Echoing Silence: Essays on Arctic Narrative

W.J. Keith is a retired professor of English at the University of Toronto and author A Sense of Style: Studies in the Art of Fiction in English-Speaking Canada.

These are the papers from the Symposium on Arctic Narrative held at the
University of Ottawa in 1995, part of the series entitled
“Reappraisals, Canadian writers.” The book is different from most of
its predecessors because, virtually by definition, it is more
interdisciplinary as well as intercultural. The precise area of
expertise of each contributor is difficult to establish, since most of
the academics are identified, rather irritatingly, only by their
university; but there are numerous writers of both fiction and
nonfiction (the best-known being Rudy Wiebe, Farley Mowat, and Aritha
van Herk) as well as papers covering history, sociology, folklore, and
exploration. The discussions are framed by an account of efforts to
preserve Inuit oral history (including a chilling specimen emphasizing
the harshness of the traditional life) by Nellie Cournoyea, sometime
premier of the Northwest Territories, and two examples of oral narrative
(here inevitably transformed into print) by Mary Carpenter, a
traditional storyteller.

Echoing Silence thus commemorates a coming together of white Canadians
and Inuit, men and women, writers and scholars, old and young. While
united in a common cause, there are times when their testimonies
contradict each other, when the perspective of one paper is qualified by
its position before or after a radically different perspective in
another. Ironies abound. Although the contrast between historical and
contemporary attitude is stressed, I found myself wondering how many of
the contributors realized the extent to which they were themselves the
products—and the prisoners—of their age. Even the words “Canadian
Writers” in the series title reflect nationalistic tensions and the
supremacy of written text over oral. This is a rich mix, but readers
need to stand back and notice the discrepancies as well as the
agreements.

One reservation, however: this written text is littered with editorial
glitches. Bibliographical listings are incomplete or inconsistent; the
alphabetical ordering is imperfect, dates are incorrect, and (a serious
discourtesy) names are sometimes rendered incorrectly. Too many of the
contributions (including those by “writers”) are marred by spelling
mistakes, grammatical snags, incorrect apostrophes, faulty punctuation.
More care should have been taken.