- Read Susanna Moodie’s introduction to the third edition of Roughing it in the Bush, 1854. I use the Project Gutenburg website which has a ‘command F’ function that allows you to search the entire document by words or phrases. Moodie’s introduction is often read as a warning to would be emigrants as well as an explanation of why her family emigrated from Britain. See if you can find echoes of the stories discussed above: a gift from god, a second Garden of Eden, an empty/wasted land, the noble but vanishing Indian, and the magical map. By echoes I mean reading between the lines or explicitly within Moodie’s introduction. Discussing what you discover, use your examples as evidence to write a blog that explores what you think might have been Moodie’s level of awareness of the stories she carried with her. And accordingly, the stories that she “resurrects’ by her appearance in the Dead Dog Café in Green Grass Running Water.
From the very first sentence, the introduction to “Roughing it in the Bush” is immediately shocking as an example of nineteenth-century European thinking. There’s an old copy of this book, with that lovely faded linen cover and that smell of old paper, sitting on my bookshelf in the room I grew up in. I have a very clear image in my mind of what “Roughing it in the Bush” represents: a great piece of Canadian literature, a testament to the triumphs of my ancestors, an enduring model of upstanding life, the kind that we are supposed to cling to in moral conflicts. None of that is based on the words in that old book, and certainly not in the introduction that I read here. My image is based on the tone of my mom’s voice when she says the title of the book, the stories of my aunt studying it in school fifty years ago, the name written inside the front cover in that elegant script we don’t learn anymore. The shock value of this read is about those things too, because all of these very deep attachments of mine are very closely tied to the concept of this land as belonging to the Europeans who arrived before and after and with my relatives.
Moodie leads with the idea that emigration is more often and more deeply a forced situation for “persons of respectable connections”, for whom emigration is “an act of severe duty”. It is the bankrupt members of the privileged classes who are the victims and the heroes, enduring the misfortune of their situation in England and the wrath of the Canadian wilderness, and exhibiting “that love of independence which springs up spontaneously in the breasts of the high-souled children of a glorious land.”
Moodie speaks of the popularity of Canada as a destination for these adventurers. The soil, water, location, business opportunities are all cited as advertised reasons to move here, and then are all countered by Moodie’s own examples of “toil and hardship.” Margaret Atwood describes a trend of English writers, upon actually experiencing the Canadian nature that they had imagined, feeling fear, betrayal, and meaninglessness (59). Moodie’s introduction seems like a good example of this tendency to distrust nature and depict it as “actively hostile” to people (Atwood, 45). The land is out to harm the settlers, the animate subject that “would blast the fruits of the poor emigrant’s labour, and almost deprive him of bread.”
This is a fascinating study in the motivations of European settlers coming to Canada. Although I’ve explored my family tree, tried to find out who came here when, how, with who, what their middle names were, I’ve honestly never considered ‘why’. Moodie writes of educated Europeans of a certain class who came because they lacked money: “they go forth to make for themselves a new name and to find another country, to forget the past and to live in the future, to exult in the prospect of their children being free and the land of their adoption great.” Whether or not this describes my own ancestors, the question for me is why I have never wondered why my relatives came to Canada. The first answer I can think of is that it seems perfectly natural that they came. There doesn’t need to be any specific reason. This land was here waiting for them, and that’s why they came. It was one of the “waste places of the earth”, in need of being reclaimed and being made “subservient to the wants and happiness of its creatures.” They came to “hew out the the rough paths for the advance of civilization.” (Moodie) The labours of these pioneers in the Backwoods of Canada are accomplishments to celebrate, Moodie tells us, and I understand deeply because my worldview defines work as good in itself, virtuous, sacred. Idle hands are the devil’s best friend. Cleanliness is next to Godliness. These phrases are spiritual in the way that European rituals at points of first contact with Indigenous peoples were spiritual (Lutz, 41).
In this introduction, I see no explicit reference to Indigenous peoples in Canada, but the very clear and forceful and stubbornly embedded foundation for settlers’ image of and behaviour towards Indigenous peoples, then and now. Decolonization is a process of questioning our own stories, in order to make some room for others’ stories. Very few of us settlers have started that process of questioning, or are even aware of it. I don’t see any evidence that Susanna Moodie wondered about her right to be in this land, only a sense of victimization, by the land itself and by the British society she left behind, and an entitlement to work for independence and freedom. Her few paragraphs have shocked me by how foreign they sound a century and a half later, but more importantly have shocked me because of how similar my assumptions are to hers. Neither of us stopped to question ourselves.
Works Cited
Atwood, Margaret. Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 2004. Print.
Davis, Leonard. “The original Porter locomotives and the steamship Algonquin
at North Portage about 1925.” The Huntsville and Lake of Bays Railway Society. Portage Flyer. Web. 18 June 2015. http://www.portageflyer.org/
Lutz, John. “First Contact as a Spiritual Performance: Aboriginal — Non-Aboriginal Encounters on the North American West Coast.” Myth and Memory: Rethinking Stories of Indigenous-European Contact. Ed. Lutz. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2007. 30-45. Print.
Moodie, Susanna. Roughing it in the Bush.. Project Gutenburg, 18 January 2004. Web. 18 June 2015. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/4389/4389-h/4389-h.htm
Hi Kaitie,
I am glad you covered this question, because I had only briefly scanned Susan Moodie`s Book. I liked that you brought up the concept of decolonization as it is definitely something that we all needed to be reminded of. I was unsure of what decolonizing entailed so I looked up online to see what others had said. An interesting article I found emphasized that “it requires a profound re-centering on Indigenous world views“. It also discusses the importance of solidarity, in which communication must be established consistently and not only during blockades or rallies. I feel that solidarity is something we rarely see. Sadly, it is more common that we see cultural appropriation through the wearing of headpieces, and other culturally significant items. It seems to signify a disinterest in the past and the unquestioning feeling of belonging to this land. Very similar to what you described about Susan Moodie`s feelings towards living in Canada as an emigrant.
Here is the article I mentioned: https://briarpatchmagazine.com/articles/view/decolonizing-together
-Sarah
Hi Sarah!
Thanks for this article on decolonization. I think the most important thing to understand is that decolonization is a future goal, a process that very few people have only just started, and not a past accomplishment.
Both of your descriptors – a disinterest and an unquestioning feeling – are at the heart of the issues we’re talking about in this whole class, I think. Maybe that’s what stereotypes are about, and racism, and everything that goes with it. People find out one thing, and think that’s all they need to know. Why don’t we want to know more about other people? A healthy dose of curiosity can go a long way. And of course, it’s curiosity about other people and about our own people, our own beliefs and traditions and behaviour.
Thanks for your great discussion!
Kaitie
🙂
Hi Katie,
Glad to see that you weighed in on this with the requisite legwork – I found a new appreciation for Susanna Moodie in a previous CanLit class, and there really is so much there, even just between how she is lauded as a founder of Canadian Literature and what an unreliable and ungrateful narrator she is. I say that with total affection for her and the character that she has become with Canada’s imagination of itself.
If I recall (based on excerpts that I read in that other class) life here was harder than she anticipated, and I think in the end her writing (in contrast to her sister Catherine Parr Traill) is really a record of a kind of defeat. I wonder about the various ways this might contribute to the Canadian literary identity as a foundational kind of text? Like, miserable, but we all ignore that part and celebrate it anyway?
Heidi
Hi Heidi,
Thanks for this background on Susanna Moodie. She’s definitely a foundational character in “Canada’s imagination of itself”!
I think that maybe the misery and failure she recounts isn’t something we just ignore and celebrate the pioneer spirit anyway. I think we actually celebrate the misery, the hardship, the struggles. A lot of our spirituality encourages this. For example, my mostly Scotch Presbyterian roots glorify work as a virtue in itself, and tell us that appearing too successful or lucky or comfortable is sinful.
I actually came across this bit from Alice Munro’s “The Moons of Jupiter”, in the story “Connection” last night by chance. The narrator explains that Scottish or Irish immigrants to Canada were happy to say that their ancestors were “poor landless people. But anyone whose ancestors came from England will have some story” about how their family lost money or title or eloped with a servant. “There may be some amount of truth in this; conditions in Scotland and Ireland were such as to force wholesale emigration, while Englishmen may have chosen to leave home for more colorful, personal reasons.” (Munro, 7). I’m sure Alice Munro is very familiar with Susanna Moodie, and this sounds like a direct explanation of Susanna Moodie’s introduction!
Thanks Heidi!
Kaitie
Munro, Alice. “Connection.” The Moons of Jupiter. Markham: Penguin Books, 1986. Print.
🙂
This is a really thought-provoking post, Kaitie. Your point about never questioning why your family came over all those years ago is something that so may of us can relate to, I think. Personally, my dad’s side has been in the country for who-knows-how-long (someone does, but not I), whereas my maternal grandfather and grandmother both came over from China when they were young teenagers. It’s fascinating when I consider both of these sides, knowing that in the end, everyone came over for, as you’ve mentioned “the soil, water, location, business opportunities” that Canada is known for.
It’s also really interesting that you bring up decolonization (the concept of which I’m gathering from Sarah’s comment), and the fact that it’s a future goal, not something that’s been accomplished in the past. You’ve mentioned that it’s a process of questioning our own stories—maybe deconstructing and examining our origins? I wonder if you believe that will lead to a whole new “Canadian” identity? I feel like at this time, the country is considered a chunky vegetable soup, compared to the United State’s “melting pot”, where distinct cultures exist in Canada, whereas residents of the U.S. are seen as having an overall patriotic, American identity. It’s fascinating to consider the prospect of a new identity for a country, when it’s truly an amalgamation (for better or for worse) of the original inhabitants and all of the immigrants.
Hi Whitney,
Thanks for your thoughts! It’s really interesting that the two sides of your family have such different immigration stories, but you can still see the connection in why they “came over”.
Interesting questions on decolonization and its impact on Canadian identity. I want to say that it’s more important for us to focus on the present instead of the past – I mean, it could be easier for us to look at the past and forget that all of the destruction to Aboriginal peoples and their land is now, not back then – but really, we can’t separate history from our national identity now. Our concept of Canadian identity is all wrapped up in our concept of Canadian history, which certainly leaves a lot out! Last semester I took a course with some historians and historiographers, and learned a lot from them about how very deep history goes, in defining our thinking. That’s what this course is about too, I think – our stories. To embark on a process of decolonization, we have to deconstruct and examine, as you say, our personal stories, our family stories, and our national histories. It’s hard work!
Kaitie
🙂