Our Own Canada Day Holiday

In further honour of nation's day, and in light of the plain fact that a Canadian Literature course does not get a celebratory rest day by statute, we will have our own Canada Day holiday on Thursday July 2nd. For those of us who are strongly academically focused, it is an opportunity to refine the mid-term essay to the fine gem-like hardness of an A+ ...

Revised Mid-Term Due Date

In honour of our nation's day -- Canada Day, July 1st -- the mid-term deadline is now extended until Tuesday July 7th in lecture. Syllabus is updated accordingly.

Happy day.....

Canadian ... Molson

The three Molson brothers (Geoffrey, Andrew and Justin) -- who have just bought Canadians (i.e. les Canadiens) -- are widely-liked members of Canadian society.

One of their representatives -- Mr. Roy Speers, father of our classfellow Holly -- very generously donated well-chilled cans of Molson Canadian, accompanied by sharp-looking Molson beer glasses, to our class. We toast this generosity, and the Canadian institution.

(Fries with gravy in the background...)

Orwell on British Schoolboy Fiction

To more fully understand the literary genre in which Mordecai Richler opens The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, read George Orwell's still-resonant essay "Boys' Weeklies."

The aspects -- a gang of boys with a 'title' and a leader; an antagonistic and idiosyncratic master; japes in and out of school, etc -- are all there. We'll look in lecture at explanations for Richler's choice.

(Orwell, of course, is to be read universally for its own justification.)