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Abstract

This essay examines the interstices between geography and history in English Canadian poetry by analyzing the production of space through poetic imagery. It introduces two terms, "garrison temporality" and "geologic temporality," to demonstrate how poets created divisions in the Canadian landscape temporally, demarcating these divisions according to their understanding of the perceived spaces' historicity. In early Canadian poetry, poets tended to distinguish colonized spaces from uncolonized spaces by designating them as either historical or ahistorical. This was achieved, more specifically, by appropriating civil, or garrison, spaces into a narrative of English expansion which traced its historical lineage back to European antiquity. The space outside the garrison's perimeter was deemed to exist out of time, providing yet another justification for further colonization. Later generations of Canadian poets contested the ahistorical designations created by this narrative, as well as the division they draw between urban and non-urban spaces, by appealing to geologic time. Geologic temporality functions not so much as a viable explanatory model for the narration of history as it does a poetic device for contesting the centrality of Europe and of urban centers in assessing contemporary Canada's place in time. This essay traces the shift in attitudes towards time and space from Charles G.D. Roberts' "Tantramar Revisited" (1886) to Dale Zieroth's "Baptism" (1981).