Writing

I wrote a little poem called The Canon during my university days. A Canon typically defines the acceptable, standard set of literature for a specific genre. English Literature in academia has an accepted list of stories, poems and plays which an English Lit student must read to understand Western culture and civilization. As required by my professors, I used my dog-eared Norton Anthology of English Literature to analyze Shakespeare, Milton, Woodsworth, Shelly, Faulkner, and a hundred other famous writers in the Anglo-Saxon world. ...

I’ve been told that Canadians are excellent writers. If there ever was an overstatement this certainly is one of them. Yet Canada has produced some world renowned authors. Think Margaret Atwood, Nobel prize winning Alice Munroe, Lucy Maud Montgomery, Mordecai Richler, Yann Martel, Leonard Cohen, Northrop Frye and Malcolm Gladwell, to name a few. So, what is it about Canada that produces good writers? Could it be something about Canada’s long winters? Yet, lots of Canadians spend cold winter days - and nights - doing anything but writing. They are outdoors enjoying the frigid weather or skating on an ice rink shooting hockey pucks into frozen nets. They aren’t curled up in an armchair or sitting at a desk writing the next great novel. So we can’t entirely blame the weather. ...