SOURCE: "Harold Innis and the Unity and Diversity of Confederation," in Journal of Canadian Studies/Revue d'études canadiennes, Vol. 17, No. 4, Winter, 1982-83, pp. 57-73.

In the following essay, Hutcheson examines Innis's views of Canadian economic development.

A prevalent view of the Canadian imagination, articulated by Northrop Frye, is that it has been dominated by a sense of dislocation occasioned by the enormity of the landscape and the sparseness of "civilization." Frye's view is that Canada has been seen as "a country of isolations and terror, and of the overwhelming of human values by an indifferent and wasteful nature." From this perspective Frye has claimed E. J. Pratt's "Brébeuf and His Brethren" as a statement of the central tragic theme of the Canadian imagination. The Iroquois are seen, in European fashion, as part of nature. Brébeuf represents an order which, through a hierarchical chain of command...