Western University Scholarship@Western Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository 12-16-2013 12:00 AM After Dark: Reading Canadian Literature in a Light-Polluted Age David S. Hickey The University of Western Ontario Supervisor Dr. D.M.R. Bentley The University of Western Ontario Graduate Program in English A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the equirr ements for the degree in Doctor of Philosophy © David S. Hickey 2013 Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd Part of the Literature in English, North America Commons Recommended Citation Hickey, David S., "After Dark: Reading Canadian Literature in a Light-Polluted Age" (2013). Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository. 1805. https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd/1805 This Dissertation/Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by Scholarship@Western. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository by an authorized administrator of Scholarship@Western. For more information, please contact [email protected]. After Dark: Reading Canadian Literature in a Light-Polluted Age Monograph by David Hickey Graduate Program in English A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English The School of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies The University of Western Ontario London, Ontario, Canada © Hickey 2013 i Abstract A threat to nocturnal ecosystems and human health alike, light pollution is an unnecessary problem that comes at an enormous cost. The International Dark-Sky Association has recently estimated that the energy expended on light scatter alone is responsible for no less than twelve million tons of carbon dioxide and costs municipal governments at least $1 billion annually (“Economic Issues” 2). Emerging research also suggests that excessive artificial light at night may compromise melatonin production, a hormone that has been linked to the suppression of certain cancers (Stevens 28; Haim 32). As scotobiologists seek to solidify the connection between the disruption of circadian rhythms and compromised states of physical and mental well-being, the impetus to study the cultural and literary meaning of the night sky becomes all the more pressing. Drawing on a range of affect theorists, the findings of nocturnal ecologists, and ecocriticism’s call to memory and mindfulness, this dissertation assembles a diverse crew to consider the ways in which Canadian writers have chronicled the shift from natural darkness to artificial light. Too easily dismissed as nostalgic or sentimental, the desire to see the night sky make its return has never mattered more. To live in a time and a place where night never fully arrives is to know that the stars in a given volume of poetry may well outnumber those that remain visible in the sky. Literature itself has now drifted into an era of post-darkness, the world’s obsession with artificial light having ushered in a historical period that is, quite literally, after dark. For this reason, stories and poems that are rich in celestial allusions are worth studying because they place personal reflection, cosmological awareness, and empathetic witness in a century that has otherwise failed to appreciate the necessity of nocturnal environments the world over. Favouring lyrical persistence over nocturnal lament, the Nova Scotian poet Kenneth Leslie once set sail to “stubborn stars,” his imagination ii desiring those truths that only take shape in a sea of dark (1). Seventy-five years later, his finest sonnet still invites us to follow – headlong into the passages we find in search of better light to read by. Keywords Canadian literature, ecocriticism, night sky, light pollution, dark-sky movement, P.K. Page, W.W.E. Ross, L.M. Montgomery iii iv Acknowledgments My thanks to the following individuals who helped make this project possible: Margaret Steffler, for scanning P.K. Page’s unpublished Mexican Journals for references to the night sky; Elizabeth Epperly, for enthusiastic support; George Fleenor and Peter McMahon, for generously granting me permission to use images free of charge; John Tyndall, for six years of assistance at the D.B. Weldon Library reference desk; Lindsey Bannister, whose work with the English collection at D.B. Weldon Library was invaluable; staff librarians at the National Archives of Canada, at the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, and at the University of Toronto’s Archive and Records Management Services, without whom this dissertation could not have been written; Rick Stapleton, Archives and Research Collections Librarian at McMaster University, for his help with the R.G. Everson fonds; Jeremy Heil, Technical Services Archivist at Queen’s University, for retrieving materials from the William Wilfred Campbell fonds; Erica Kelly, Tina Northrup, Mandy Penny, and Phil Glennie, for reading early drafts of these chapters; Rebecca Campbell and Alicia Robinet, for sending along every reference to the night sky that they encountered in their reading; the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, for financial support; Peter Yampolsky, for doing the math that appears in the final footnote of this dissertation; Dr. Bryce Traister, for the conversations, Dr. Manina Jones, not only for her close reading of this project, but also for her support of creative writers in academia; Dr. D.M.R. Bentley, for generous feedback, expert guidance, and space to think and to write; and, finally, Erica Leighton, for company under the stars. v Table of Contents Abstract ............................................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgments ............................................................................................................. iiv Table of Contents ................................................................................................................ v List of Plates ...................................................................................................................... vi Introduction: Ecology, Memory, and the Recovery of the Night ....................................... 1 Recollecting Light: Accounts of the Leonids over Nineteenth-Century Canada ............. 48 Unearthly Pleasures: The Night Skies of L.M. Montgomery ........................................... 93 In Praise of Night: The Celestial Poetry of W.W.E. Ross ....................................... ..….159 Dark Spectrums: The Artful Astronomy of P.K. Page ................................................... 212 Conclusion: Reading Literature in a Light-Polluted Age ............................................... 259 Works Cited .................................................................................................................... 270 Curriculum Vitae ............................................................................................................ 311 vi List of Plates Fig. 1. In order for public lighting to play its part in ensuring public safety, unnecessary glare needs to be reduced with proper shielding. As the contrast between these two photographs by George Fleenor illustrates, exterior lighting can just as easily obscure what we would otherwise trust it to reveal. Fig. 2. The front page of the Leader-Post, 15 November 1932. Fig. 3. 2013 promotional poster for London, Ontario’s Take Back the Night March. Fig. 4. The official logo of the International Year of Astronomy 2009. Fig. 5. First published in 1898, Thomas Conant’s Upper Canada Sketches includes this illustration, “Meteoric shower (1833),” and twenty-seven others by the Canadian painter Edward Scrope Shrapnel. Fig. 6. The old moon wanes faintly above the tree line on the cover of the 1923 edition of Emily of New Moon. Fig. 7. Paul Renaud’s Contemplation, as it appeared in Camille Flammarion’s Astronomy for Amateurs (1910). Fig. 8. Recently installed street lights steal the show as Quebec’s 9th Battalion marches down Toronto’s Yonge Street. Illustrated War News, 25 July 1885. Fig. 9. The Hodder and Stoughton cover of Magic for Marigold (1929). The image works through pairings that frame and naturalize the intergenerational exchange: four trees rise in the distance, two on either side; two more stand in the foreground, and two especially brilliant stars rise in the enchanted sky. Note, too, how Marigold’s carefully balanced arms contribute to the sense of symmetry that governs the scene as a whole. Fig. 10. “The Brockton Comet Chart.” Toronto Daily Star, 16 April 1910. Fig. 11. “The ‘Brockton’ is Here.” Toronto Daily Star, 21 April 1910. Fig. 12. Inside the back cover of L.M. Montgomery’s Red Scrapbook. vii Fig. 13. Combining the geometric shapes of Cubism, the clean lines and angles of the Constructivists, the bright colours of the Fauvists, and Futurism’s emphasis on speed and power, Art Deco was the popular face of high art from the 1920s to the 1940s (Duncan 142-44). In his analysis of Tamara de Lempicka’s paintings, whose work is synonymous with the Art Deco period, Alastair Duncan has called attention to an “icy and enigmatic style in which contrasting angular images and bright colours predominated” (143). Montgomery’s preference for this cover design of A Tangled Web (1931) and its depiction of an Art Deco comet indicates that she, too, could appreciate the value of the “icy” and the “enigmatic” in Modern visual art. Fig. 14. Algol is located in the constellation Perseus, Alioth is the brightest star in Ursa Major, and Aldebaran and Alcyone both belong to the