The Wild Is Always There: Canada Through the Eyes of Foreign Writers

Patricia Raible, formerly a law librarian, is currently a bookseller in
Creemore, Ontario.

“Canada is like an expanding flower: wherever you look you see some
fresh petal unrolling.” So wrote Arthur Conan Doyle about his 1914
cross-country journey. Susan Buchan, novelist and wife of John Buchan
(Governor General of Canada, 1935–1940), noted the “variety of
landscape, weather and occupation” as Canada’s greatest charm. She
added, “it is possible to live an urban and civilized life in one of
her great cities and to forget how near the wild country is to your
home. ... The wild is always there.”

Greg Gatenby, who was convinced that most Canadians take for granted
that they live in a country not much lauded—or even considered—by
authors from abroad, set out to produce a history and anthology of
writings by foreign authors about Canada. Apparently to his surprise,
Gatenby found an “embarrassment of riches,” and his difficulty has
been in the selection rather than in the seeking. In fact, he has done
an admirable job. His 36 selections offer a wide range of opinions and
observations.

For some authors (e.g., Algernon Blackwood and Willa Cather), a
prolonged stay deeply influenced their work. For others (Harriet Beecher
Stowe), a brief trip had to suffice. Still others (Voltaire and Cyrano
de Bergerac) never visited Canada at all; their imagination, coupled
with the reports of others, informed their work. Even influential
Evangeline was written long before Longfellow set foot on Canadian soil.

Some of the selections are autobiographical in nature (e.g., Enid
Bagnold’s amusing recollections of her unromantic honeymoon aboard a
trans-Canada train). Others are complete in themselves (e.g., Jack
London’s short story “In a Far Country,” the tragic tale of
unheroic men trapped in an Arctic winter). Some have a bittersweet edge,
exemplified in Mark Twain’s amusing after-dinner speech in Montreal,
in which he decries the piratical practices of those Canadian publishers
who purloined and illegally published his most famous works.

Gatenby has prefaced each selection with a biographical essay, usually
quite extensive and often including excerpts from the author’s other
writings. These excellent essays add considerably to the reader’s
appreciation.