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INTRODUCTION: SETTING THE SEEN
In recent years, the fundamentalist view of collective identity has been challenged by those arguing the "invention of tradition" (Hobsbawm and Ranger, 1983) and the construction of an "imagined community" (Anderson, 1991).(1) From this perspective, national identities are constantly being reconstituted according to a presentist agenda. Rather than being primordial entities, they are generated by "symbolic processes that emerge and dissolve in particular contexts of action" (Handler, 1994:30). It follows from this that we need to understand the ways in which nationalizing-states are continually re-imagining themselves and asking ourselves if the result is appropriate for a contemporary society in its local and global contexts.(2)
The central theme of this paper, therefore, is the invention of Canada through strategies that have attempted to integrate a people separated by geography, history, ethnicity, class, and gender by constructing a national identity that is, among other things, self-consciously aware of place. Mackenzie King's cynical evaluation has come to be diagnostic of the national dilemma: too much geography and too little history; too much space and too little time.(3) When nineteenth and twentieth century migrations and ideological shifts are added to the problems of two founding nations and an expansive neighbour, the picture becomes even more complicated. Canadian nation-building has been an ongoing encounter with colonial, regional, fractional, and continental challenges to national unity. Accordingly, it has turned to several meta-narratives: the spirit of the land; the cult of the hero; the transformation of wilderness into home and commodity; an ethic of progress; the nurturing of democracy and social justice (Wright, 1993; Pal, 1993; Francis, 1997; Mackey, 1999).
In particular, I want to look at the geography of identity. Peoples' identification with distinctive places is essential for the cultivation of an awareness -- an a-whereness -- of national identity. That is, nationalizing-states occupy imagined terrains that serve as mnemonic devices. Commonly held sets of symbolic meanings about places have often been developed to reinforce peoples' identification with specific social values. Carefully selected because of their emotive power, they are empowered by the careful cultivation of associated mythologies. In this way, the familiar material world becomes loaded with symbolic sites, dates, and events -- as well as silences -- that provide social continuity, contribute to the collective...