Table Of ContentRAPT IN PLAID
Canadian Literature and Scotti&u Tradition
Rapt in Plaid combines reflection, criticism, and memoir to illus-
trate a curious and long-lasting connection between Scottish and
Canadian literary traditions. Examples drawn from genres in-
cluding lyric poetry, narrative romance, war fiction, children's
literature, sentimental fiction, thrillers, domestic novels, and
short stories link Canadian writers such as John Richardson,
Isabella Valancy Crawford, Sinclair Ross, Hugh MacLennan,
Margaret Laurence, and W.O. Mitchell to Scottish writers such
as Robert Burns, Walter Scott, Thomas Carlyle, J.M. Barrie, Rob-
ert Louis Stevenson, John Buchan, and George Mackay Brown.
Each chapter traces the connections from directly imitative
nineteenth-century Canadian writers to modern Canadian works
where Scottish tradition persists, sometimes transformed and
sometimes distorted. Lively biographical sketches and close
analysis of particular passages by Scottish and Canadian writ-
ers are set in the context of multicultural, narrative, postmodern,
and post-colonial theories. This study illuminates the way Scot-
tish ideas and values still wield surprising power in Canadian
politics, education, theology, economics, and social mores.
Although Professor Waterston's method is that of a literary
historian, she frames each section in this new work with af-
fectionate memories of reading, researching, and teaching Scot-
tish and Canadian literature over a sixty-year period.
ELIZABETH WATERSTON is Professor Emeritus, University of
Guelph. A lifetime member of the Association of Canadian Stud-
ies and a former National President of the Humanities Associa-
tion of Canada, she is also a co-founder and former editor of
Canadian Children's Literature / Litterature canadienne pour la
jeunesse.
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Rapt in Plaid
Canadian Literature and
Scottish Tradition
ELIZABETH WATERSTON
UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS
Toronto Buffalo London
www.utppublishing.com
© University of Toronto Press Incorporated 2001
Toronto Buffalo London
Printed in Canada
Reprinted in paperback 2003
ISBN 0-8020-4785-8 (cloth)
ISBN 0-8020-8685-3 (paper)
Printed on acid-free paper
National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Waterston, Elizabeth, 1922-
Rapt in plaid : Canadian literature and Scottish tradition / Elizabeth
Waterston.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8020-4785-8 (bound).—ISBN 0-8020-8685-3 (pbk.)
1. Canadian literature (English) - Scottish influences. 2. Canadian
literature (English) - History and criticism. 3. Literature, Compara-
tive - Scottish and Canadian (English). 4. Literature, Comparative -
Canadian (English) and Scottish. 5. Scottish literature - History and
criticism. 6. English literature - Scottish authors - History and
criticism. I. Title.
PS8097.S36W37 2000 C810.9 COO-932193-4
University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to
its publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the
Ontario Arts Council.
This book has been published with the help of a grant from the
Humanities and Social Sciences Federation of Canada, using funds
provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of
Canada.
Support of this publication by the Scottish Studies Foundation is
gratefully acknowledged.
The University of Guelph Research Board awarded a grant in aid of
publication from the General Research Grant of the Social Sciences and
Humanities Research Council.
University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial support for its
publishing activities of the Government of Canada through the Book
Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP).
Contents
Preface vii
Acknowledgments ix
Part One
Auld Lang Syne 3
1. Burns, Acorn, and the Rivers of Song 12
2. Scott, Crawford, and the Highlands of Romance 43
3. Scott, Findley, and the Borders of War 66
A Cup o' Kindness 85
Part Two
Signs of the Times 93
4. Gait, Ross, and the Lowlands of Irony 102
5. Carlyle, Mitchell, Laurence, and the Storms of Rhetoric 120
Everlasting Yea? 139
Part Three
Road to the Isles 151
6. Stevenson, Lee, and the Garden of Childhood 160
vi Contents
7. Barrie, Montgomery, and the Mists of Sentiment 175
8. Buchan, MacLennan, and the Winds of Violence 192
Braggart's in My Step 212
Part Four
Open the Door! 221
9. Sinclair, Saunders, and the Outskirts of Story 229
10. Duncan, Munro, and the Vistas of Memory 249
Brought to Mind 266
Notes 273
Books Cited 299
Index 327
Preface
In a multicultural, post-colonial age, it is not fashionable to
focus attention on a single, imported strand in the national
fabric. From earliest days, however, the Scottish strand has
remained strong, colourful, and resilient in Canadian life. Post-
colonial meditation on the development of a national identity
separate from its early borrowings cannot ignore the evidence
that Scottish attitudes and experiences have played a dispro-
portionate part in developing a Canadian tang in literature and
life. This book is a study of the influence on Canadian literature
of certain Scottish writers. It is also a memoir of my own
encounters with those writers, as a teacher, researcher, and
editor.
My lifelong professional interest in Scottish-Canadian con-
nections has been augmented by a lifetime of pleasure, as a
reader, in Scottish and Canadian books. The books that en-
riched and sustained me when I was young remain as fresh as
ever, sixty years after I entered academic life. And the fascina-
tion of watching the interconnection between two fine national
literary traditions remains as great.
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Acknowledgments
Over many years, my research on Canadian and Scottish litera-
ture has been supported by travel and research grants from the
Canada Council and the Social Sciences and Humanities Re-
search Council. The University of Guelph and the University of
Western Ontario have furnished research funds, space, and
secretarial and research assistants; again gratefully noted. In
the National Archives of Canada, the National Library of Scot-
land, the Edinburgh University Library, the Beinecke Library of
Yale, the Weldon Library at the University of Western Ontario,
the McLaughlin Library at Guelph, the Fisher Library in To-
ronto, and the MacLennan Library at McGill University, librar-
ians have always been very helpful. I also want to thank my
husband, children, and grandchildren, and my friends, par-
ticularly Mary Rubio, for their support over a long-drawn-out
process. I am grateful to Gerald Hallowell and others at the
University of Toronto Press for encouraging me to go on with
the manuscript, to various assessors who offered suggestions
for improvement, to Jennie Litster, who provided inestimable
research help in Edinburgh, and to Elizabeth Hulse for her final
sensitive editing.
The work of Milton Acorn is reprinted by kind permission of
Mary Hooper. The Wars by Timothy Findley, copyright © 1977
by Timothy Findlay, copyright © 1986 by Pebble Productions, is
reprinted by permission of Penguin Books Canada Limited.
