Here’s a picture of me the way you can usually find me – with my nose behind a book!
Hello, readers! Welcome to my blog for the course ENGL 372. My name is Victoria and I am delighted to be your host for this website! Just to give you a little bit of context about myself, I am a fourth year English literature major, with a minor in philosophy. This is my last semester at UBC!
This course concerns itself with Canadian Literature in the broadest sense: we will not simply relate stories of colonial settlers, or adhere to the fanciful version of Canada that denies and/or excuses its colonial past. Instead, we will seek to unearth the stories of both settlers and Indigenous groups alike, with the aim of considering why the stories that survive are the ones that do, and why those that have fallen to the wayside have been so neglected. The Canadian œuvre of literature has been long dominated by white settler voices, and it is high time to decolonize our canon. This course will strive to do that.
As someone who has been a settler on Canadian land for my entire life, I once found myself clinging to the vision of Canada as a multicultural melting pot, and prided us on being an almost utopian society. It has especially tempting in recent years, for Canadian and American popular culture alike, to establish the superiority of Canada over our counterparts to the south. However, I have been forced to question this story of Canada as my own research, as well as university classes I have taken here at UBC, have challenged my misplaced idealism. Canada is not perfect; we are, in fact, far from it. The simple fact that residential schools remained open until 1996 – only three years before I was born – is enough to put this narrative in extreme jeopardy, if not destroy it altogether. Thus, I expect this course to show Canada in all of its ugly glory; I hope that it will challenge my own beliefs and allow me to become more knowledgeable about the ways that these fanciful narratives permeate our lives, especially in regards to Indigeneity.
Finally, I would be remiss in failing to acknowledge that I am currently writing this blog on the unceded territories of the səl̓ilwətaɁɬ təməxʷ (Tsleil-Waututh), Skwxwú7mesh-ulh Temíx̱w (Squamish), S’ólh Téméxw (Stó:lō), and xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam) Nations.
I look forward to getting to know you, my fellow classmates, this semester!
Works Cited:
Kliff, Sarah. “No Doubt Aboot It: Canada Is Better than America in at Least 7 ways.” 01 July 2014. Web. 16 Jan. 2021.
“A Timeline of Residential Schools, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission | CBC News.” CBCnews. CBC/Radio Canada, 25 Mar. 2014. Web.