In his 1963 debut essay for the militant Quebec journal, Parti pris, André Brochu invoked the figure of the sixteenth-century skeptic Michel de Montaigne in the name of what Ralph Waldo Emerson, responding to the same over a century earlier, had called, «an original relation to the universe». «Écrire», wrote Brochu, «c'est redéfinir la relation originelle de l'homme à l'univers, c'est, comme écrit magnifiquement Montaigne, 'faire l'homme'...» By tracing the idealism of nineteenth-century American and twentieth-century Quebec writers back to Montaigne and his rejection of Aristotelian and Scholastic reason, The Renaissance of Impasse offers an alternate history to that found in much (post)Romantic criticism, wherein modern skepticism tends to be identified with, and so in a sense confined to, the project of Enlightenment reason. Key works from Thomas Carlyle, Emerson and Herman Melville to Hubert Aquin, Réjean Ducharme and Victory-Lévy Beaulieu serve to define and to refine the sense of an impasse - personal, social, spiritual, historical, and political - that accompanies the «modern» drive to renaissance.
Quebec’s early novels are full of sacred themes and motifs – devotional objects and practices, parables and scripture, priests and nuns, transcendence, divinity, and eternity. Yet the critical gaze of the past fifty years has seldom engaged the idea of the sacred in a sustained way. Indeed the presence of the sacred has alienated modern and postmodern readers who ignore or downplay its significance, leading to misguided assessments of these works as mediocre and even unreadable for contemporary audiences. The Sense of the Sacred in the Early Novels of Quebec reexamines seven classic novels at the foundations of Quebec’s national literature: Patrice Lacombe’s La Terre paternelle (1846), P.-J.-O. Chauveau’s Charles Guérin (1853), Antoine Gérin-Lajoie’s Jean Rivard (1874), Philippe Aubert de Gaspé’s Les Anciens Canadiens (1863), Laure Conan’s Angéline de Montbrun (1884), Louis Hémon’s Maria Chapdelaine (1916), and Félix-Antoine Savard’s Menaud, maître-draveur (1937). Through chapters that focus on sacred themes, character analysis, narrative temporalities, and the hermeneutics of the sacred, Lisa Gasbarrone demonstrates that these novels are more nuanced and innovative than their reputation has allowed. *The Sense of the Sacred in the Early Novels of Quebec *reintroduces readers to classic works of French-Canadian literature that ironically and provocatively cast their quarrel with modernity in that essentially modern form: the novel.
In the 1970s, Hydro-Qu?bec declared “We Are Hydro-Qu?b?cois.” The slogan symbolized the intimate ties that had emerged between hydroelectric development in the North and French Canadian aspirations in the South. Caroline Desbiens focuses on the first phase of the James Bay hydroelectric project to explore how this culture of hydroelectricity hastened the erasure of Aboriginal homelands and the manipulation of Northern Quebec’s material landscape. She concludes that truly sustainable resource development will depend on all actors bringing an awareness of their cultural histories and visions of nature, North, and nation to the negotiating table.
The Contemporary Leonard Cohen is an exciting new study that offers an original explanation of Leonard Cohen’s staying power and his various positions in music, literature, and art. The death of Leonard Cohen received media attention across the globe, and this international star remains dear to the hearts of many fans. This book examines the diversity of Cohen’s art in the wake of his death, positioning him as a contemporary, multi-media artist whose career was framed by the twentieth-century and neoliberal contexts of its production. The authors borrow the idea of “the contemporary” especially from philosophy and art history, applying it to Cohen for the first time—not only to the drawings that he included in some of his books but also to his songs, poems, and novels. This idea helps us to understand Cohen’s techniques after his postmodern experiments with poems and novels in the 1960s and 1970s. It also helps us to see how his most recent songs, poems, and drawings developed out of that earlier material, including earlier connections to other writers and musicians. Philosophically, “the contemporary” also sounds out the deep feelings that Cohen’s work still generates in readers and listeners. Whether these feelings are spiritual or secular, sincere or ironic, we get them partly from the sense of timeliness and the sense of timelessness in Cohen’s lyrics and images, which speak to our own lives and times, our own struggles and survival. From a set of international collaborators, The Contemporary Leonard Cohen delivers an appreciative but critical examination of one of our dark luminaries.
Surrounded by water and located at the heart of a fertile plain, the Island of Montreal has been a crossroads for Indigenous peoples, European settlers, and today's citizens, and an inland port city for the movement of people and goods into and out of North America. Commemorating the city's 375th anniversary, Montreal: The History of a North American City is the definitive, two-volume account of this fascinating metropolis and its storied hinterland. This comprehensive collection of essays, filled with hundreds of illustrations, photographs, and maps, draws on human geography and environmental history to show that while certain distinctive features remain unchanged – Mount Royal, the Lachine Rapids of the Saint Lawrence River – human intervention and urban evolution mean that over time Montrealers have had drastically different experiences and historical understandings. Significant issues such as religion, government, social conditions, the economy, labour, transportation, culture and entertainment, and scientific and technological innovation are treated thematically in innovative and diverse chapters to illuminate how people's lives changed along with the transformation of Montreal. This history of a city in motion presents an entire picture of the changes that have marked the region as it spread from the old city of Ville-Marie into parishes, autonomous towns, boroughs, and suburbs on and off the island. The first volume encompasses the city up to 1930, vividly depicting the lives of First Nations prior to the arrival of Europeans, colonization by the French, and the beginning of British Rule. The crucial roles of waterways, portaging, paths, and trails as the primary means of travelling and trade are first examined before delving into the construction of canals, railways, and the first major roads. Nineteenth-century industrialization created a period of near-total change in Montreal as it became Canada's leading city and witnessed staggering population growth from less than 20,000 people in 1800 to over one million by 1930. The second volume treats the history of Montreal since 1930, the year that the Jacques Cartier Bridge was opened and allowed for the outward expansion of a region, which before had been confined to the island. From the Great Depression and Montreal's role as a munitions manufacturing centre during the Second World War to major cultural events like Expo 67, the twentieth century saw Montreal grow into one of the continent's largest cities, requiring stringent management of infrastructure, public utilities, and transportation. This volume also extensively studies the kinds of political debate with which the region and country still grapple regarding language, nationalism, federalism, and self-determination. Contributors include Philippe Apparicio (INRS), Guy Bellavance (INRS), Laurence Bherer (University of Montreal), Stéphane Castonguay (UQTR), the late Jean-Pierre Collin (INRS), Magda Fahrni (UQAM), the late Jean-Marie Fecteau (UQAM), Dany Fougères (UQAM), Robert Gagnon (UQAM), Danielle Gauvreau (Concordia), Annick Germain (INRS), Janice Harvey (Dawson College), Annie-Claude Labrecque (independent scholar), Yvan Lamonde (McGill), Daniel Latouche (INRS), Roderick MacLeod (independent scholar), Paula Negron-Poblete (University of Montreal), Normand Perron (INRS), Martin Petitclerc (UQAM), Christian Poirier (INRS), Claire Poitras (INRS), Mario Polèse (INRS), Myriam Richard (unaffiliated), Damaris Rose (INRS), Anne-Marie Séguin (INRS), Gilles Sénécal (INRS), Valérie Shaffer (independent scholar), Richard Shearmur (McGill), Sylvie Taschereau (UQTR), Michel Trépanier (INRS), Laurent Turcot (UQTR), Nathalie Vachon (INRS), and Roland Viau (University of Montreal).
In 1904, sixteen women travelled together by train to cover the St Louis World's Fair. The Sweet Sixteen traces the fateful ten-day trip that resulted in the formation of a professional club for the advancement of Canadian newspaper women. Drawing upon letters, journals, interviews, and most significantly, newspaper stories written by the women themselves, Linda Kay narrates the journey to St Louis with evocative detail. Delving into the group dynamics and individual experiences of these women, Kay explores the cultural divide between the Anglophone and Francophone members of the group and provides compelling biographical sketches of each woman's life and work. The Sweet Sixteen documents the struggles of a group of tenacious and talented women who, in 1904, did not have the right to vote, were not regarded as persons under the law, and were credentialed as journalists at a time when marriage and motherhood were considered a woman's one true calling. Their legacy -the Canadian Women's Press Club - is a testament to their daring.
On the agricultural frontier and through technological progress, Europeans and others and their descendants have sought to fulfill their dreams of improvement. Through businesses, governments, and other bodies, city dwellers expedited these desires by organizing settlements, communications, trade, finance, and manufacturing. In turn, cities grew mightily. To assess the present condition of cities, Liberal Dreams and Nature's Limits focuses on five large North American cities at various times in the past --Philadelphia (about 1760), New York (1860), Chicago (1910), Los Angeles (1950), and Toronto (1975). Life inside these cities--specifically the economy, society and politics, public services, land development, and the geographies of circulation, workplaces, and residential districts--is the central concern of this book. Another concern is drawing contrasts and similarities between the American and Canadian urban experiences. North Americans, most now living in cities, face the challenge of a social frontier--how to maintain civility in a near-stagnant economy. Despite recent advances in cyberspace, nature has imposed limits on technical progress defined by speed, convenience, and comfort; Promethean gains through creative destruction are no longer possible. Increased preoccupation with money, status, and safety suggests that the striving inspired by liberalism is still appealing. Yet without growth, liberal dreams cannot be fulfilled. To ensure work, income equity, and a degree of freedom in thought and action, citizens and leaders in both countries will have to commit themselves as never before to managing fairness through social democracy. Sustainable cities are not possible otherwise.
Cullen particularly focuses on the founding fathers and the Declaration of Independence ("the charter of the American Dream"); Abraham Lincoln, with his rise from log cabin to White House and his dream for a unified nation; and Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream of racial equality. Our contemporary version of the American Dream seems rather debased in Cullen's eyes-built on the cult of Hollywood and its outlandish dreams of overnight fame and fortune.
The settlements, economically based on lumber alone, were locked into poverty and dependency by Anglophone-monopoly control of the spruce forests. J.I. Little examines the ultimate failure of the British and Quebec settlement projects and argues that the stranglehold of the monopolies was broken only by the belated extension of the rail network into the Upper St Francis district. Canadians have only recently begun to question their model of company-leased Crown forest reserves and to become interested in the more efficient Scandinavian model of small-scale, privately owned woodlots. This book is one of the first to explore the ideological contradictions and social costs which followed from the entrenchment of large-scale lumber companies in a settled zone.
