“There has never been, in the history of the world, a multicultural society that was not an empire.”

Discussed: CanLit’s Colonial Habit: Literature in the age of Reconciliation and ‘peak’ diversity by Stephen Marche (here).

Students at Ahousat Indian Residential School in B.C., 1939.

I read Stephen Marche’s essay yesterday morning. Then I read it again — aloud, to my wife — in the afternoon.

“That’s incredible,” she said. “So many devastating observations. But what do you take away from it?”

“I’m not sure,” I said.

I’m still not sure. But it seems to me essential reading.

Marche adroitly surveys the CanLit scene and eviscerates the sanctimony that drives it, without coming off as holier-than-thou (because, after all, he is the beneficiary of said scene (such as it is)). He touches on CanLit figureheads I’ve puzzled over — Joseph Boyden and Miriam Toews, to name just two — and succinctly summarizes both their appeal and their limitations.

When I was a younger writer, doing the whole SASE submission thing, I was vaguely aware of the unspoken cultural expectations the guardians of the CanLit scene had. And I took a stab at meeting those expectations. I’ve still got the hangover — see my blog masthead for evidence. I figure “Mennonite” is a search parameter more likely to net readers than “movies, music, miscellaneous.” Marche pinpoints this reflexive impulse as well, and highlights the uniquely Canadian tint to it.

I could fill the page with quotes, but will settle with this one:

I have always wondered why Canadians care so little for their history, why an event like the War of 1812 — rich with fascinating characters and heroic incident — should be more or less completely forgotten. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission report explains without explaining: When your country is based on taking away First Nations’ history from them, and replacing it with a history from a country thousands of miles away, why wouldn’t you throw out your own history too? The cliché of Canadian art is that it is obsessed with landscape. The TRC report reveals the terrifying why: Canadian landscapes are visions of country with no people.

Marche's essay is here. Truth and Reconciliation Commission reports are here. This is the executive summary.