishing regularly in Liberté and L’Action nationale, and counting among his admirers important critics like François Ricard, Vadeboncœur and his books have been at the centre of the province’s literary thought for 40 years.66
The most important word in Vadeboncœur’s lexicon is “culture.” InTrois essais he states, “I have an enormous hunger for culture.”67 It is his view that when France was the centre of Western culture the world had a conscience, but, with the arrival of “American materialism,” man has returned to an “animal morality.”68 The United States’ culture has not replaced France’s; what has occurred is more fundamental. The idea has come to dominate the world that “there is no need for ideas,” and Vadeboncœurwonders: “Would man be a dog?”69
Expressing his dualism, Vadeboncœur’s Les deux royaumes, his 1978 essay on “l’esprit,” opens the door into his Manichean conscience, which loves the good (Europe, childhood innocence, the interior) and hates the bad (America, the spiritual poverty of contemporary man, the exterior). Les deux royaumes is a quest for the “country of the spirit,” and Vadeboncœur finds it in an interior “space.”70 Like Dennis Lee’s national space, his Canada colonized by America’s philosophy of “essential human freedom,” Vadeboncœur’s space, his “heart of hearts” (for intérieur), has been corrupted by the corrupt “liberté” exported to the world by American “inculture.”
For Vadeboncœur, “culture is the worship of the soul,” and the demigod creators of this cult are “the artist, the mystic, the writer.” These are the men and women who have the most contact with the soul. In a 1996 essay he writes,“Noonehas,inthefullsense,moreculturethantheartist,themystic, the writer. Because they make it.”71 Like Lee’s Canadian, Vadeboncœur’s Quebecois often feels inferior.72 Vadeboncœur himself overcomes his feeling of inferiority by watching Marcel Dubé’s play “Le retour des oies
249 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes blanches” or by being in the presence of paintings by the poet Michèle Lalonde. Through these works of art, “the soul takes possession of a good.”73
French Canada’s religious culture also gave to Vadeboncœur and his generation a sense of the “good.” When, in Les deux royaumes,he nostalgically describes his childhood, Vadeboncœur tends to avoid the word “Catholicism” but often respectfully uses the more imprecise linguistic symbol “religion.”74 Less reserved concerning Jesus Christ, Vadeboncœurdescribes Him as “the only historical character who gives the impression of having entirely existed, as if being itself had played his role.” The writer considers Jesus a revolutionary, like himself, and feels that, in spite of the Quebecois’entry into “modernité,” Jesus still belongs to them as an example of “absolute dignity”: Is it because of his words, his legend, because of the fact that we believed that he was himself the living God? Wedon’t know how to untangle it all. But it is certain in our spirits as the sons of Christendom, this God made man does not seem to have been contingent.75 ForVadeboncœur,althoughtheQuebecois,unliketheirFrenchCanadian ancestors, may no longer believe Jesus Christ was the “living God,” they have internalized his words and legend; they are still “the sons of Christendom.” Given that America is on the side of bad, he must deny that America also belongs to Christendom, and, thus, he describes the United States as a “post-Christian” nation.76 Like Grant, he criticizes American Protestantism, but goes further. Protestantism in America started out virtuously, but slowly its spirit turned to “activity” and “exterior posses- sions.” Like New Yorkersfor Father Tamisier, American Protestantism, for Vadeboncœur, worships an idol: In the end, it wasn’t even a religion, or to put it better, it wasn’t a religion at all, for only a feeling of legitimacy persisted. The entire Protestant conscience, the good Protestant conscience, was engaged in new work. She marked it with her intensity, her exclusiveness, her load of passion and will, her narrow views; so that an idol, taking the place of God, received from the Protestants the service destined to God, without the faithful, for all that, thinking that anything had been subtracted from Him. But look, the American has managed a complete transfer and he has fixed forever his new pole: the exterior.77 The late Quebecois critic André Belleau, observing his reactions while reading Vadeboncœur, noted, “I feel myself becoming intolerant and moralizing.”78
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Conclusion Globally, the literature of anti-Americanism is enormous. The Canadian contribution to the genre represents the oldest continuous argument against the United States. Lament for a Nation has never been published in the United States and Trois essais sur l’insignifiance has never been translated into English. An American publisher who collected and made available such documents would be providing a service to scholars and the public. Only when the myriad texts of worldwide anti-Americanism are read and analyzed together can they be understood and confronted.
MorerhetoricallyviolentthanGrantandhauntedbyQuebec’ssolitudein North America, Vadeboncœurtends to fold English Canada into the United States and reject “Anglo-Saxon culture.” Grant, on the other hand, embraces French Canada as an ally in his struggle against the United States. Nevertheless, in spite of Vadeboncœur’s rejection of Canada, his Quebecois nationalism has much in common with Grant’s Canadian nationalism.
Grant believes that the dominant philosophy of the United States is “secular liberalism,” while Vadeboncœur calls America “post-Christian.” Grant and Vadeboncœurboth equate modernization with Americanization. They view “post-Christian secular liberalism” not as a Western pheno- menon that, along with Americans, they have to confront but, rather, as a problem that comes, like a disease, from the south.
Ian Angus’difficulties in formulating a Canadian philosophy, as well as the long-time dilemma conservatives in the country have had in developing a consensual tradition, stem from the “resentment” and “purity” that suffuse Canadian thought. Grant and Vadeboncœur’s writings present extreme examples of Canadian resentment of the United States as well as of the tenacious belief in Canada’s and Quebec’s pure origins in England and France. Politically, Grant’s Red Toryism and Vadeboncœur’s separatist movement have acted as barriers to the articulation of both a coherent national philosophy and an effective conservative tradition in Canada.79 In addition, both Grant and Vadeboncœur hold a grudge against American Protestantism. To Grant, American Protestantism is dead, replaced by a morally shallow pragmatism. Echoing Father Tamisier in La revue canadienne, Vadeboncœur accuses American Protestants of worshipping an idol he calls “the exterior” (Tamisier called it “money”).
On the other hand, Grant and Vadeboncœur both admire France. In particular, they respect Charles de Gaulle and defend the Gaullism of the 1960s, when the French president built an independent foreign policy often in opposition to the United States.80 Concerning France, however, not the politicians but the rebels of French art most deeply move Grant and Vadeboncœur. In 2003, the French Canadian published a book about
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Rimbaud,81 while the English Canadian’s study of Céline occupied the last ten years of his life.
Benoît Melançon remarks on the “generic tension” present in Trois essais. Classed first as “essais,” they were later republished as “essais philosophiques.” Melançon feels that Trois essais sur l’insignifiance belongs to the genres of “la littérature morale” and the pamphlet, and calls Vadeboncœur a moraliste because the French author opposes a “monde moral” to American “inculture.”82 Grant’s essays evoke the same generic tension. Some analysts in the United States and Canada would like to consider Grant a philosopher; however, he is more accurately labelled an English-language moraliste, closer to Montaigne than to Spinoza. I would also argue that his anti-Americanism was an impediment to his becoming a philosopher. Like Vadeboncœur’s Trois essais, Grant’s analyses in Lament for a Nation and elsewhere most often operate at the level of the pamphlet and the philosophical essay. He belongs in the company of writers like Vadeboncœur, not with Eric Voegelin and Leo Strauss, two twentieth- century philosophers who influenced him.
Once Grant and Vadeboncœurpublicly entered the traditions of English- and French-Canadian anti-Americanism, it took about twenty years before their thought reached the boiling point and they were compelled to write their major texts in this mode. Grant’s 1945 pamphlet “Canada Must Choose: The Empire, Yes or No?” and Vadeboncœur’s 1961 essay condemning the American union movement, “Projection du syndicalisme américain” (“The Negative Influence of American Unionism”), are their first significant statements concerning the United States. John Diefenbaker’s defeat by Lester Pearson, openly endorsed by the Kennedy Administration, led Grant to write Lament for a Nation. Vadeboncœur’s reading of James Cain’s The Postman Always Rings Twice and Julian Green’s Journal and his visit to Judy Chicago’s exhibit The Dinner Party inspired the composition of Trois essais sur l’insignifiance.
In 2002, Jack Granatstein offered a mea culpa for his 1996 claim that Canadiananti-Americanismseemedas“deadasadodo.”Headmitsthatthe recent burst of anti-Americanism once again “consuming many Canadians” proves that the phenomenon continues to flourish. In particular, the “mindless” anti-American “bile” he had listened to on a recent book tour distresses him. Clearly Granatstein’s wishes were ahead of the facts when he announced in the 1990s that Canadian anti-Americanism had been “marginalized, by-passed, and overtaken by events.”83 All announcements of the final end or triumph of anti-Americanism in Canada will later be proven incorrect. In a speech in 2003, Granatstein showed he seemed to understand this better when he said, “Anti-Americanism has been and to a substantial degree remains Canada’s state religion, the very bedrock of Canadian nationalism, its strength rising and falling with events.”84 This echoes Underhill, who wrote in 1957 that “there is a
252 Stuffing the Scarecrow: The Anti-Americanism of George Grant and Pierre Vadeboncœur periodicity of about twenty to thirty years in these anti-American crises of our Canadian history.”85 The movement toward continentalism always balances a period of nationalism and vice versa. Thus, after almost twenty years of continentalism, including two free-trade agreements, many Canadians were ready for a nationalist phase, and the vigorous American response to the 9/11 terrorist attack provided the convenient trigger.
Yet can any given American foreign policy be held responsible for upturns in Canadian anti-Americanism? Only in part, because a study of Grant and Vadeboncœur’s writings demonstrates that anti-Americanism is the obsessive centre of their thinking and that the specific public or private event that provokes the writing of an anti-American tract is like flipping a lightswitch.Theelectricityisinthewire,it’sjustwaitingtobeturnedon.
Raised in the anti-American tradition of the United Empire Loyalists — losers in the struggle of political philosophies that accompanied the American Revolution — Grant spent his life nuancing, rationalizing and struggling with his hatred of the United States. Aless subtle anti-American, Vadeboncœur inherited the French-Canadian clergy’s mistrust of the Protestant religious liberty of the United States. The resentment of that clergy — losers in the struggle of Christian confessions that accompanied the French and Indian Wars, and having once dreamed of a Catholic, French-speaking North America — has evolved into Quebec’s leftist anti-Americanism at the beginning of the 21st century. Indeed, now in his eighties, Vadeboncœur continues to write passionately against the United States.86
Canadian anti-Americanism has always existed alongside a continent- alist tradition that promotes friendship with the confederation’s only neighbour. In the twenty or so years following 9/11, however, barring an Islamistterroristattackonitsownsoil,Canadawillbeinanationalistphase, uncomprehending and often critical of America’s actions in the world.
Notes 1. Jack Granatstein, Yankee Go Home? Canadians and Anti-Americanism (New York: HarperCollins, 1996), 246–77. The final chapter of the book is entitled “Last Gasp Anti-Americanism.” The Free Trade Agreement (FTA) became effective on 1 January 1989. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) went into effect five years later on 1 January 1994. 2. André Pratt, “Bin Laden ou Bush?” La Presse, 18 November 2002, A8. Throughout this article, all translations from French to English are mine. 3. See Jean-François Revel, L’obsession anti-américaine (Paris: Plon, 2002). 4. Knowlton Nash, Kennedy and Diefenbaker: Fear and Loathing Across the Undefended Border (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1990), 17. 5. Anthony DePalma, Here: A Biography of the New North America (New York: Public Affairs, 2001), 239.
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6. Underhill is quoted by Granatstein in Yankee Go Home? Canadians and Anti-Americanism, 8. 7. Three themes dominate Grant’s thought: the modern era as relativist and historicist, technology as homogenizing and destructive, and the role of the United States in propagating modernity and technology. His major works are Philosophy in the Mass Age (New York: Hill and Wang, 1960), Lament for a Nation ([1965] Ottawa: Carleton UP, 1989), Time as History (Toronto: CBC, 1969), Technology and the Empire (Toronto: Anansi, 1969), English-Speaking Justice (Sackville: Mount Allison University, 1974), Technology and Justice (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1986). A short but important anti-American text is “From Roosevelt to LBJ,” in The New Romans, Candid Canadian Opinions of the U.S., ed. A.W. Purdy (Edmonton: M.G. Hurtig, 1968). Most of Vadeboncœur’s writings analyze Quebecois politics and argue for the province’s separation from Canada. On this subject, see L’autorité du peuple, essais (Montreal: Éditions de l’arc, 1965), La dernière heure et la première, essais sur l’indépendance du Québec (Montreal: Hexagone/Parti pris, 1970; Hexagone 1980), Indépendances (Montreal: Hexagone/Parti pris, 1972; HMH, 1977), Un génocide en douce (Montreal: Hexagone/Parti pris, 1976), Chaque jour, l’indépendance (Montreal: Leméac, 1978), To Be or Not to Be, That is the Question! (Montreal: Hexagone, 1980), Gouverner ou disparaître (Montreal: Typo, 1993). His first essay collection La ligne du risque, essais (Montreal: HMH, 1963) has been re-edited twice: (Montreal: Hurtsubise, 1977) and (Montreal: Bibliothèque Québécoise, 1994). The collection of articles and essays Lettres et colères (Montreal: Parti pris, 1969) presents a useful guide to Vadeboncœur’s radicalization in the 1960s and contains several anti-American texts (“Démocratie égale Nations,” 45–50; “Allocution du 1er mai 1967,” 81–84; “Les salauds contre Cuba,” 85–100). Vadeboncœur has written two books on childhood: Un amour libre, récit (Montreal: HMH, 1970); Dix-sept tableaux d’enfant: Étude d’une métamorphose (Montreal: Bellarmin, 1994). His debt to French culture is clear in L’absence : Essai à la deuxième personne (Montreal: Boréal Express, 1985) and in Essais inactuels (Montreal: Boréal, 1987). He has written two essays on love: Essai sur une pensée heureuse (Montreal: Boréal, 1989); and Le bonheur excessif (Montreal: Bellarmin, 1992). He has written on painting: Vivement un autre siècle! (Montreal: Bellarmin, 1996); and Qui est le chevalier (Montreal: Leméac, 1998). He wrote against postmodernism in L’humanité improvisée (Montreal: Bellarmin, 2000). He has published on Rimbaud in Le pas de l’aventurier : à propos de Rimbaud (Montreal: PUM, 2003). 8. George Grant, Lament for a Nation ([1965] Ottawa: Carleton UP, 1989), 53–54. 9. Pierre Vadeboncœur, Trois essais sur l’insignifiance (Montreal: Hexagone, 1983), 12, 56, 90. Trois essais was also published in Paris by Albin Michel in 1983. The Parisian edition contained an epilogue entitled Lettre à la France. References to the book in this article are to the Montreal edition published by Hexagone. In 1984, Trois essais won the annual France-Quebec Prize awarded by the French Language Writers’ Association. 10. See Pierre Quesnel, “Le mal américain, ou la mort de la pensée,” Le Devoir,19 March 1983, 23 and the special issue of Liberté (21.6, Nov.-Dec. 1979) to understand the shock it produced in Quebec. 11. Northrop Frye, “Conclusion to a ‘Literary History of Canada,’” The Bush Garden: Essays on the Canadian Imagination (Toronto: Anansi, 1995), 222.
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12. Ian Angus, “Crossing the Border,” The Massachusetts Review 31.1/2 (Spring– Summer 1990): 32–47. 13. William Watson writes, “Thus our lower income per capita does distinguish us from the Americans, but would we be so indifferent to this or so quick to discount wealth’s importance if ours were the higher income? If one twin becomes richer and more famous, the other may stew in secret envy, a common Canadian syndrome as far as the Americans are concerned” (131). And in discussing a government aerospace contract that in 1986 was given to a Montreal company instead of one in Winnipeg that had submitted a lower bid: “Resentment being the Canadian condition, Montrealers were resentful in turn because of the accusation that they won only because the contest was rigged” (209). Globalization and the Meaning of Canadian Life (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998). 14. “English-speaking Canadians, such as myself, have despised and feared the Americans for the account of freedom in which their independence was expressed, and have resented that other traditions of the English-speaking world should have collapsed before the victory of that spirit; but we are still enfolded with the Americans in the deep sharing of having crossed the ocean and conquered the new land.” George Grant, “In Defence of North America,” Technology and Empire (Toronto: Anansi, 1969), 17. 15. William Christian, George Grant: A Biography (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993), 107. 16. George Grant, “Céline: Art and Politics,” Queen’s Quarterly 90.3 (Autumn 1983): 801. 17. Céline’s three anti-Semitic pamphlets are: Bagatelles pour un massacre (1937), L’école des cadavres (1938), and Les beaux draps (1941). 18. Gerald Owen, “Why Did Grant Love Céline?” George Grant and the Subversion of Modernity, ed. Arthur Davis (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996), 58. 19. Grant, Lament for a Nation, 63–64. 20. Janet Ajzestat, “The Conservatism of the Canadian Founders,” After Liberalism: Essays in Search of Freedom, Virtue, and Order, ed. William D. Gairdner (Toronto: Stoddart, 1998), 19, 20. 21. John Gellner, “Books in Review: The Canadian Crisis,” Saturday Night 34–46 (July 1965): 22. 22. Alexander Brady, “Letters in Canada: 1965, Social Studies, National and International,” The University of Toronto Quarterly 35.4 (July 1966): 459. 23. Charles Taylor, “Bâtir un nouveau Canada,” Cité libre 79 (Aug.–Sept. 1965): 10. 24. Christian Roy, “George Grant: L’identité canadienne face à l’empire de la technique,” Argument 4.2 (Spring–Summer 2002): 181–82. 25. Dennis Lee, “Cadence, Country, Silence: Writing in Colonial Space,” Boundary 2 3.1 (Fall 1974): 156, 159. 26. Philip Abbott, “Still Louis Hartz after All These Years: A Defense of the Liberal Society Thesis,” Perspectives on Politics 3.1 (March 2005): 93. 27. H.D. Forbes, “Hartz-Horowitz at Twenty: Nationalism, Toryism and Socialism in Canada and the United States,” Canadian Journal of Political Science 22.2 (1987): 287. 28. Forbes criticizes the Hartz-Horowitz scheme for its “distortion of French- Canadian political thought”; “Rejoinder to ‘A Note on ‘Hartz-Horowitz at Twenty’: The Case of French Canada,” Canadian Journal of Political Science 21.4 (December 1988): 807–11. 29. Peter J. Smith and Janet Ajzenstat, “Canada’ Origins: The New Debate,” National History 1.2 (1997): 114–15.
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30. Gordon T. Stewart, The Origins of Canadian Politics: A Comparative Approach (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1986). 31. Janet Ajzenstat, “The Constitutionalism of Étienne Parent and Joseph Howe,” Canada’s Origins: Liberal, Tory, or Republican (Ottawa: Carleton University Press, 1995): 209–32. 32. See, for example, Andrew Potter’s letter, Literary Review of Canada 10.1 (Jan.–Feb. 2002): 3. And in French: Roy, “George Grant.” 33. Grant, Lament for a Nation, 43, 33, 71. 34. Gad Horowitz, “Conservatism, Liberalism, and Socialism in Canada: An Interpretation,” Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science 32 (1966): 141–71. 35. Russell Kirk, The Conservative Mind (London: Faber and Faber, 1954). 36. E.C. Manning, Political Realignment: A Challenge to Thoughtful Canadians (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1967), 50, 92. 37. Grant, Lament for a Nation, 68. 38. Kim Campbell is cited in Gad Horowitz, “Commentary,” By Loving Our Own: George Grant and the Legacy of Lament for a Nation, ed. Peter C. Emberly (Ottawa: Carleton University Press, 1990), 75–76. 39. George Grant, “American Morality,” Philosophy in a Mass Age (New York: Hill and Wang, 1960), 96. 40. Grant, Lament for a Nation, 83. 41. George Grant, “In Defence of North America,” Technology and Empire (Toronto: Anansi, 1969), 26. 42. Eli Mandel, “George Grant: Language, Nation, the Silence of God,” Canadian Literature 83 (Winter 1979): 171–72. 43. Grant, Céline: Art and Politics,” 810–11. 44. Larry Schmidt, ed., George Grant in Process: Essays and Conversation (Toronto: Anansi, 1978), 102. 45. Grant, Céline: Art and Politics,” 811–12. 46. Ibid., 805–8. 47. Sylvie Groulx’s National Film Board of Canada documentary À l’ombre d’Hollywood (2000) is a good example of this timeless theme in anti-American thought. The article by Albin Janin, “Le Cinéma,” in La revue Dominicaine’s special issue of 1937 “Notre Américanisation” speaks of an “American, with an Israëlite name, well known in film circles” who “attacked” French films in the province by playing them in double features with dubbed American movies (95). 48. Grant, Philosophy in a Mass Age, 101. 49. Vadeboncœur, Trois essais, 94–95. 50. W.J. Hankey, “English Canada’s Philosophic Voice,” The Review of Politics 57.1 (Winter 1995): 175. 51. Christian, George Grant: A Biography, 46. 52. George Grant, “Revolution and Tradition,” Tradition and Revolution, ed. Lionel Rubinoff (Toronto: Macmillan, 1971), 89. 53. Translated from Vadeboncœur’s “une détestation profonde” in Trois essais: “Agitation-inattention, grandiloquence, action sans conscience, existentialisme turpide, primitif et avant la lettre, primauté du résultat pour le résultat, je ne dis pas que ce soit là toute l’Amérique, mais enfin c’est beaucoup l’Amérique, c’est surtout beaucoup de ce qu’on apprend par l’Amérique et de ce qui est passé dans la culture dominante de ce continent. J’éprouve la plus profonde détestation de tout cela” (81). [Agitation-inattention, grandiloquence, action without conscien- ce, base existentialism primitive and before its time, results for the sake of results,
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I am not saying that this is all of America, but in the end, this is in large part America, above all it is what we learn from America and from what passes for the dominant culture of this continent. I feel the most profound hatred for all that.] 54. M. Tamisier, SJ, “L’Amérique du nord, que faut-il en penser? (suite et fin),” La revue canadienne 27.5 (June–July 1922): 355–56. “Quick lunch” and “sky-scraper” are in English in the text. 55. Vadeboncœur, Trois essais, 30. 56. Pierre Quesnel, “Le mal américain, ou la mort de la pensée,” Le Devoir, 19 March 1983, 23. 57. Jean-Pierre Roy, “Pierre Vadeboncœur et le roman américain,” Le Devoir, 11 June 1983, 21; Rose-Marie Arbour, “Vadeboncœur et le féminisme,” Possibles 8.1 (1983): 181–89. 58. Gilles Marcotte, “Trois essais sur le bon vieux temps,” L’actualité (June 1983): 103–05. 59. Henri Bastien, “L’américanisation par la philosophie,” in “Notre América- nisation,” special issue, La revue Dominicaine (Montréal: Presse Dominicaine, 1937): 48. 60. Vadeboncœur, Trois essais, 54. 61. Raymond-M. Voyer, “L’américanisme et notre vie religieuse,” in “Notre Américanisation,” special issue, La revue Dominicaine (Montréal: Presse Dominicaine, 1937): 38. 62. Vadeboncœur, Trois essais, 32. 63. Ernestine Pineault-Leveille, “Notre américanisation par la femme,” in “Notre Américanisation,” special issue, La revue Dominicaine (Montreal: Presse Domi- nicaine, 1937), 134, 150. 64. Vadeboncœur, Trois essais, 54. 65. Arbour, “Vadeboncœur et le féminisme,” Possibles 8.1 (1983): 189. 66. François Ricard wrote the preface to the 1977 edition of Vadeboncœur’s first book La ligne du risque (Montréal: Hurtsubise, 1977), 1–8. 67. Vadeboncœur, Trois essais, 12. 68. Ibid., 20, 40. 69. Ibid., 23. 70. Pierre Vadeboncœur, Les deux royaumes (Montreal: Hexagone, 1978), 40. 71. Pierre Vadeboncœur, “Le neuf et le jamais vu,” Études littéraires 29.2 (Autumn 1996): 89. 72. Vadeboncœur, Les deux royaumes 203. 73. Ibid., 56–57. 74. Ibid., 195. 75. Ibid., 78. Vadeboncœur writes of “la révolution du Christ” on page 214. 76. Vadeboncœur, Trois essais, 39. 77. Ibid., 95. 78. André Belleau, “Un génocide en douce, de P. Vadeboncœur: un discours crépusculaire,” Voix et Images 3.1 (September 1977): 155. 79. Barry Cooper casts doubt on the Tory component of Grant’s Red Toryism, suggesting that Grant has reduced Toryism to anti-Americanism. “Review of George Grant: Selected Letters and George Grant and the Subversion of Modernity: Art, Philosophy, Politics, Religion and Education,” Canadian Literature 161/162 (Summer/Autumn 1999). 80. Grant, Lament for a Nation, 45; Vadeboncœur, “Sans la nation politique, qui peut défendre quoi?” L’Action nationale 92.9/10 (Nov.–Dec. 2002) : 27.
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81. Pierre Vadeboncœur, Le pas de l’aventurier: à propos de Rimbaud (Montreal: PUM, 2003). 82. Benoît Melançon, “La fiction de l’Amérique dans l’essai contemporain: Pierre Vadeboncœur et Jean Larose,” Études françaises 26.2 (1990): 33–34. 83. Jack Granatstein, “Our best friend — whether we like it or not,” The National Post, 23 October 2002, A22. 84. Jack Granatstein, “The Importance of Being Less Earnest: Promoting Canada’s National Interests through Tighter Ties with the U.S,” Benefactors lecture, C.D. Howe Institute, Toronto (21 October 2003), 1–2. 85. Frank H. Underhill, In Search of Canadian Liberalism (Toronto: Macmillan, 1960), 259. 86. Vadeboncœur has contributed to the latest wave of anti-Americanism in Canada in articles for L’Action nationale and Le Couac.
258 Review Essay
Essai critique
Leslie R. Alm and Ross E. Burkhart
Canada and the United States: Approaches to Global Environmental Policy-making
· Rosenbaum, Walter. Environmental Politics and Policy. 6th ed. Washington, DC: CQ Press, 2005. · VanNijnatten, Debora and Robert Boardman, eds. Canadian Environmental Policy: Context and Cases. 2nd ed. Don Mills, ON: Oxford University Press, 2002. · Vig, Norman J. and Michael E. Kraft, eds. Environmental Policy: New Directions for the Twenty-first Century. 6th ed. Washington, DC: CQ Press, 2006.
How do Canada and the United States create environmental policy, considering the impact that the global environment has on both of these geographically large countries (the second and third largest land masses in the world)? Do Canada and the United States demonstrate similar or different approaches, considering their political structures and histories? What policy-making lessons can we learn from each country’s experiences in tackling some of the most crucial and vexing public policy problems on the planet (and in space)? Does the context of a globalizing world provide more insight into the environmental policy-making processes of Canada and the United States?
The purpose of this review essay is to provide a starting point for the evaluation of the ways in which Canada and the United States approach global environmental policy-making. Each country has its own special place regarding environmental leadership — one tends toward exception- alism and unilateralism, while the other tends toward participation and multilateralism. Essential to explaining how and why Canada and the United States approach global environmental concerns is understanding their relationship to each other, both as nation-states and countries dedicated to the protection of the environment.
In the following pages, we highlight common themes in three books that outline the Canada–United States relationship as it pertains to international environmental policy-making: Environmental Politics and Policy by Walter Rosenbaum (2005), Canadian Environmental Policy: Context and Cases edited by Debora VanNijnatten and Robert Boardman (2002), and
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Environmental Policy: New Directions for the Twenty-first Century, edited by Norman J. Vig and Michael E. Kraft (2006). These works illuminate the vast similarities and differences that characterize the way each of these nations views its place in bringing about environmental globalization. We then discuss how globalization (especially economic globalization) as a policy affects the salience of the environment. Finally, we meld a framework of policy-making into the environmental arena as a way of comparing and contrasting the two countries.
The chapters in the VanNijnattenand Boardman book and in the Vig and Kraft book focus on four main categories, from two geographical perspectives. Domestically and internationally, the chapters focus on general environmental policy-making, environmental organizations in the policy arena, business and the environment, and environmental institutions including legal structures. The most frequent contribution is in general environmental policy (fifteen chapters), followed by environmental organizations in the policy arena (seven chapters), environmental institutions including legal structures (six chapters), and business and the environment (five chapters). In a slight departure, the Rosenbaum book examines specific policy areas, such as hazardous materials regulation (including nuclear material), public lands management, and air and water pollution, in addition to including a policy-making chapter and a political institutions chapter. Overall, the themes of these books suggest that sustainable development is the current overarching theme that is utilized to address current environmental controversies (Vig and Kraft), that a whole host of pending controversies remain in Canadian environmental politics that will need cross-border solutions (Van Nijnatten and Boardman) and that science has imposed itself on the environmental policy-making process in providing both benchmarks for assessing policy solutions and an overall ethic of professional stewardship over the environment (Rosenbaum).
The Setting: Globalization and the Environment There exists no lack of grand statements portraying the importance of the environment to the peoples and governments of Canada and the United States as each country attempts to fashion its unique role in the making of global environmental policy. It has been argued that we as a world society are increasingly shifting our values toward an emphasis on quality of life rather than economic growth,1 and there is little evidence that the environmental movement’s growing impact on national and international politics will slow any time soon.2 In fact, it appears that environmental quality now occupies a central place in the public policy of most advanced industrial nations3 such that “environmental issues have become matters of central national and international concern that transcend ideology and political persuasion.”4
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There appears to be a greater awareness evolving in both Canada and the United States that environmental issues have moved past the realm of local and national concern to become increasingly connected to global concerns.5 This evolution is characterized by the Canada–United States relationship, which is said to be “reflective of the problems and promise of a more integrated world,”6 a world whose rapid ecological progress now allows for both protecting nature and maintaining a comfortable living standard.7
There are those, however, who question the ability and desire of peoples and countries to foster true concern for the environment on a global scale. When talking about the earth’s biosphere, Dyson speaks of the “enormous gaps in our knowledge, the sparseness of our observations, and the superficiality of our theories.”8 Bryner criticizes both Canadians and Americans for being “unwilling to embrace the criterion of ecological sustainability”9 and VanNijnatten and Boardman assert that “[our] society continues to favour the individual accumulation of consumer goods and wealth, as opposed to reducing production and consumption patterns for environmental gain.”10
There should be no doubt in anyone’s mind that this movement toward global environmentalism, or the internationalization of environmental issues, is tied directly to the market economy.11 As Switzer makes clear, in the last decade of the twentieth century, “the issues of environment and developmentbecameevenmorecloselyintertwined.”12 Thepositivepartof this connection between the environment and market economy in an international setting is that because such a linkage allows recognition of shared problems and the possibility of mutual advantage, it provides “the most compelling and common incentive for nations to negotiate environmental agreements.”13
The negative side of this linkage is that the success of the market economy is directly associated with environmental pollution and resource degradation.14 In this light, some characterize the era of globalization and free trade, insofar as free trade is linked to environmental quality, as a worldwide “race to the bottom.”15 Whether one agrees or disagrees with these assessments, it is difficult to disagree with the fact that the complexities of global environmentalism are formidable. As Vig and Kraft put it, “Democracies in the twentieth century proved capable of sustaining national and international efforts to defeat enemies in war and to contain them for decades in peacetime. Sustainable development will be the challenge of the twenty-first century.”16
Few doubt that concern about the environment in Canada and the United States has moved firmly within the realm of globalization. None have been more pointed in this assertion than Esty and Ivanova, who pronounce “the need for international cooperation to address environmental problems with
263 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes transboundary or global implications is clear in both theory and practice.”17 Their basic premise is quite straightforward: “There exists today a set of inescapably global environmental threats that require international collective action.”18 This argument is not new. Over the past several decades, many have essentially made the same point: that, in one way or another, environmental problems, being transboundary in nature, require global solutions fashioned in the international arena.19
The evolution toward the grand linkage of environmental concerns and globalization has witnessed what some call “striking advances in international treaties and the establishment of new institutions and policy- making regimes” that offer “fresh, boundary-spanning approaches” to environmental decision-making that cut across technologies, environ- mental media, socio-economic groups and geographic boundaries.20 More important to the Canada–United States relationship, it appears that ecological deterioration is setting the stage for North Americans “to unite and work together in an even broader global environmental context.”21
The Canada–United States Relationship Despite the growth of stronger ties among North American nations (e.g., North American Free Trade Agreement, North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation, Commission for Environmental Cooper- ation), transboundary environmental management remains predominantly bilateral in nature with little supranational environmental institutional- ization at the continental level.22 This certainly is an apt description of the Canada–United States relationship, which remains centred on a bilateral level of interaction. Over the years, the Canada–United States relationship has been described in both simple and eloquent terms, and in ways that amplify the extreme nature of this connection. A listing of some of these descriptions is worthy of careful attention. The Canada–United States relationship has been described as: · profound, the envy of other bilateral relationships in the world23; · the best and closest relationship of any two countries in the world24; · the closest and most cordial transboundary relationship between any two nations in the world25; · robust and positive … mechanically fit to travel well down the road into the next millennium26; · truly special in world affairs27; · providing a sense of mutual security and amity.28 Despite these claims, Canada and the United States remain diametrically opposed in many important ways — none of which stands out more than their asymmetric environmental relationship. Carroll provides an
264 Canada and the United States: Approaches to Global Environmental Policy-making enlightening description of this relationship in saying, “Both nations are vulnerabletoeachother,althoughtheUnitedStateshasagreatercapacityto affect (and inflict) Canada than vice versa. Canada is much more aware of this interdependence and assigns a higher priority to it.”29
Carroll’s words are revealing along two different lines. First, he notes the dominance of the United States, which some simply characterize as “overwhelming.”30 This asymmetry of power, economic development and population size is not some new phenomenon characterizing the Canada– United States relationship.31 The United States’ economic and cultural dominance, coupled with its military superiority, have throughout time threatened Canada’s identity as a sovereign nation.32
The United States’ dominance at times does appear to overwhelm the Canada–United States relationship. In fact, the United States is so dominant that Munton has labelled the particular connection between Canada and the United States with respect to environmental concerns as “environmental dependence.”33 Hoberg argues that the relationship goes beyond dependence; that American influence on Canadian environmental regulation is such that Canadian emulation of United States values regarding the environment is “the single most pervasive dynamic behind United States influence.”34 In this same light, Canada is viewed as remaining unabashedly dependent on American ideas regarding the scientific information that underlies environmental decision-making.35
The United States’dominance has taken a relatively sharp turn in recent times. This is particularly evident as the United States — under the guidance of President George W. Bush — has moved strongly in the direction of unilateralism in world affairs.36 The United States has largely ignored all of its “traditional” allies in its foreign policy-making, save for Great Britain. As President Bush states, “America will never seek a permission slip to defend the security of our country.”37
Carroll’s second line of thought is more interesting — at least with respect to the substance of this paper — that is, that Canada remains acutely aware of its inferior position vis-à-vis its bilateral relationship with the United States and, more importantly, acts accordingly. Perhaps the most glaring reaction to US dominance is Canada’s efforts to look outside the North American continent in an attempt to bring more balance to its US ties. In seeking such balance, Canada has become an enthusiastic advocate of international measures to reduce cross-border pollution38 and has pushed — along with western Europe, New Zealand, and Australia — for “a greater recognition of global problems.”39 In short, with respect to environmental concerns, Canada places a far greater importance on the ability of international forces to solve problems than the United States.40 Schwartz sees neither Canada nor the United States as willing to push the other too
265 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes hard in the environmental arena, but views Canada as focusing more attention on multilateral environmental issues than the United States.41
At the same time, the balance of concern and attention to the Canada–United States relationship lies firmly on the Canadian side of the border.42 As Mahant and Mount point out, “Perhaps no one has studied their country’s relationship with the United States as obsessively as have Canadians. Yet,we still do not know if there is or ever has been an American policy toward Canada.”43 In this vein, Canadians have been roundly criticized for unrealistic expectations of their special status with the United States.44 Simply put, Canadians are viewed as believing that the United States will “always accord their country consideration when calculating the American interest,”45 and do not appear to realize the degree to which Canada is viewed by the United States as a country like any other, with no special status.46 “As one well-informed Canadian put it: ‘10 years ago, we had little influence in Washington. Now we have less.’”47
The United States’ view toward the Canada–United States relationship, as noted above, has been quite accurately labelled as “extreme ambivalence”48 and “benign indifference.”49 The United States does acknowledge, however, that the bilateral relationship is a very dense web of interactions between individuals, private institutions of all kinds and governments at every level.50 In addition, Canada is especially important in regard to national security matters, such as in the creation of a bilateral SMART borders program to monitor border crossings. However, with respect to shaping American perceptions of the international environment, Canada’s influence has been characterized as “negligible.”51
Canada–United States Comparisons Recent research has reminded us that Canada and the United States have two distinct and different forms of democratic political systems.52 With respect to environmental politics, Canada and the United States present contrasting and interesting comparisons. In general, Canadians are viewed as being more collective and supporting of institutions, while Americans are viewed as more individualistic and suspicious of institutions.53 The Canadian environmental policy-making process is viewed as being less pluralistic, less open, less adversarial and more informal than that of the United States.54
Aspecific example highlighting the differences between Canada and the United States regarding environmental policy-making is the ability of citizens in each country to affect administrative decisions in the courts. There is a dearth of environmental citizen suits in Canada, whereas in the United States citizen suits are considered commonplace.55 Howlett documents the “general lack of citizen ability in Canada to overturn administrative decisions through recourses in the courts.”56 He argues that
266 Canada and the United States: Approaches to Global Environmental Policy-making limited rules of standing and restricted grounds for judicial review essentially prevent Canadian citizens from influencing environmental assessment and regulation in a meaningful way.57 On the other hand, the National Environmental Policy Act provides easy access to the courts for US citizens and guarantees the ability to pursue actions for the public good.58
Having said this, it is important to point out that some now argue that environmental policy in the United States is in the midst of a profound transition, such that the once dominant command and control structure is giving way to market considerations involving volunteerism, collaboration and public education.59 Furthermore, while the Canadian environmental implementation style remains distinct from that of the United States, it appears that the United States’style is changing “somewhat towards that of Canada.”60
Canada and the United States have important institutional differences regarding environmental policy-making. As Hoberg posits, “The United States system of separation of powers and checks and balances is profoundly different from the Westminster-style government in Canada.”61 In fact, Canada is both profoundly centralized in its monarchical accountability and decentralized in its constitutional division of powers between Ottawa and the provinces. While both Canada and the United States operate relatively decentralized environmental systems, “Canada is a model of extreme decentralization among Western democracies [such that] Canadian provincial governments are more powerful, more independent, and more influential than are American state governments in most issues of environmental policy.”62
Canada and the United States are vast and wealthy consumptive nations. For most, it is no surprise that the United States has enormous stores of natural resources. Many forget, or simply do not know, that not only is Canada richly endowed with natural resources (it possesses 10% of the world’s fresh water) but it is also the world’s largest per capita consumer of energy.63 “The two countries are thoroughly intertwined [vis-à-vis energy trading, Canada supplies] 17 percent of America’s natural gas imports and nine percent of its oil and refined petroleum intake.”64 As Hessing and Howlett submit, “The size and wealth of [Canada] alone are of global significance.”65 In essence, both Canada and the United States possess enormous stores of natural resources and rank high among the most consumption-oriented nations in the world.
Canada and the United States share common interests and a common geography that provide what some consider a catalyst for greater transnational interactions regarding the environment.66 Both nations place a high priority on environmental protection67 and have become “consi-
267 International Journal of Canadian Studies Revue internationale d’études canadiennes derably more participatory in the way they formulate environmental policy.”68
Looking Inward: Domestic Environmental Policy-making Characteristics Scholars have long noted the linkages between domestic policy-making and international relations. Schmidt goes as far as to observe that policy change at the international level occurs only at the intersection of domestic politics and international negotiations.69 In general terms, domestic politics are often viewed as the “dominant consideration” for nations participating ininternationalnegotiationsrelatedtotheenvironment.70 Alongtheselines, Doran posits that “the very essence of the current revolution in diplomatic discourses is the supremacy of the domestic over the foreign.”71
This pattern of domestic policy driving international (or cross-border) negotiations is quite prevalent in the Canada–United States environmental sphere.72 Moreover, the dominance of United States domestic policy- making (as discussed earlier) is readily apparent with respect to the Canada–United States environmental relationship. VanNijnatten notes the “political asymmetry whereby Canadian policy-makers [are] largely at the mercy of American domestic political outcomes”73 and Desombre directly links United States unilateralism on international environmental issues to the values of the domestic political system.74 Simply put, “If we want to understand what the United States has chosen to pursue or avoid internationally in terms of environmental policy, we need to look at what it has regulated or shunned domestically.”75
Looking specifically at the United States, it is quite obvious that protection of the environment is important to the American people. Environmentalism is now considered a core American value and environmentalists are now viewed as major players in the American policy process.76 Over the past 50 years, public opinion polling has consistently shown a pattern of high support for environmental protection, with vast majorities of respondents indicating the environment as a priority issue.77 In fact, environmentalism has become such a regular feature of the United States public policy-making process that its basic tenets are often referred to as being “woven into the fabric of everyday life.”78
It is important to keep in mind, however, that despite the high support environmental protection seems to garner among the American public, over the past several decades salience for environmental issues has remained fairly low.79 Add that fact to several decades of underfunding on the part of the federal government for environmental protection,80 the limited role that environmentalism appears to play in presidential elections — including the last one —81 and the fact that the United States has recently been labelled “the world’s leading laggard when it comes to global warming issues,”82
268 Canada and the United States: Approaches to Global Environmental Policy-making and the prominence of the environment on the United States policy-making agenda fades a bit.
On the domestic side, Canada has moved toward what some call the “intergovernmentalization of environmental policy-making,”83 a move characterized by the federal government’s efforts to harmonize environmental policy-making among the provinces through the sharing of authority and voluntary compliance.84 Having said that, there should be no doubt in anyone’s mind that the provinces have the lead role in Canadian domestic environmental policy-making.85 In this regard, provinces are said to be “calling the shots”86 with powers over environmental matters that are considered “sweeping.”87
While Canadian public support for the environment has remained fairly steady over the past several decades, some are worried that the trend is downward. McKenzie argues that “environmental issues have lain dormant in the shadow cast by continued government inaction and public apathy”88 and VanNijnatten and Boardman point out that despite moderate levels of concern about environmental degradation, these concerns are consistently pushed aside by others about the deficit, health care and education.89 However, according to a Centre for Research and Information on Canada poll, more respondents said that “protecting the environment” is a “high” priority compared with other issues.90
Looking Outward: International Environmental Policy-making Characteristics There is no doubt that the United States has displayed strong leadership with respect to environmental protection, both at home and in the international arena. The United States has consistently set a high standard of environmental protection at home91 and is known throughout the world as having the most comprehensive environmental program of any nation.92 At the international level, the United States has displayed strong and effective leadership on some very important environmental issues, including bringing about consensus for an ozone standard.93
The United States remains the single most important country with respect to bringing about global consensus on environmental issues. People speak in terms of the United States as “the most powerful nation in the world and the primary driver of the forces of globalization … what the United States does, or fails to do, will be decisive.”94 Such strong language represents the hope that it is the United States that is going to bring about a new way to think about the environment95 and provide the incentives for an environmental “race to the top.”96 Paarlberg summarizes this view as follows:
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[T]he leadership of the United States is essential in global environmental affairs. If the United States decides to take a lead, a strengthening of international environmental policy becomes possible. If the United States fails to lead or resists the leadership of other nations, paralysis sets in.97 The hope that the United States is going to lead the world to environmental glory is now under grave attack. While the United States retains some of the strictest environmental regulations at the domestic level,98 it also remains the biggest polluter and energy consumer in the world.99 More important, the United States is now viewed as “retreating from multilateralism and becoming more and more unilateral in its approach to major international issues,”100 including the environment. The United States is seen as failing to provide international leadership on the global level with respect to environmental issues. Indeed, the United States is increasingly being characterized as “a principal holdout on international environmental agreements.”101 Recent United States refusals to ratify major international initiatives to address global issues (e.g., climate change, biodiversity protection) appear to suggest “the United States is often unwilling to exercise leadership or even participate in some multilateral environmental efforts.”102 In short, many now view the United Statesaslagginginitsleadershiponinternationalenvironmentalpolicy.103
On the other side of the border, in 2003 Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin spoke of a “new politics of achievement” for Canada that “extends far beyond our relationship with the United States.”104 He pointedly asserted that Canada’s influence is going to come from being “at the leading edge of where the global economy is going.”105 Along these lines, Canada’s domestic environmental regime is viewed as “more than sufficienttobackupitscredentialsasaninternationalplayer.”106 Anditisat the international level that Canadian environmentalism appears to shine. Despite the fact that economic globalism has seemingly diminished Canada’scapacitytoengageinacross-the-boardproactivemultilateralism, Canada continues to push an environmental agenda that reflects the pursuit of what some argue are purely Canadian values — the pursuit and promotion of the virtues of multilateralism and international institu- tions.107 In this light, Canada has used the international stage for the germination of environmental policy ideas, de-emphasizing the “politics of shaming.”108 In fact, through its advocacy of progressive solutions in both the ozone and climate negotiations, Canada has been viewed as an active policy entrepreneur.109
It is looking outward, beyond their borders, that Canada and the United States are most contrasted. The words of Lipset resonate in this regard: Americans more than other western peoples tend to view international politics in non-negotiable moralistic and ideological terms. Canadians, like Europeans, are more disposed to perceive
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foreign-policy conflicts as a reflection of interest differences, and therefore subject to negotiation and compromise.110 Reflecting Lipset’s general belief, Canada draws on a reservoir of “internationally recognized contributions to global environmental leadership,”111 and governments around the world increasingly look to Canada “as the world’s most successful pluralist state.”112 Canadians view global leadership with respect to environmental protection as a way to gain prestige within the world community and take pride in their efforts to bring about global environmental cooperation, especially as it relates to the United Nations. Canada pursues its domestic environmental policy goals through international means and uses its middle-power statecraft as a way to affect policy change in the international environmental arena.113
The connection that Canadians feel toward the United Nations remains strong, something Canadians point to with confidence.114 Canadians perceive themselves as “enthusiastic joiner[s] of international agreements” and embodied with “a strong internationalist tradition.”115 This tendency toward multilateral relations is characterized as “an intrinsic, substantial, and growing feature of environmental policy in Canada,”116 one that plays directly to the values that Canadians believe constitute the foundation of their existence: the rule of law, liberty, democracy, equality of opportunity and fairness.117 Wood sums up Canada’s unique view toward the world outside its borders rather nicely: Canada … does not get its influence from power but from coope- ration, supporting proposals, enthusiasm, forming coalitions, willingness to work with weaker nations, and contributing more than its fair share. Canada has a focus on values like understanding the social aspects of globalization; a need for a fair process to ensure legitimization; a sharing of the burdens and the focus on legitimization.118 Over the years, Canada “has gained a reputation as one of the world’s most ecologically minded nations”119 and has earned “a positive international image on the environmental front.”120 In recent times, mostly due to the fact that Canada’s economy remains dependent on natural resources, that image is under attack.121 Smith contends that Canada’s failure to provide credible leadership in the fight against climate change has tarnished its image in the international arena122 and Paehlke proclaims that in today’s world Canada is “losing ground in environmental protection in the face of both public opinion and international reputation.”123 Schneider observes that economic worries are exerting pressure on environmental priorities in Canada such that Canada’s image as one of the world’s “greener” industrialized countries is under attack, since Canada’s focus is now on jobs, trade and deficit-fighting, at the expense of the environment.124
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Conclusion Wearenowfunctioninginaneramarkedbygreatcomplexityanddiversity, one in which environmentalism is now cast as “the most elaborate and segmented of our social issues.”125 There should be no doubt in anyone’s mind that environmental protection is now considered one of the core values of North American society, along with social justice, economic prosperity, national security and democracy.126 Furthermore, emphasis has turned toward the internationalization of environmental problems and policy, as issues such as climate change, acid rain, geochemical flux and control of toxic pollution are viewed more and more from a global, rather than state, perspective.127
As illustrated above, this turn toward a global environmental perspective provides a good backdrop to view how Canada and the United States approach the development of international environmental policies as well as how the Canada–United States relationship plays out in that regard. Both Canada and the United States are richly endowed countries that trumpet their strong commitment for protecting the environment. Yet each country approaches environmental policy-making outside their borders from uniquely different perspectives. Canada looks outward, pushing its values through international organizations and using its reputation as a caring multicultural country to foster conversations at the multilateral level. The United States looks inward, using its domestic agenda to push values from a unilateral perspective. Each country remains entrenched in its particular approaches to environmental policy-making: Canadians are committed to negotiation and compromise and the United States is committed to pressing its values along non-negotiable moralistic and ideological terms.128
Having said all that, Canada and the United States — in their own unique ways — also remain deeply affected by their bilateral relationship. The United States, despite almost unending criticism over the past several decades, remains substantially ambivalent toward Canada when it comes to environmental concerns. The United States can and does ground all environmental policy decisions within its own domestic policy goals and expects all other nations, including Canada, to react to its position. Canada continues to challenge the United States to recognize the uniqueness of the Canada–United States relationship in a way that would provide special status to Canadian views. To this point, the type of special recognition that Canada desires from the United States has not materialized.
Still, Canada is not sitting idly by, waiting for this special status to somehow appear without warning. Canada continually reaches out to the international community in ways that build upon its commitment to improving its status and influence at the global level, as well as with the United States. Canada clearly recognizes its asymmetric relationship with its powerful neighbour and looks beyond its borders for ways to foster
272 Canada and the United States: Approaches to Global Environmental Policy-making values important to the Canadian way of life while gaining some leverage in its bilateral relations with the United States. Paul Martin enunciated the heart of Canada’s position vis-à-vis the United States: Like other countries, we must come to grips with the fact that the United States has emerged as the world’s lone superpower. We need a proud partnership based on mutual respect with our closest friend and nearest neighbor. Two nations with many shared values but each acting independently. … We must ensure that the global institutions of the coming decades are suffused with the values Canadians treasure — rule of law, liberty, democracy, equality of opportunity and fairness.129 Inmeetingsuchgoals,MartinsuggestedthatCanadians“havetodevelop new thinking about how the international community governs itself; and how sovereign nations take action together in tackling global issues.”130
One question yet to be answered is exactly how Canada uses its “sense of a more orderly, more civil, less market driven, more collectively and socially responsible mindset”131 to fit into the changing global dynamics and at the same time deals with the overwhelming influence of its southern neighbour. Will the projection of ecological deterioration unite Canada and the United States to work together in a broader environmental context or must Canada go its separate way? Again, this is a decision that Canadians must make, as the United States appears quite content in its relationship with Canada and has clearly indicated that such integration with Canada in approaching global environmental concerns is not a central element of its domestic policy agenda.132 In essence, Canadians are the ones really left with the choice of joining the United States or going it on their own. The immediate decade ahead will provide a tantalizing forum to find the answers.
Notes 1. Ronald Inglehart, “Public Support for Environmental Protection: Objective Problems and Subjective Values in 43 Societies,” PS: Political Science and Politics 28.1 (1995): 61; Glen Toner, “Contesting the Green: Canadian Environmental Policy at the Turn of the Century,” Environmental Politics and Policy in Industrialized Countries, ed. Uday Desai (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002), 71–120. 2 Sheldon Kamieniecki, ed., Environmental Politics in the International Arena: Movements, Parties, Organizations, and Policy (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1993), 2. 3. Norman Vig and Michael Kraft (2000) Environmental Policy,6th ed. (Washington, DC: CQ Press, 2000), 374. 4. John Sigmon, “Saving the Environment (from Ourselves): An Editor’s Perspective,” Human Dimension Quarterly 1.4 (1996): 11. 5. Melody Hessing and Michael Howlett, Canadian Natural Resource and Environmental Policy: Political Economy and Public Policy (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1997), 3; Richard Kiy and John Wirth, “Introduction,” Environmental
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Management on North America’s Borders, ed. Richard Kiy and John Wirth (College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press, 1998). 6. Debora VanNijnatten and Robert Boardman, Canadian Environmental Policy: Context and Cases,2nd ed. (Don Mills, ON: Oxford University Press, 2002). 7. Gregg Easterbrook, “Good News from Planet Earth,” USA Weekend, 14–16 April 1995, 4–6. 8. Freeman Dyson, “What a World!” [book review of Vaclav Smil’s The Earth’s Biosphere: Evolution, Dynamics, and Change], The New York Review of Books, 15 May 2003, 4–6. 9. Gary Bryner, “Building Preservation and Logging: Public Lands Policy in British Columbia and the United States,” Policy Studies Journal 27.2 (1999): 234. 10. VanNijnatten and Boardman, Canadian Environmental Policy, xi. 11. David Vogel, “International Trade and Environmental Regulation,” in Vig and Kraft, Environmental Policy, 355. 12. Jacqueline Switzer, Environmental Politics: Domestic and Global Dimensions, 4th ed. (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Thomson Learning, 2004), 60. 13. Walter Rosenbaum, Environmental Politics and Policy,6th ed. (Washington, DC: CQ Press, 2005), 335. 14. Daniel Press and David Mazmanian, “The Greening of Industry: Combining Government Regulation and Voluntary Strategies,” in Vig and Kraft, Environmental Policy, 265. 15. Robert Paehlke, “Environmentalism in One Country: Canadian Environmental Policy in an Era of Globalization,” Policy Studies Journal 28.1 (2000): 161; Vogel, “International Trade and Environmental Regulation,” 357. 16. Vig and Kraft, Environmental Policy, 389. 17. Daniel Esty and Maria Ivanova, “Toward a Global Environmental Mechanism,” Worlds Apart: Globalization and the Environment, ed. James Speth (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2003), 68. 18. Ibid. 19. Kamieniecki, Environmental Politics in the International Arena, 9; Lettie Wenner, “Transboundary Problems in International Law,” in Kamieniecki, Environmental Politics in the International Arena, 165; Richard Benedick, Ozone Diplomacy: New Directions in Safeguarding the Planet (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), vii; Donald Kettl, “Environmental Policy: The Next Generation,” The LaFollette Policy Report 9.2 (1999): 16; Vogel, “International Trade and Environmental Regulation”; John Robinson, “Working Across the Line: Environmental Perspectives,” Horizons 3 (2000): 34; James Speth, “Two Perspectives on Globalization and the Environment,” in Speth, Worlds Apart, 1; Switzer, Environmental Politics: Domestic and Global Dimensions. 20. Michael Kraft, “Environmental Policy and Politics in the United States: Toward Environmental Sustainability,” in Desai, Environmental Politics and Policy in Industrialized Countries, 43. 21. Mebs Kangi, “North American Environmentalism and Political Integration,” American Review of Canadian Studies 26.2 (1996): 183. 22. Roberto Sanchez-Rodriguez, Konrad Von Maltke, Steven Mumme, John Kirton and Don Munton, “The Dynamics of Transboundary Environmental Agreements in North Africa,” in Kiy and Wirth, Environmental Management on North America’s Borders, 33; Debora VanNijnatten, “Analyzing the Canada–US Environmental Relationship: A Multi-Faceted Approach,” American Review of Canadian Studies 33.1(2003): 97.
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23. David Biette, “United States–Canada Relations Will Never Be the Same,” Canadian Studies Update 22.1(2003): 9. 24. Raymond Chrétien, “Canada @ 2000: America’s Partner for the New Millennium,” speech at Woodrow Wilson Center, 29 April (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center, 1999), 4. 25. Alice Chamberlin and Leonard Legault, “International Joint Commission Looks to the 21st Century,” Focus 22.3 (1997): 4. 26. Christopher Kirkey (2000) “The Canada–United States Political Relationship: The Pivotal Role and Impact of Negotiations,” Canada and the United States: Differences That Count, ed. David Thomas (Peterborough ON: Broadview Press, 2000), 295. 27. John Kirton, “A Global Partnership: The Canada–United States Political Relationship in the 1990s,” Handbook to the Modern World: Canada, ed. Mel Watkins (New York: Facts on File, 1993), 284. 28. Lauren McKinney and Victor Konrad, “Borderlands Reflections: The United States and Canada,” Borderlands Monograph Series No. 1 (Orono, ME: University of Maine Canadian-American Center, 1989), iii. 29. John E. Carroll, Environmental Diplomacy: An Examination and a Prospective of Canadian-US Transboundary Environmental Relations (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1986), 296. 30. Peter Newman, “The End of Canada,” Maclean’s 114.2 (7 January 2001): 19. 31. Chamberlin and Legault, “International Joint Commission Looks to the 21st Century”; Stephanie Roussel, “Canadian–American Relations: Time for Cassandra,” American Review of Canadian Studies 30.2 (2000): 137. 32. Gregory Millard, Sarah Riegel and John Wright, “Here’s Where We Get Canadian: English-Canadian Nationalism and Popular Culture,” American Review of Canadian Studies 32.1(2002): 25. 33. Don Munton, “Acid Rain and Transboundary Air Quality in Canadian–American Relations,” American Review of Canadian Studies 27.3 (1997): 352. 34. George Hoberg, “Sleeping with an Elephant: The American Influence on Canadian Environmental Regulation,” Journal of Public Policy 2 (1991): 126. 35. Anthony Scott, “Fisheries, Pollution, and Canadian–American Transnational Relations,” in Canada and the United States: Transnational and Transgovern- mental Relations, ed. Annette Baker Fox, Alfred Hero Jr. and Joseph Nye Jr. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1976), 239. 36. John Herd Thompson, “Playing by the New Washington Rules: The United States–Canada Relationship,” American Review of Canadian Studies 33.1 (2003): 6. 37. George W. Bush, “State of the Union Address,” Washington, DC: 20 January 2004. 38. Marvin Soroos, The Endangered Atmosphere: Preserving a Global Commons (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1997), 111. 39. Lester Milbrath, “The World is Relearning Its Story about How the World Works,” in Kamieniecki, Environmental Politics in the International Arena, 36. 40. Munton, “Acid Rain and Transboundary Air Quality,” 352. 41. Alan Schwartz, “Canada–US Environmental Relations: A Look at the 1990s,” American Review of Canadian Studies 24.4 (1994): 490. 42. John Kirton, “Promoting Plurilateral Partnership: Managing United States– Canada Relations in the Post-Cold War Period,” American Review of Canadian Studies 24.4 (1994): 460; Thomas, Canada and the United States.
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43. Edelgard Mahant and Graeme Mount, Invisible and Inaudible in Washington: American Policies toward Canada (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1999), 3. 44. Kim Richard Nossal, “‘Without Regard to the Interests of Others’: Canada and American Unilateralism in the Post-Cold War Era,” American Review of Canadian Studies 27.2 (1997): 194. 45. Bruce Muirhead, “From Special Relationship to Third Option: Canada, the US, and the Nixon Shock,” American Review of Canadian Studies 34.3 (2004): 439. 46. John Herd Thompson and Stephen Randall, Canada and the United States: Ambivalent Allies (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1994), 1–2. 47. Robert Greenhill, “Making a Difference? External Views on Canada’s International Impact,” interim report of the External Voices Project (Toronto: Canadian Institute of International Affairs, 2005), 6. 48. Stephanie Golob, “North America Beyond NAFTA? Sovereignty, Identity, and Security in Canada–US Relations,” Canadian–American Public Policy 52 (2002): 5. 49. Anthony Wilson-Smith, “All Depends on the View,” Maclean’s 4 (24 May 2004). 50. Paul Cellucci, “The Ties That Bind: The Common Borders and Uncommon Values of Canadian–US Relations.” Speech given at the conference of the Association for Canadian Studies in the United States, Vancouver BC, 29 October 2004. 51. Roger Gibbins, “Canada as a Borderlands Society,” Borderlands Monograph Series No. 2 (Orono, ME: University of Maine Canadian–American Center, 1989), 12. 52. David Kumar and James Altschuld, “Science, Technology, and Society,” American Behavioral Scientist 47.10 (2004): 1360. 53. Jon Alston, Theresa Morris and Arnold Vedlitz, “Comparing Canadian and American Values: New Evidence from National Surveys,” American Review of Canadian Studies 26.3 (1996): 311; Seymour Martin Lipset, “North American Cultures,” Borderlands Monograph Series No. 3 (Orono, ME: University of Maine Canadian–American Center, 1990), 2. 54. Stephen Bocking, Ecologists and Environmental Politics: A History of Contem- porary Ecology (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997), 195; Debora VanNijnatten, “Participation and Environmental Policy in Canada and the United States: Trend Over Time,” Policy Studies Journal 27.2 (1999): 270. 55. Marcia Valiante, “Legal Foundations of Canadian Environmental Policy,” in VanNijnatten and Boardman, Canadian Environmental Policy, 16. 56. Michael Howlett, “Policy Instruments and Implementation Styles: The Evolution of Instrument Choice in Canadian Environmental Policy,” in VanNijnatten and Boardman, Canadian Environmental Policy, 32. 57. Ibid. 58. Ibid. 59. Kraft, “Environmental Policy and Politics in the United States,” 29. 60. Howlett, “Policy Instruments and Implementation Styles,” 37. 61. George Hoberg, “Canadian–American Environmental Relations,” in VanNijnatten and Boardman, Canadian Environmental Policy, 174. 62. Barry Rabe, “Federalism and Entrepreneurship: Explaining American and Canadian Innovation in Pollution Prevention and Regulatory Integration,” Policy Studies Journal 27.2 (1999): 264; Debora VanNijnatten, “The Bumpy Journey Ahead: Provincial Environmental Policies and National Environmental Standards,” in VanNijnatten and Boardman, Canadian Environmental Policy, 146.
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63. Annette Fox, Canada in World Affairs (Washington, DC: The ACSUS Papers, 1989), 7. 64. Mary Janigan, “The Energy Payoff: Martin May Parlay Bush’s Desire for Oil Security into Freer Trade across the Border,” Maclean’s, 14 February 2005, 20. 65. Hessing and Howlett, Canadian Natural Resource and Environmental Policy. 66. Donald Alper and James Loucky, “North American Integration: Paradoxes and Prospects,” American Review of Canadian Studies 26.2 (1966): 178; Chamberlin and Legault, “International Joint Commission Looks to the 21st Century,” 3. 67. Hoberg, “Sleeping with an Elephant: The American Influence on Canadian Environmental Regulation,” 126. 68. VanNijnatten, “Participation and Environmental Policy in Canada and the United States,” 268. 69. Robert Schmidt, “International Negotiations Paralyzed by Domestic Politics: Two-Level Game Theory and the Problem of Pacific Salmon,” Environmental Law 2 (1996): 107. 70. Courtney Brown, “Politics and the Environment: Nonlinear Instabilities Dominate,” American Political Science Review 88.2 (1994): 292. 71. Charles Doran, “Style as a Substitute for Issue Articulation in Canada–US Relations,” American Review of Canadian Studies 27.2 (1997): 177. 72. Juliann Allison, “Fortuitous Consequence: The Domestic Politics of the 1991 Canada–United States Agreement on Air Quality,” Policy Studies Journal 27.2 (1999): 347; Jurgen Schmandt, Judith Clarkson and Hilliard Roderick, Acid Rain and Friendly Neighbors: The Policy Dispute between Canada and the United States (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1988), 24. 73. Debora VanNijnatten, “Analyzing the Canada–US Environmental Relationship: A Multi-Faceted Approach,” American Review of Canadian Studies 33.1 (2003): 95. 74. Elizabeth R. Desombre, “Understanding United States Unilateralism: Domestic Sources of US International Environmental Policy,” The Global Environment: Institutions, Law, and Policy, ed. Regina Axelrod, David Downie and Norman Vig (Washington, DC: CQ Press, 2005), 182. 75. Ibid. 76. Rosenbaum, Environmental Politics and Policy, 38. 77. Neil Harrison, “Political Responses to Changing Uncertainty in Climate Science,” Science and Politics in the International Environment, ed. Neil Harrison and Gary Bryner (Boulder, CO: Rowman and Littlefield Press, 2004), 120. 78. Christopher Bosso and Deborah Guber, “Maintaining Presence: Environmental Advocacy and the Permanent Campaign,” in Vig and Kraft, Environmental Policy, 95. 79. Hoberg, “Canadian–American Environmental Relations,” 179. 80. Rosenbaum, Environmental Politics and Policy, 11. 81. Switzer, Environmental Politics: Domestic and Global Dimensions, 73. 82. Lamont Hempel, “Climate Policy on the Installment Plan,” in Vig and Kraft, Environmental Policy, 288. 83. VanNijnatten and Boardman, Canadian Environmental Policy, xi. 84. G. Bruce Doern, “Environmental Canada as a Networked Institution,” in VanNijnatten and Boardman, Canadian Environmental Policy, 107; Valiante, “Legal Foundations of Canadian Environmental Policy,” 19–20.
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85. Judith McKenzie, Environmental Politics in Canada: Managing the Commons into the Twenty-First Century (Don Mills, ON: Oxford University Press, 2002), 115. 86. VanNijnatten and Boardman, Canadian Environmental Policy. 87. Valiante, “Legal Foundations of Canadian Environmental Policy,” 3. 88. McKenzie, Environmental Politics in Canada, vii. 89. VanNijnatten and Boardman, Canadian Environmental Policy, x–xii. 90. Centre for Research and Information on Canada, “Portraits of Canada 2004” (Ottawa: CRIC, 2005), 2. 91. Robert Paarlberg, “Lapsed Leadership: US International Environmental Policy Since Rio,” in Axelrod, Downie and Vig, The Global Environment, 236. 92. Desai, Environmental Politics and Policies in Industrialized Countries, ix. 93. Benedick, Ozone Diplomacy, 316; Karen Litfin, Ozone Discourses: Science and Politics in Global Environmental Cooperation (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 107; Soroos, The Endangered Atmosphere, 160. 94. Maurice Strong, “Stockholm Plus 30, Rio Plus 10: Creating a New Paradigm of Global Governance,” in Speth, Worlds Apart, 49. 95. Wade L. Robinson, Decisions in Doubt: The Environment and Public Policy (Hanover NH: University Press of New England, 1994), 15. 96. Ted Chambers, “Canada and NAFTA,” presented at the Boise State University International Institute on Canada, 19–23 June 2000, Boise, Idaho. 97. Paarlberg, “Lapsed Leadership,” 236. 98. Desombre, “Understanding United States Unilateralism,” 182–83. 99. Desai, Environmental Politics and Policies in Industrialized Countries, 14. 100. Strong, “Stockholm Plus 30, Rio Plus 10.” 101. Speth, “Two Perspectives on Globalization and the Environment,” 8. 102. Desombre, “Understanding United States Unilateralism,” 184. 103. Paarlberg, “Lapsed Leadership.” 104. Paul Martin, “Speech to the Liberal Leadership Convention,” Ottawa, 14 November 2003. 105. Ibid. 106. Robert Boardman, “Milk-and-Potatoes Environmentalism: Canada and the Turbulent World of International Law,” in VanNijnatten and Boardman, Canadian Environmental Policy, 195. 107. Ibid., 197. 108. McKenzie, Environmental Politics in Canada, 246. 109. Harrison, “Political Responses to Changing Uncertainty in Climate Science,” 121. 110. Lipset, “North American Cultures,” 33. 111. Boardman, “Milk-and-Potatoes Environmentalism,” 194. 112. John Ibbitson, “Pluralism: The World Wonders How We Pulled it Off,” Globe and Mail, 6 February 2004, A21. 113. Robert Boardman, Canadian Environmental Policy: Ecosystems, Politics, and Process, (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1992), 237. 114. Flora MacDonald, “Canada and the United Nations: Why We Must Lead the Movement for Reform,” Canada and the United States: An Evolving Partnership (Montreal: Centre for Research and Information on Canada, 2003), 17. 115. Toner, “Contesting the Green,” 73. 116. Boardman, Canadian Environmental Policy: Ecosystems, Politics, and Process, 224. 117. Paul Martin, “Speech from the Throne,” Ottawa, 2 February 2004.
278 Canada and the United States: Approaches to Global Environmental Policy-making
118. Duncan Wood, Seminar discussion, Biennial Meeting of the Association for Canadian Studies in the United States, Portland OR, 23 November 2003. 119. Howard Schneider, “Economy, Ecology Lock Horns: Canada Redefines Relationship with the Land,” Washington Post, 27 October 1997 A01. 120. Paehlke, “Environmentalism in One Country,” 161. 121. Toner, “Contesting the Green.” 122. Heather Smith, “Stopped Cold,” Alternatives Journal 24.4 (1998): 10. 123. Paehlke, “Environmentalism in One Country.” 124. Schneider, “Economy, Ecology Lock Horns.” 125. Glen Sussman, Byron Daynes and Jonathan West, American Politics and the Environment (New York: Longman, 2002), 313. 126. Rosenbaum, Environmental Politics and Policy, 38; Vig and Kraft, Environmental Policy, 374. 127. Neil Harrison and Gary Bryner, “Thinking about Science and Politics” in Harrison and Bryner, Science and Politics in the International Environment, 1–2; Marybeth Martello and Sheila Jasanoff, “Globalization and Environmental Governance,” Earthy Politics: Local and Global in Environmental Governance, ed. Sheila Jasanoff and Marybeth Martello (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004), 3. 128. Lipset, “North American Cultures.” 129. Martin, “Speech to the Liberal Leadership Convention.” 130. Ibid. 131. Hugh Segal, “The Politics of Enhanced Canada–US Relations” (Victoria, BC: University of Victoria Centre for Global Studies, 2004). 132. Ibid.
279
Authors / Auteurs
Vijay AGNEW, Professor of Social Science, Director, Center for Feminist Research, York University, 228 York Lanes, 4700 Keele Street, North York, Ontario, M3J 1P3. Leslie ALM, Professor/Department Chair, Public Policy and Administration/SSPA, Boise State University, 1910 University Drive, Boise, Idaho, 83725-1935 USA. Ross BURKHART, Associate Professor and Chair, Department of Political Science, Boise State University, 1910 University Drive, Boise, Idaho, 83725-1935 USA. Katie CHOLETTE, Ph.D. Candidate, Canadian Studies, Carleton University, 1125 Colonel By Drive, Ottawa, Ontario, K1S 5B6. Daniel CHARTIER, Professeur, Directeur, Laboratoire international d’étude multidisciplinaire comparée des représentations du Nord, Département d’études littéraires, Université du Québec à Montréal, Case postale 8888, succursale Centre-ville, Montréal, Québec, H3C 3P8. Serge GRANGER, chargé de cours, Département d’histoire et de sciences politiques, Faculté des lettres et sciences humaines, Université de Sherbrooke, 2500, boul. de l’Université, Sherbrooke, Québec, J1K 2R1. Daniel McNEIL, PhD candidate, Department of History, University of Toronto, Sidney Smith Hall, 100 St. George Street, Toronto, Ontario, M5S 3G3. David PALMIERI, 5570, av. Decelles, app. 4, Montréal, Québec, H3T 1W5. Janusz PRZYCHODZEN, Professeur adjoint, Études françaises, Université York, bureau 705, édifice Ross North, Faculté des arts, 4700, rue Keele, Toronto, Ontario, M3J 1P3.
Vijaya RAO, Associate Professor, Centre for French and Francophone Studies, School of Language, Literature & Cultural Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India 110067.
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Volume 35 (2007)
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The burgeoning economic growth of China and India is perhaps the most significant manifestation of a new global distribution of power. These “arriviste powers” and perhaps others such as Brazil, Mexico, Indonesia, and South Korea, are unsettling the old binary categories of East and West, North and South, developed and developing. While the United States remains unrivalled in such realms as military prowess, in economic, scientific, and technological terms, it is becoming less dominant in overall global terms. Within the ‘west’, an expanded European Union has emerged as a distinctive power centre. What do these major power shifts between countries and regions signify for Canada? While Canada’s next-door relationship with the United States will continue to be enormously important for Canada’s trade and international policies, the movement of the global system from uni- to multi-polarity suggests the need of Canada to develop international strategies so as not to risk being left marginalized. How has Canada adapted to the Asia-driven shift in the global balance of power and shifts in power within Asia (e.g. the economic ascendance of China and relative decline of Japan)? To what extent has Canada seen its own global weight diminished relative to emerging powers – not only in GNP terms, but also politically, militarily, and so on? To what extent can we chart Canada’s new diplomatic realities in the context of the United States struggling to retain its own power share in global terms, and to face challenges to its legitimacy and that of its current leadership? Finally, how has the imaginary of Canada and its place in the global system shifted in the world of arts and literature because of these changed global realities? Kindly submit your paper (20-30 pages), along with an abstract of 100 words or less, by October 31, 2006 to the IJCS, 250 City Centre, S-303, Ottawa, Ontario, K1R 6K7, Canada. Tel.: (613) 789-7834. Fax: [1] (613) 789-7830. E-mail: [email protected]. REVUE INTERNATIONALE D’ÉTUDES CANADIENNES
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Volume 36 (2007) Le Canada et les puissances émergentes dans le système mondial La croissance économique fulgurante de la Chine et de l’Inde est peut-être la manifestation la plus importante d’une nouvelle répartition interna- tionale du pouvoir. Ces « nouvelles puissances » et peut-être d’autres, comme le Brésil, le Mexique, l’Indonésie et la Corée du Sud, modifient les anciennes dichotomies de l’Est et de l’Ouest, du Nord et du Sud ainsi que des pays développés et des pays en développement. Les États-Unis demeurent sans égal dans les domaines militaire, économique, scientifique et technologique, mais ils dominent de moins en moins à l’échelle mondiale. En Occident, l’Union européenne élargie est devenue un centre de pouvoir distinct. Que signifie pour le Canada cette évolution du rapport des forces entre les pays et les régions? Même si les relations du Canada avec son voisin, les États-Unis, continueront de revêtir beaucoup d’importance pour le commerce et les politiques internationales du Canada, le passage de l’unipolarité à la multipolarité du système mondial donne à penser que le Canada doit élaborer des stratégies internationales pour éviter d’être marginalisé. Comment le Canada s’est-il adapté à la modification de l’équilibre des forces imprimée par l’Asie et à la variation des pouvoirs en Asie (p. ex. l’ascendant économique de la Chine et le déclin relatif du Japon)? Dans quelle mesure le Canada a-t-il vu son propre poids international diminué par rapport à celui des puissances émergentes – non seulement sur le plan du PIB, mais aussi sur les plans politique, militaire, etc.? Dans quelle mesure le Canada peut-il faire face aux nouvelles réalités diplomatiques dans un contexte où les États-Unis s’efforcent de conserver leur propre part du pouvoir à l’échelle mondiale et de relever les défis que posent leur légitimité et celle de leurs dirigeants actuels? Enfin, comment l’imaginaire du Canada et de sa place dans le système mondial a-t-il évolué dans le monde des arts et de la littérature en raison de ces nouvelles réalités mondiales? La RIÉC vous invite à soumettre un texte (20 à 30 pages) ainsi qu’un résumé (maximum 100 mots) d’ici le 31 octobre 2006 au secrétariat de la Revue internationale d’études canadiennes, 250, rue City Centre, S-303, Ottawa, Ontario, K1R 6K7, Canada. Tél. : (613) 789-7834; télécopieur : (613) 789-7830; courriel : [email protected]. INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CANADIAN STUDIES
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