Publishing and distribution are essential and this is how it was for English Canadian writing at that time. But there is another factor that is crucial to growing a national literature: children need to grow up reading about the world through the eyes of their own culture.”
21 October 2020
Dr. Evelyn Ellerman
Congratulations on this new venture!
It’s a funny thing about national literatures. It seems as though they find their own time to blossom. Like Papua Niuguineans, I live in a former colony, Canada. Different circumstances, but many of the same challenges. We achieved our political independence in 1867, but it wasn’t until almost a century later, 1967, that we awoke as a culture.
There are many reasons for this, but the influx of many European cultures through immigration, added to over 60 pre-existing indigenous cultures, meant that it took us a long time to figure out what the collective term “Canadian” meant. It happened with a bang in the 1960s, centring on a year-long celebration of our first century as a political entity.
I was in high school at the time and remember the very day in 1963 that I was able to walk…
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