SOURCE: "Present at the Creation: John Richardson and Souwesto," in Journal of Canadian Studies, Vol. 28, No. 3, Autumn, 1993, pp. 75-91.

In the following essay, Duffy focuses his discussion on Richardson's last novel, Westbrook the Outlaw, contending that the novelist led the way in establishing the imaginative tradition of Southwestern Ontario in Canadian literature.

"Souwesto" designates one of English Canada's most thickly populated countries of the mind. On the map where Thoreau's true countries never are, Southwestern Ontario covers the peninsula created by Lake Erie, Lake Huron and Georgian Bay. The painterly imagination has dotted it with the views caught in the paintings of Jack Chambers and Greg Curnoe. Hamlets as storied as Hanratty (Munro's Who Do You Think You Are?), Biddulph Township (Reaney's The Donnellys), and Deptford (Davies's trilogy of that name) flourish there. Though James Reaney is the genius of Souwesto's shore, he credits Curnoe with inventing its...