Escape: In Search of the Natural Soul of Canada

Thomas M.F. Gerry is a professor of English at Laurentian University and
the editor of Arachne, Laurentian University’s bilingual
interdisciplinary journal of language and literature.

About 80 pages after Roy MacGregor trashes Northrop Frye, all but
calling him a fraud, he uses a quotation from Frye as the epigraph for
his book’s fourth chapter. This chapter deals with some Canadian
utopian schemes; the epigraph is Frye’s remark that the words
“Canada” and “utopia” possibly have similar root meanings, and
“perhaps the real Canada is an ideal with nobody in it.” MacGregor
explores this hypothesis through several examples, beginning with
Mizpah, a long-gone community whose cemetery is near the MacGregor
family cottage, the main reference point in the book.

MacGregor’s apparent change of opinion regarding Frye is symptomatic
of this book’s unevenness, which can cause readers to lose confidence
in the narrator. The opening chapter is a remarkably engaging
autobiographical account of MacGregor and some fellow cottagers’ quest
to locate a small lake somewhere in Algonquin Park. Even with maps and
an aerial photograph, they have lots of trouble finding Ermine Lake. The
chapter nicely illustrates people’s struggle to reconcile official,
technical information with the in-your-face nature of swamps, hills, bug
bites, and nasty weather. Through humor and vivid description, readers
imaginatively sense MacGregor’s perception of the “natural soul of
Canada.”

The problem with Frye, as far as MacGregor is concerned, is that he was
born, raised, educated, and worked in—horror of horror—cities. (No
mention of his time riding a United Church circuit in southwestern
Saskatchewan.) According to MacGregor, Frye’s reflection that terror
is part of Canadians’ imaginative response to nature is invalidated by
the fact that he had no “real experience of Canadian nature.” His
imagining immigrants’ experience of entering the Gulf of Saint
Lawrence in terms of being swallowed by a whale is, for cottager
MacGregor, “pure hogwash.”

In spite of some fundamental narratorial inconsistencies, I enjoyed
reading Escape. It’s full of amusing anecdotes and charming
characters.