ABSTRACT
Yet there is much to be said for approaching the question of Canada’s identity from the outside.
(Jill Conway 1974: 71)
‘If anything oers the possibility for community and commonality in this era of multiplicity and dierence,’ Cynthia Chambers (1999: 147) suggests, ‘it is the land that we share.’ ‘Deeply ingrained in Canada’s national psyche,’ (White 2007: 11) ‘the land,’ as Chambers is keenly aware, is complicated by Canadian history, specically the nation’s status as a colony displacing indigenous peoples: the First Nations, Métis, and Inuit. Displacement characterizes the genesis of all three nations comprising North America.1 Indeed, one of the ‘worst’ consequences of European colonization, Conway (1974: 72) judges, is psychic. As Fanon (1967) knew, colonial cultures are not only political and historical facts, they are also psychic facts, among them (Conway underlines) the consequences of severance from the originary culture. Such separation constitutes, she suggests, a psychic loss that deprives colonial (and colonized) peoples not only of ‘creativity on their own terms’ but also of identity itself, about which they are le© ‘confused’ and ‘uncertain’ (Conway 1974: 72). John Ralston Saul (2005: 32) believes Canada remains ‘emotionally and existentially hampered by its colonial insecurity’.
