SOURCE: Knutson, Susan. Review of No Great Mischief, by Alistair MacLeod. University of Toronto Quarterly 70, no. 1 (winter 2000): 190-92.

In the following excerpt, Knutson highlights the historical significance of the rivalry between Scotch- and French-Canadians in No Great Mischief.

Alistair MacLeod is by no means the first Canadian author to interest himself in the historical play between the Highlanders and the French in Canada. From Philippe Aubert de Gaspé to Margaret Laurence to Catharine Parr Traill, Canadian authors have given us fictional Highlanders and French Canadians whose union—or whose failure to unite—prefigures the birth of the Canadian nation. If the theme is not new, however, MacLeod's treatment of it [in No Great Mischief] is still fresh, disclosing much that has become obscure, and reconfiguring most of the fundamental categories Canadians use when talking and thinking about national identity.

Initially striking is the rivalry—itself archaic and extreme...