Canadian Gothic & Sub-Styles

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by SignalHillHiker

Wow. That's going to stick with me, oddly positively.

*****

I also loved the way he described that. Nice evocation there, hipster duck. Bravo!

[Xelebes]

Originally Posted by jeremy_haak

I grew up in the epicentre of Southern Ontario Gothic: Clinton, Alice Munro's home and the heart of Huron County. Do I win a prize?

More seriously, I don't necessarily identify with it all that much as I grew up amongst Dutch expatriates and I don't really feel her stories ring as true for the experiences within that community.

Clinton, Ontario. Hm, I have an Irish connection to that town, I believe. I know it's from my mother's side and if it's my mother's side, it is the Irish part in me. From Clinton, Ontario to Delia, Alberta. There's a story there, a dark one. Almost a handmaid's tale of a sort. Never really realised that. My grandmother, as she fades away into the night, still cries.

[rousseau]

Originally Posted by jeremy_haak

I grew up in the epicentre of Southern Ontario Gothic: Clinton, Alice Munro's home and the heart of Huron County. Do I win a prize?

More seriously, I don't necessarily identify with it all that much as I grew up amongst Dutch expatriates and I don't really feel her stories ring as true for the experiences within that community.

If there is one, the epicentre would actually be Wingham, where she grew up. Wingham was the inspiration for quite a few stories, including Lives of Girls and Women.

But unless you're getting close to seventy, it's understandable that Alice Munro's stories don't resonate with your own lived experience, as the ones about Huron County mostly take place from the 1930s through to the 1950s. Many people have praised her in print for how well she captures that time and place, and I've even met people in person who have said the same thing.

Such as one of my other neighbours, a former schoolteacher in her seventies who did an MA in the 1970s and chose Alice Munro as the subject of her thesis because "she hadn't been done yet."

In certain ways I'm quite steeped in Alice Munro around here, but it's not like Super Bowl Sunday or anything. You have to be attuned to it to see it. You can miss it if you're not looking for it.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by rousseau

I'm certain ways I'm quite steeped in Alice Munro around here, but it's not like Super Bowl Sunday or anything. You have to be attuned to it to see it. You can miss it if you're not looking for it.

For some Canadians, nothing is equivalent to Super Bowl Sunday! And we all have to pay attention!

[Xelebes]

So with that leg run out, how about the extension of CanGoth: the realm of Weird Canada. Again, a corollary to Weird America in a sort but this time bringing the fantastic and surreal here.

[kwoldtimer]

I watched a Maine version of Southern Ontario Gothic on my flight home last night. A four-part HBO mini-series entitled "Olive Kitteridge". Repression, damaged psyches, thwarted affairs, depression and suicides - it was brilliant! It felt like home!

[wg_flamip]

Originally Posted by hipster duck

I think being aware of existing on that periphery is a very Canadian concern. But I think it reaches a boiling point in Southern Ontario, because those two worlds are large enough to be self-sustaining. On one hand, you are closer to the magnetic pull of Toronto (which, itself, suffers from the same self doubts and aspiration to be something bigger and more worldly, even if it's already doing pretty well for itself), and the rest of the world, but at the same time, you can live a hermetically-sealed country life in the countless farming villages and market towns that pop up every dozen kilometers or so along the concession roads. Southern Ontario is the only area of the country (maybe Quebec's Beauce?) that is large and populous enough to sustain a full life within a rural bubble.

Although re: Toronto and the Southern Ontario Gothic, I believe it was Toronto's Timothy Findley who originally came up with the term to refer to his own writing. Of course, his Toronto was radically different from ours today - provincial, repressed and insular (cue the laughter from some in the Montreal set, perhaps).

I see the Southern Ontario Gothic as a literary movement that comes out of a reaction to the fanciful stories Ontario had previously told itself in the years preceding the Great Depression. These were stories told mostly (read: entirely) by wealthier white guys about this pastoral paradise - a bountiful land filled with "freethinking" Protestants, all loyal subjects of the Crown, living simple lives filled with, at once, self-evident virtue and the charming indiscretions of simple rustic existence. No Catholics, no French, no non-whites (or even non-British folk), and no uppity women unhappy with their lot. I'm really thinking here of Stephen Leacock, who - like his counterparts in Britain busy creating "Merry/Little/Deep England" - was quite willing to overlook the very real plight of the poor and marginalized in some sort of exercise in anti-modern nostalgia.

Those whose formative years carried them through the Depression and the War could not, I think, square this notion of a happy, civilized society with their experiences of scarcity (and all of the nastiness that comes with it). Further, the post-war boom allowed for the erstwhile poor to attain a level of economic security that enabled them to pursue the arts as a career option. Those happy rustics started speaking for themselves - not of an idyllic society, but of one fraught with harsh realities: sectarian tension, the oppression of women, petty hypocrisies - a society that viewed ambition with suspicion and where success was met with scorn and resentment. All boiling away beneath a suffocating veneer of near-Puritan propriety.

[kwoldtimer]

I think people forget that Southern Ontario Gothic is a form of Romanticism (at least that is how I understand it). Wasn't there a time in the early 19th century when it was considered the height of intellectual fashion to feel only sadness? The deep (i.e. true) emotions that are repressed seem to marry particularly well with the old Anglo culture of this part of Canada. Not for us the facile, on-your-sleeve emoting of those silly Catholic Latins! Today it seems somehow far away and ever-present at the same time. Quite wonderful really, when you think about it.

[Xelebes]

The 19th century was a great period for tragedies. Tragedies have largely been replaced by threnodies, largely as an outcome of the World Wars and the rising awareness of genocides.

[hipster duck]

Originally Posted by wg_flamip

I see the Southern Ontario Gothic as a literary movement that comes out of a reaction to the fanciful stories Ontario had previously told itself in the years preceding the Great Depression. These were stories told mostly (read: entirely) by wealthier white guys about this pastoral paradise - a bountiful land filled with "freethinking" Protestants, all loyal subjects of the Crown, living simple lives filled with, at once, self-evident virtue and the charming indiscretions of simple rustic existence. No Catholics, no French, no non-whites (or even non-British folk), and no uppity women unhappy with their lot. I'm really thinking here of Stephen Leacock, who - like his counterparts in Britain busy creating "Merry/Little/Deep England" - was quite willing to overlook the very real plight of the poor and marginalized in some sort of exercise in anti-modern nostalgia.

Those whose formative years carried them through the Depression and the War could not, I think, square this notion of a happy, civilized society with their experiences of scarcity (and all of the nastiness that comes with it). Further, the post-war boom allowed for the erstwhile poor to attain a level of economic security that enabled them to pursue the arts as a career option. Those happy rustics started speaking for themselves - not of an idyllic society, but of one fraught with harsh realities: sectarian tension, the oppression of women, petty hypocrisies - a society that viewed ambition with suspicion and where success was met with scorn and resentment. All boiling away beneath a suffocating veneer of near-Puritan propriety.

Fascinating theory, wg_flamip.

Admittedly, I don't know very much about Stephen Leacock's writings but the short stories I read, and the few pages of Sunshine Sketches I flipped through before putting it back on the shelf and buying something else, seemed to accord with what you say.

And, yes, the massive investments in universities in the postwar era would be the prelude to the great sea change in mentality and cultural appreciation, not just in Canada but across the Western world in the mid to late 1960s. The rapid rate at which universities had to expand meant that not only was a liberal arts education no longer exclusive to the upper class, but that the instructors, themselves, often had to be hired from a pool of non-elites.

[MonkeyRonin]

Did Toronto ever figure prominently in the works of Southern Ontario Gothic writers? I have no idea, but can't imagine it did - it just wouldn't have worked as well as the prim, pastoral, gossipy towns of the southwest, despite the geographic proximity and a similar Puritan streak running through it.

This is partly a function of being a city. The smoke belching factories, slums, rich industrialists, corruption, sleaze, and crime are too obvious to hide behind a veneer of propriety, try as some might. But it's also perhaps a function of demographics - Toronto has always been too Catholic to let that Presbyterianness be too overpowering. And that also meant that the sort of sectarianism that WG Flamip was alluding to would tend to erupt in violence rather than just stir in quiet resentment.

In any event, those Torontonians of the 19th and early 20th century sure built one Gothic looking city...



TORONTO 2007- PRINCE ARTHUR by ettml, on Flickr








168/365 by Yewbert The Omnipotent, on Flickr


https://www.flickr.com/photos/zenslens/


University of Toronto Art Centre by Roaming the World, on Flickr


UofT by ZensLens, on Flickr


Provincial Lunatic Asylum Wall by philipjohnson, on Flickr


https://www.flickr.com/groups/blogto...79759096/?rb=1


https://www.flickr.com/photos/armstrongone/14935545264/


Knox College by NHond, on Flickr


Center of the Spadina circle by missbeegail, on Flickr


IMG_3622(3) by JStokez, on Flickr


If nothing else it seems appropriate given the geographical context...


HDR Foggy riverside by Lone Primate, on Flickr



There still seems to be something of a pensive undertone to the city though, even in today's not-so-Puritan Toronto. Perhaps it's something to do with the loneliness that comes from being in a transient place, perhaps it's the gloomy weather, or maybe it's just part of our civic character to be a bunch of grumpy little shits (some residual Britishness there). Perhaps it also has something to do with closure of mental health services in the 90s...I'm too young to compare to what it was like before, but all's I know is I've never been anywhere that has quite so much visible mental illness as does Toronto.

Anyway, here's some of that ominous, brooding Toronto sensibility expressed in a variety of musical forms (even if the sounds themselves mostly aren't indigenous to Toronto). Actually, this is something that we across Canada seem to "punch above our weight" in.


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[MonkeyRonin]

How about a case to be made for the existence of a Northern Gothic aesthetic? It would be one that is more rooted in nature however, being a place where the all of the Earth's terrible splendor is on display. There's the rugged, ancient terrain & unforgiving climate; the abyssal sense of emptiness & isolation; and where most humans do reside it's in the form of decrepit towns & reserves, or work camps for resource exploitation.

It's a vague idea but one that I think was being explored as far back as by the Group of Seven, who's work really captured that magnificent, terrifying, lonely wilderness.


http://www.picturethisgallery.com/Ar...7_artists.html


Or in music:

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[Xelebes]

One of the most interesting things about Toronto goth rock is how in its early days it was so clean, unlike what was going on in Britain, the US and Vancouver. Maria Del Mar in her 1988 recording on National Velvet's debut album sounds like she could be replaced by mid-90s Alanis Morisette. The Birthday Massacre's first few albums are impeccably clean. As is the case with Austra's first few albums. It seems now that once Nivek Ogre started collaborating with the Toronto bands have they started horsing up their sound.

[Xelebes]

Just a compariosn:

1980s Toronto Goth

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1980s Vancouver Goth

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[wg_flamip]

Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin

Did Toronto ever figure prominently in the works of Southern Ontario Gothic writers? I have no idea, but can't imagine it did - it just wouldn't have worked as well as the prim, pastoral, gossipy towns of the southwest, despite the geographic proximity and a similar Puritan streak running through it.

This is partly a function of being a city. The smoke belching factories, slums, rich industrialists, corruption, sleaze, and crime are too obvious to hide behind a veneer of propriety, try as some might. But it's also perhaps a function of demographics - Toronto has always been too Catholic to let that Presbyterianness be too overpowering. And that also meant that the sort of sectarianism that WG Flamip was alluding to would tend to erupt in violence rather than just stir in quiet resentment.

Findley and Atwood, among others, have set some of their Southern Ontario Gothics in Toronto. Atwood's The Blind Assassin is probably the most internationally recognized singular work from that tradition, with much of its action taking place here in Toronto. Her poem "A Bus Along St. Clair: December" from The Journals of Susanna Moodie really captures the urban Southern Ontario Gothic thing: read it here on page 115.

(As an aside, Susanna Moodie herself is sort of the great-grandmother of the Southern Ontario Gothic - from her Roughing it in the Bush (published in 1852), for example: '"Ghosts! There are no ghosts in Canada!" said Mr. D——. "The country is too new for ghosts. No Canadian is afear'd of ghosts. It is only in old countries, like your'n, that are full of sin and wickedness, that people believe in such nonsense" [...] The unpeopled wastes of Canada must present the same aspect to the new settler that the world did to our first parents after their expulsion from the Garden of Eden; all the sin which could defile the spot, or haunt it with the association of departed evil, is concentrated in their own persons. Bad spirits cannot be supposed to linger near a place where crime has never been committed. The belief in ghosts, so prevalent in old countries, must first have had its foundation in the consciousness of guilt.')

I think it's no surprise really that the Toronto authors who write SOGs are mostly from (or write mostly about) that north of Bloor bastion of WASPish propriety - Rosedale, Forest Hill, Leaside, &c. - all sufficiently suffocating at the time and for the purpose, I suppose. I'd imagine the Southern Ontario Gothic (in the strictest sense) wouldn't really work in the Ward or Kensington, say.

[isaidso]

Originally Posted by hipster duck

After I read Who do you think you are? as a young, twenty-something, I happened to visit a friend of mine who lived in Boston amongst other young Ivy League-educated professionals, and all I could think of was "these people are going to run the world one day, and I will not be among them." I spent the rest of the weekend walking around the streets of Boston as if I had learned that I was going bald.

I think being aware of existing on that periphery is a very Canadian concern.

We're all a product of where we're from. I suppose I never acquired that feeling of periphery (or understood it) even though I've lived most of my life in Canada. I was born in London UK in an upper middle class family (in the old world European context rather than Canadian: pedigree rather than financial status). You grow up with no cultural self doubt and never feel like you're on the outside looking in no matter what your reality is.

[kwoldtimer]

Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin

How about a case to be made for the existence of a Northern Gothic aesthetic? It would be one that is more rooted in nature however, being a place where the all of the Earth's terrible splendor is on display. There's the rugged, ancient terrain & unforgiving climate; the abyssal sense of emptiness & isolation; and where most humans do reside it's in the form of decrepit towns & reserves, or work camps for resource exploitation.

It's a vague idea but one that I think was being explored as far back as by the Group of Seven, who's work really captured that magnificent, terrifying, lonely wilderness.


http://www.picturethisgallery.com/Ar...7_artists.html


....

I wonder if the work of late artist Alex Colville could be considered "Canadian Gothic"? On the one hand, his style was realism, on the other hand, some of the subject matter seems to fit the bill, as I imagine it:

[rousseau]

A brave music critic from Toronto attempts to explain to Americans what is in some ways akin to southern Ontario gothic about Drake, and a couple of predictable things happen.

First, Americans are so insular that they really, really don't care. The story has very little feedback, and will drop off the front page of Slate without any ado. You'd think that a musical superstar in country A coming from country B would inspire at least a modicum of curiosity in country A about why that is so, and that would be the case in just about every single other country on the globe, save maybe for pan-Arab and pan-Latin American musical and media personalities, but not in this case.

Second, the writer conflates Toronto and Canada in a way that I assume people outside of southern Ontario would find perplexing:

But Drake is not only the first Torontonian to summit the rap game, he’s the first from our whole northern nation. So the Toronto-centrism of Drake’s output obscures a larger issue: What is Canadian about Drake, and how does that affect how listeners feel about him?

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/m..._it_s_too.html

Because one of the comments reads thusly:

Blech. First of all, Toronto writers should stop writing as if they ever leave the 416 area code. Going to Montreal for Jazzfest every second year and to your mother-in-law's cottage once a summer does not count. Out west you'd see that ethnic divisions and racism are alive and well, they're just all one way: down on the FN.Second of all, Canadians are not more media-savvy or obsessed with weird sex. We just have some federal funding for "serious artists" and media thinkers and the CBC and they like the weird sex thing and media-pontification (not that I have anything against weird sex). The intelligentsia get more airtime because there is less of a Canadian popular culture. We have the States tfor that.

You missed the real truth of Drake's Canadian-ness. He's clinically depressed. It never occurred to me, after a youth of listening to the Tragically Hip and Blue Rodeo that all of our artists are affected by SAD, but lately I was listening, yet again, to the Weakerthans, and I realized that we have a problem. Seen a pic of Drake recently? Buddy's not that cheerful, is he?

All very interesting. Unless, of course, you're not Canadian.

(I know nothing about Drake and have never knowingly heard his music, so can't really comment).

[esquire]

^ That article would have been a bit much for even The Globe and Mail, let alone Slate. I'm surprised they ran it.

[kwoldtimer]

I'm surprised you see that quote as conflating Toronto and Canadian identify - I would interpret it as doing the very opposite, taking into account that Torontonians are still Canadians (whether they like it or not!).

In the context of this thread, I enjoyed the section on "weird Canadian sex". Not very original but always a fun perspective. The comment about Drake being clinically depressed is quite perceptive. That person really "gets it".