Over the years, through a steadily deepening analysis of the national scene, Hugh MacLennan has been exploring the meaning of Canadianism; each of his novels, in some manner, has been a variation on this theme. His long study of all aspects of the Canadian character has peculiarly fitted him for the writing of The Watch that Ends the Night in which he traces Canada's coming-of-age. More important, in this novel he has gone back to examine what he feels are the character-shaping protoforms of the Canadian identity as exemplified by the fur trader. In one magnificent chapter of The Watch that Ends the Night in which the boy Jerome escapes down the wilderness river in his canoe, Hugh MacLennan is giving us his version not only of the Canadian character, but of the Canadian myth.
The most rewarding, and probably the shortest, route into MacLennan's latest novels is through his essay "The People Behind this Peculiar Nation." In this brief study MacLennan wrote that the fur trade has been as basic to the Canadian character as the sea has been to England's; that nations as well as children tend to forget the events of early years; that these events sink into and become part of the national subconscious. The true makers of Canada, he maintains, were not the Victorians whose ghastly statues surround the Parliament Buildings in Ottawa, but the voyageurs…. If we accept true myth as originating in either the historical or the religious background of a people and belonging to their collective subconscious, then it becomes clear that Hugh MacLennan is leading us, in this essay, toward his definition of the Canadian myth. In the significant section dealing with Jerome's childhood in The Watch that Ends the Night …, MacLennan has consciously embodied in narrative form all the mythic elements of our early history that he had outlined in his essay.
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