As Northrop Frye recognized long ago, the essential Canadian conundrum is not of identity but of place. We have been inculcated into a particular national question — who are we? — but our prevailing concern is actually more subtle and profound. We inhabit a landscape of unparalleled diversities and a cultural milieu of unrivaled alchemy; we synthesize nationalities and geographies; we order our tandoori with a side of sashimi, and wash it down with okanagan wine. Frye discerned the essential query hidden in the turbulent beauty of this land and its people: Where is here? – Ross Laird
“The fundamental job of the imagination in ordinary life, then, is to produce, out of the society we have to live in, a vision of the society we want to live in.”
– Frye, The Educated Imagination
– Frye, The Educated Imagination