Monthly Archives: July 2014

I’m writing this blog on a mountain. The Lazy Z Resort proudly calls itself “a mountain hideaway.” It certainly is secluded, judging by the winding, motion-sickness inducing road and the spotty wifi that fulfills my barest online needs. Not that I’m complaining. The stars here are gorgeous.

And I do mean the fiery balls of gas in space, not the apparently well-known folk who have stayed here before. The photo wall does make a decent gallery of sexy white women, cowboy hats, and fringed leather jackets.

Who are you people?

I have to say, the further I am from major cities, the less I feel I belong in North America. Isn’t that funny? Moving through a predominantly white population is jarring, considering I spent most of my life surrounded by the Asian diaspora of the Lower Mainland. It’s not that I experience unpleasant encounters here in places such as Twain Harte or Sonora—far from it—but the sensation that I’ve crossed into “Otherness” does tend to creep under my skin from time to time.

I suppose with that, I’ll dive right into my assigned pages (page 169-181) for Thomas King’s Green Grass, Running Water. (But first, I’d like to apologize for the lack of proper GGRW in-text citation because I’m currently working off an ebook that has no page numbers. Curse you, Amazon.)

There is so much to talk about even in these few pages; it’s a little overwhelming. Continue reading →

American Progress by John Gast

Reading through Susanna Moodie’s introduction, I had the sense the underlying narrative in her words reflects a combination of two different Christian stories: the Garden of Eden (and subsequent expulsion) and the journey of the Israelites from Egypt to Canaan. (I apologize for how rooted in Christian narratives this reading is, when I’m supposed to be extracting myself from that framework, but the draw was too strong and I am so weak.)

Journey Through the Wilderness
(A Gift from God / The Magical Map)

Biblically, the Israelites are referred to as God’s chosen people, much like the “high-souled children of a glorious land” that Moodie separates from ordinary emigrants because of their “higher motive.” Like the Israelites, these people “go forth to make for themselves a new name and to find another country…to exult in the prospect of their children being free and the land of their adoption great” (Moodie).

Canada, “lauded beyond all praise” for its “salubrious climate, its fertile soil, commercial advantages, great water privileges, its proximity to the mother country, and last, not least, its almost total from taxation” (Moodie) sounds like the Promised Land God offers the Israelites—the fertile Canaan (which, hey, coincidentally sounds similar to Canada).

Then Moodie writes this passage:

“It is not by such instruments as those I have just mentioned, that Providence works when it would reclaim the waste places of the earth, and make them subservient to the wants and happiness of its creatures. The Great Father of the souls and bodies of men knows the arm which wholesome labour from infancy has made strong, the nerves which have become iron by patient endurance, by exposure to weather, coarse fare, and rude shelter; and He chooses such, to send forth into the forest to hew out the rough paths for the advance of civilization. These men become wealthy and prosperous, and form the bones and sinews of a great and rising country. Their labour is wealth, not exhaustion; its produce independence and content, not home-sickness and despair.” Continue reading →