The Elegant Canadians

Revised Auflage
ISBN: 978-0-19-900852-0
Verlag: Hurst & Co.

Buch, Englisch, 192 Seiten, Format (B × H): 165 mm x 244 mm, Gewicht: 259 g

Reihe: Wynford Books

Opening with the Queen Victoria's arrival in Charlottetown harbor, visitors from the Old World emerge with erroneous expectations: they are constantly surprised that the New World is a place of energy, creativity, and imagination, reflected in exuberant architecture, dress, and culture. Elegance flourishes and society blossoms in gala events where long after midnight "the crinolines swayed, multicoloured and seemingly endowed with independent life of their own." In this lively mix of fact and
fiction, Creighton is fascinated by the stuff of culture, here depicted as a distinctive weave of style, sophistication, and individuality with a unique Canadian character. Her fascination is also with cultural difference. In Canada there is undoubtedly unqualified elegance, but it is an edgier,
harder-earned elegance than that of the pompous, baggage-bound Old World.

Published in 1967, exactly one hundred years after Confederation, Creighton's book shows a Canada in the best of all possible worlds. Gone is pioneer poverty and environmental hardship, replaced now by thriving sophistication. At the same time, this is a world that still retains some respect for social hierarchy, decent manners, and old-fashioned inherited wisdom-the unspoken corollary here is that the Canada of 1967 has grown sloppy, noisy, and vulgar. Lovingly researched and assembled with
sixty images, this depiction of Canada in the 1860s reveals much about our own history and myth-making.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Creighton, Luella

Wright, Don

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Amerikanische Geschichte

Über Autor(innen)

Luella Creighton (1901-1996) was born in Stouffville, Ontario. She studied at the University of Toronto under E.J. Pratt and the Sorbonne, and later married esteemed Canadian historian and writer Donald Creighton, with whom she had two children. A writer of fiction, non-fiction, and children's stories, she is best-known for her novel High Bright Buggy Wheels (1951, reissued in 2013), which depicts Mennonite life in rural Ontario. The Wynford edition of
Elegant Canadians is introduced by Cynthia Flood, Luella Creighton's daughter.