Last week we discussed titles of books which were purported to be those considered by the BBC ‘100 books you ought to read if you were an informed person’. Since then, the source of that list has been questioned as being the BBC, and in fact may be some sort of list come up with by someone who thought to themselves ‘damn it, people ought to read these, you know!’

Whoever came up with the list — and go here for that post — there’s no denying that there’s some damned fine writing there. ‘Damned fine’ meaning: well written; full of imaginative plot points, rammed through with ‘thinky’ material for the reader’s consideration.

Would you think that it’s also a list with a whole bunch of seditious and banned titles? Oh yes; it really is!

25^th anniversary poster

This is “Freedom to Read Week” in the Dominion of Canada [see poster, right], and this 25^th year of the event is just as thought-provoking as one would expect it was when it was begun a quarter of a century ago.

Of the titles on the list of last week, here’s a list of the authors or titles that have come under the wrath of those desirous of limiting the ability of others in choosing what they pour into their brains through their eye-balls, and why (all information taken from the list available on the Freedom to Read site on this page: freedomtoread.ca/censorship_in_canada/challenged_books.asp):

• J.K. Rowling: Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
  • 2000 — The Durham (ON) Board of Education received numerous complaints about the immensely popular Harry Potter books being read in classrooms throughout the board’s schools. A school board official said that the complaints came from fundamentalist Christian parents.
  • Cause of objection — As is the case in at least 19 states of the U.S. and other parts of Canada, parents were concerned that Harry Potter is engaged in wizardry, witchcraft, and magic-making, and that these activities are inappropriate for young readers.
  • Update — After listening to the complaints, the administration decided to withdraw the books from classroom use but left them in school libraries where they would be available for book reports. One board member said she had wanted the books to be withdrawn completely from the schools; another member said the board had never been asked to decide the issue, so the books’ withdrawal amounted to censorship. Several months later, after a raucous public meeting, the board rescinded its decision to remove the books. However, in other jurisdictions teachers have been asked not to use the books in the classroom. This is said to have occurred in a school in Corner Brook (NF) and in Rockwood Public School in Pembroke (ON). In 2002, the Niagara (ON) District School Board turned down a parent’s request for the removal of the books from area schools. The parent said the books contained violence and promoted a religion (Wicca) which is against the law in Ontario schools. She said that she had not read the books.
• Harper Lee: To Kill a Mockingbird
  • 2002 — Black parents and teachers in Yarmouth, Digby, and Shelburne (NS) objected to this novel, Barbara Smucker’s Underground to Canada, and John Ball’s In the Heat of the Night. The director of education of the Tri-County school board ordered the withdrawal of the three books pending a ruling by the board, but his order was rescinded at a board meeting and the books were restored. In 1993, a school principal in Hamilton (ON) removed the novel from the core reading list for Grade 10 after a complaint from a parent. In 1991, a black community group called PRUDE (Pride of Race, Unity and Dignity through Education) asked Saint John (NB) School District 20 to withdraw this book and Huckleberry Finn from reading lists.
  • Cause of objection — The novel, which contains the word “nigger,” might cause black students to be mocked because of racial stereotyping.
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Since I [Mariane Lepa] started doing Arts News Canada four years ago, I’ve come to appreciate just how much creativity, talent and imagination there is in this country from coast to coast to coast to political border. In fact, I’ve become so immersed in what Canadian artists are doing, I am a little surprised when I’m confronted with Canada’s low-level image beyond our borders.

I expect it from Americans — that’s just how they are (if you’ll permit me the over generalization) — but I don’t expect it from the UK. Certainly with all the conflict Britons have endured, internally and externally, in the name of cultural uniqueness, I have always thought we had a kindred spirit in our struggle to remain unique despite looming geopolitical influences just beyond our borders. So it came as a surprise to see the their perception of Canada described as “the US’s slightly slow cousin” in an weekend article on the London Guardian’s website.

Jean Hannah Edelstein is a London-based former New Yorker, who attended university in Montréal. Before coming to Canada, she “spent very little time even thinking about Canada, much less reading about it.” But upon arriving in Montréal to study, “I was swiftly — within hours — disabused of the south-of-the-border assumption that everyone in Canada is a bit sorry they’re not American.”

Her article in the Guardian is about Canadian literature, and she regrets that Michael Redhill’s novel, Consolation, did not make the shortlist for this year’s Man Booker prize.

“But though I can’t help but bristle when I come across people being dismissive of Canadian writing,” she writes, “I was disheartened when I worked in publishing to find that ‘Canadian’ is an adjective often used to justify not publishing a book in the UK.”

Accepting that Margaret Atwood has a well-deserved international reputation for her work, Edelstein goes on to list works by poets Gwendolyn MacEwen, Robert Kroetsch, and George Elliot Clark; novelists Robert McGill and Miriam Toews, and francophone writers Roch Carrier, Gisele Villeneuve and Monique Proulx, as worthy as anything else being published internationally.

She says, “a preoccupation with naming and identity runs through a great deal of the classic of CanLit, as writers attempt to explain what it means for a country to be a ‘cultural mosaic’ rather than an American-style melting pot.”

Canadians are right to reject “American-ness”, she says. “Canadians are quietly and deservedly smug about their rich and distinctive culture, which includes a distinguished literary canon.”

You can read Edelstein’s article in the Guardian at: blogs.guardian.co.uk/books/2007/10/dont_look_down_on_canadian_lit.html

Huzzah! More grist for the mill of my book!

As a recent visitor to the UK, I can confirm that the Mother Land is a bit thin on details about ‘The Colony Over There’. The sheer size of our country is beyond them; they know it’s big, but ‘it’s not bigger than France and Germany combined, right?’ [NOTE: not an actual quote]

Actually I staggered myself with the reality that the distance from Victoria to St. John’s is equal to County Cork to the middle of Pakistan.

The Canadian authors known are few and far between, with people like Ms Atwood being an exception probably due to the RCS recent stage adaptation of The Penelopiad. Mordechi Richler is another one who is known, but not as a Canadian per se; merely as a good writer. Carol Shields is somewhat known, barely, Leonard Cohen is unknown as Canadian, a poet, or a singer — although I can see this being understandable — but mostly not at all.

Again, we’ve done a bad job of selling ourselves.

“Canadians kick ass!” isn’t a good approach either, as this sort of ‘in your face’, ‘we’re fucking important, so respect us or we’ll kick your teeth in’ doesn’t get one anywhere either.

Soon, I hope, we’ll be quietly able to introduce our works to the world and let the quality of them speak for themselves. Only then will we deserve the attention of the world for our culture.