Colonial Tongues

David E. Kemp is a drama professor at Queen’s University, and the
author of The Pleasures and Treasures of the United Kingdom.

The roots of this play can be traced to a train trip taken by the
author, award-winning playwright Mansel Robinson. En route to Northern
Ontario for a visit, Robinson looked out the window expecting to see the
small mill town of Kormak. Instead, he saw nothing. The town had been
bulldozed—the result of a business decision.

Colonial Tongues asks the same kinds of questions about community and
family that passed through Robinson’s head as he gazed from the train
at the ghost town of Kormak. The play also examines the essential nature
of home and belonging. Lending great poignancy to this work is
Robinson’s recognition of the fact that what makes such communities so
distinctly Canadian is also what puts them at risk.