Page 52 - Studio International - October1968

Canada of being a fashionable parvenu, attracting more than its fair the suburbs of the twentieth century. Much more than in the United
share of excited attention. The attention is perfectly natural. The States, one is made aware of the newness of the New World. The
`Vancouver scene' looks like a mushroom growth, but what is impression is even heightened by the presence in British Columbia of
happening there is what has been happening elsewhere in Canada Indian art, in spite of the fact that most of that art is barely more than
over a slightly longer period. It is just that the focus in Vancouver 200 years old. At the same time, the Rockies emphasize Vancouver's
seems particularly sharp. physical remoteness from the rest of Canada—dramatize, that is to
It is a city with no sense of history and no traditions—without even say, the sense of isolation which has played, and still plays, a signifi-
that residual solidarity which gives Victoria, the provincial capital cant part in Canadian attitudes of mind. Every Canadian city is, in
across the water on Vancouver Island, its reputation of genteel a sense, a lone outpost, and a very long way from other Canadian
`Englishness'. But it is set, or rather sprawls, like no other city in cities. Strung out along the southern boundary of their immense
Canada, in the midst of that Canadian touristic cliché, spectacular country, they often seem nearer to metropolitan centres in the
scenic grandeur. The coastline of British Columbia is of a kind which United States than they do to each other. Here again Vancouver's
brings pre-history, in the shape of untamed nature, pressing up to geographical position dramatizes a recurring situation. Its natural