The Very Richness of That Past: Canada Through the Eyes of Foreign Writers Vol. 2

Barbara Robertson is the author of Wilfrid Laurier: The Great
Conciliator and co-author of The Well-Filled Cupboard.

This successor to The Wild Is Always There is wonderfully entertaining
and informative, not only because of the excerpts themselves but also
because of editor Greg Gatenby’s lively introductions. Indeed,
occasionally the introductions are more interesting than the excerpts.
For example, while the characters in the excerpt from Theodore
Dreiser’s Sister Carrie do little more than register that Montreal is
not Chicago, Gatenby has provided us with an electrifying account of
Dreiser’s real-life encounter with Toronto in 1942.

The selections range widely in time and space, from a 13th-century
Norse Saga to Stephen Graham’s interesting comments about the
Doukhobors in western Canada in 1921. There is a sensitive and observant
account from the Journal of Richard Henry Dana Jr. (in 1842, Dana
managed to combine sightseeing in Nova Scotia with efforts to reclaim a
young prostitute). Two of the finest pieces in the volume are poems:
“Canadians,” a World War I poem by Ivor Gurney; and “Niagara,” a
poem by the young Cuban poet José Marнa Heredia that was first
published in 1827 (deservedly, there is a plaque near the Horseshoe
Falls commemorating the latter poem).

There is a certain emphasis in the volume: about a third of the writers
represented are American, and nearly half were born between 1850 and
1900. This sometimes produces amusing juxtapositions, as in the case of
Zane Grey and Sinclair Lewis. In his novel Mantrap, Lewis satirizes the
Zane Grey view of the West—that exposure to nature is an ennobling
experience; elsewhere in the volume, it is revealed that Zane Grey was a
game-fishing enthusiast, an expensive hobby fed by income from his
popular Westerns.

Like all good anthologies, The Very Richness of That Past will
encourage further reading. Minimally, I mean to reread Wallace
Stegner’s Wolf Willow, an excerpt from which concludes this volume.
And perhaps I will get around to reading Sister Carrie, though not for
its insights into Montreal.