From Within Fur and Feathers: Animals in Canadian Literature

Writing in the Literary History of Canada almost thirty-five years ago, Alec Lucas 
\nnoted that "nature writing, particularly the animal story, had its hay-day in the late 
\nnineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It has long past. Perhaps the literary vein 
\nhas been worked out" (1965:404). In retrospect, Lucas's epitaph for animal presences 
\nin Canadian literature may be premature; writing in the same volume, no less a lumi- 
\nnary than Northrop Frye noted, with no predictions for the genre's demise, "the prev- 
\nalence in Canada of animal stories, in which animals are closely assimilated to human 
\nbehaviour and emotions" (343). Indeed, according to Gaile McGregor, any survey of 
\nthe foundational works of Ernest Thompson Seton and Sir Charles G.D. Roberts and 
\nthe many animal imaginings offered by recent and contemporary authors reveals that 
\n"Canadians are fascinated by animals" (1985: 192). Poets as diverse as Layton, Atwood, 
\nOndaatje, Page, Lane, Acorn, and Nowlan (among others) have written of animals; 
\nnovelists such as Fred Bodsworth, Sheila Watson, Marian Engel, and Thomas King 
\nhave all created animal characters of one form or another. The proliferation of an 
\nincreasingly urbane literature in the Canadian imaginative landscape may bear out 
\nLucas's prediction for the demise of the animal genre at some future date, but for now 
\nthe important position of non-human actors in the recent history of the Canadian 
\nimagination remains intact, a fact that has been further emphasized by the recent crit- 
\nical and commercial success of Barbara Gowdy's elephant novel, The White Bone.

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