Canada's Undeclared War: Fighting Words from the Literary Trenches

Franзois Boudreau is a sociology professor at Laurentian University in
Sudbury.

The pretext of McGoogan’s book is a letter from a Québécois
nationalist pretending that there is no English-Canadian literary
culture and that whatever exists in English Canada is monolithic and
boring. McGoogan doesn’t only prove, by thoroughly reviewing the
Canadian literary scene, that English-Canadian literature is diverse,
strong, thriving, well-rooted, and internationally recognized, he also
extends the debate to the multiple difficulties challenging this
dimension of Canadian culture. The book’s underlying thrust is a
strong argument in favor of allowing culture to play a greater role in
the definition and the operation of our society.

McGoogan asserts that, because “perceptions of reality are governed
by cultural construct,” we can say that “culture is politics.” It
is therefore possible to use a cultural viewpoint to extend the social
debate to a much wider perspective than is commonly assumed. This is how
McGoogan makes numerous arguments against free trade with the Americans
(who narrowly define Canadian culture by denying that social
organization is a cultural mindset), against racism and the denial of
Native culture (which continue to exist mainly because publishers and
the public ignore Native and non-WASP literary accomplishments), against
censorship (censoring or banning “bad” books is a bad policy if you
value democracy), and for freedom of expression (more than 360 writers
are currently imprisoned worldwide).

Canada’s Undeclared War works at different levels and demands to be
read in the context of Canada’s constitutional debate. McGoogan is
able to widen our understanding of a constitution as something
reflecting a way of life, “a way of thinking and being, a nation-wide
set of values and preoccupations” rather than a piece of paper
defining the sharing of power between levels of governments. In the end,
though, McGoogan’s book makes no practical contribution to the
constitutional debate. Both his opening and closing remarks on the
Québec separatist’s letter are filled with the same type of narrow,
short-view stereotypes of the “other solitude.” His own anger at
Québec is almost as contemptuous as the rage he denounces in the
letter: McGoogan states, in capital letters, that “Canada doesn’t
need Québec”; he wishes Québec would leave Canada (“the lesser of
two evils”).

In short, Canada’s Undeclared War is very good at showing the extent,
the diversity, and the politics of English-Canadian literary culture.
But on the question of the political unity of Canada, which McGoogan
calls a nation, he very badly misses the mark.