Always a bridesmaid, never a bride: Robertson Davies, who died
last year at the age of eighty-two, never quite attained the
international recognition he sought. Short-listed for both the
Nobel and Booker prizes in 1986 and for the Nobel again in 1992, he
lost out in each case. His books sold reasonably well in the
United States, but never in England. Yet in his native Canada
Davies was accorded tremendous prestige, considered by many the
nation’s greatest author. His work has always had a special
significance for his compatriots because throughout his career he
grappled, more eloquently and relentlessly than any other artist of
this century, with the troubled question of what it means to be a
Canadian.

“Sometimes when I think of the great world family of the
English-speaking peoples,” he said in 1977,
“I think of
Canada as the Daughter Who Stayed at Home.”

I mean that in 1776 Columbia, a self-willed girl with
a strong sense of her own independence, left her
mother’s house, after some high-pitched family rows,
and set up a household of her own. At that time
Canada elected to stay with Mother… . So what
happened? Just what everybody with a knowledge of
family behavior might expect to happen: Columbia, the
naughty daughter, prospered mightily and Mother (who
always had a sharp eye for success) became very fond
of her. And the Good Daughter Who Stayed at Home
became, in the course of time, rather a bore.

What is