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New Environments

In the early days of central-Canadian literature, the environment was often seen as a threatening "Other", leading to what Northop Frye described as the "garrison mentality"--the desire to seek protective cover from external peril. More recent writers have switched these positions, seeing humanity as the threat, and nature as the victim.

In novels by Basil Jackson and Lloyd Abbey, we arrive at a future that may not be too far ahead--when oil spills and unrestricted exploitation of the environment lead to disaster.

The Neptune Factor (1973), Deadly Harvest (1980) and David Cronenberg's early film Crimes of the Future are cinematic examples of environmental disasters propagated by human irresponsibility.

Bibliography

Abbey, Lloyd

The Last Whales

Heine, William C.

The Last Canadian

Kilian, Crawford

Icequake

The Last Whales

Abbey, Lloyd
Toronto: Random House, 1989.

This account of the meeting and mating of whales from two different hemispheres points out how they and their descendants' futures are endangered by a polluted environment.

The Last Canadian

Heine, William C.
Markham, Ont.: Simon & Shuster, 1974.

One of the few survivors of a North American plague escapes with his family to a remote northern Quebec fishing camp and then becomes part of a dramatic confrontation between rival powers.

Icequake

Kilian, Crawford
Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 1979.

Men and women battle the elements in the Antarctic in what could be the beginning of a new Ice Age.

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