CANADIAN LITERATURE

Exploration and Travel

Journal of Trip across Canada Walter Cheadle (1862)

„this is a journal of first transcanadian tourist”

Exploration vs. tourism

Significant vs. trivial

Part of the popular culture

Propaganda (national, imperial)

Danger of ideological use of exploration literatureInvader’s claim to ownershipFirst to survey claim the place

e.g. Cartier, finder of the St. LawrenceSamuel de Champlain – Father of New France

Necessary revision The Helping Hand: How Indian Canadians Helped Alexander Mackenzie and Simon Fraser to Indian Canadians (1973) - used in high schools – controversial

Viscount Milton and Walter Cheadle’ s Diary (1861-62)

First publication: The North-West Passage by Land (1866)

Practical information on natural resources Agricultural potentials Settlement of the prairies, and BC „business, exploration and duty”

Immediately after

George Vancouver’s A Voyage of Discovery to the North Pacific Ocean

„almost dazzling illiteracy”:

Imperfect grammar Incompetence of translators hired by HBC

Scholarly debate

Travel writing

Popular (sensationalism) Revision for profit Performed by the editor or author Borderline between fiction and truth = blurred

Historical sources for Indigenous peoples’

customs

Features maps

Surveys and charts

Shadow-texts

One version exists in contrapuntal relationship to another, adopting textual mode and revealing aspects of the journey and its participants that were probably not mean it for publication to begin with.

Bronislaw Malinowski: A Diary in the Strict Sense of the Term

Letters

Marie de L’Incarnation (1599-1672)

Founder of Ursuline order

Missionary, educational work

Correspondence with family members

Official letters

Quick turnaround to avoid the freeze-up of the river Several copies with different vessels New letter – provisional summary of previous

exchanges

Lady Dufferin: Undelivered Letters

Lady Aberdeen: Through Canada with a Kodak (1893)

Great Exhibition 1851

Disappointment of Canadian representation

Gold

Mineral

Fruit

Leather

Paper

Literary Travel

Getting more and more popular

e.g. Touch the Dragon: A Thai Journal Karen Connelly (1992)

Meaning of Canada is revising

Meegwetch