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Depictions of the great northern wilderness are often found in Canadian literature. The natural environment and the landscape of Canada have always been a fundamental part of the identity of the country and of the country’s literature. In different works, we find that the natural world is portrayed differently yet similarly, and looking at Charles Mair’s A Ballad for Brave Women and Thomas D’Arcy McGee’s Jacques Cartier, we notice how landscape and the natural environment play a significant role in the stories the poems are communicating. Both poems describe Canada’s untouched natural environment as having somewhat godly and mighty characteristics. In both cases, Mair and McGee portray the natural environment of Canada as one that frightens the main character but also one that provides life and beauty. The treatment of nature in both the poems A Ballad for Brave Women and Jacques Cartier revolves around the theme that suffering makes one appreciate beauty, and on a broader level, that good cannot come without evil.
Forests are often portrayed as deep, shadowy, haunted places where loneliness and vulnerability overcome reason. In A Ballad for Brave Women, the poet uses this dark description of forests to portray Laura Secord’s quest through the woods. Mair uses words to describe the woods that evoke feelings of fear such as “shadowy forms” (60), “limitless shade” (61), and “mystical sounds” (62). Mair describes the forest as having a harmful effect on Secord’s reason because its powerful energy tempts her courage and bravery to the point of physically altering her, “cheeks to grow pale” (69). As Wayne Grady wrote in his exploration of nature in literature, “the call of the wild was a call to battle” (5). This is well illustrated in Mair’s poem because Secord’s battle is found among the wilderness of the forest, and it is her perseverance that pushes her to win this battle. Secord has to be surrounded by darkness and the perceived evil that forests possess because it is her battle against it that allows her to see the good side of nature.
After Laura’s battle for her sanity and for her country, she survives her adventure in the woods. She overcomes the temptation to give up, which is compared to Eve’s temptation to eat the forbidden fruit, “One moment she faltered. Beware! What is this? The coil of the serpent!” (Mair 80-81). Secord does not succumb and is then rewarded by the purity of the natural world, “her eye caught a gleam / From the woods of a meadow through which flowed a stream” (Mair 84-85). The description of the forest shifts from harmful and frightening to resourceful and heavenly. This description is initiated after the demonstration of her temptation and her perseverance. The stream symbolizes life and purity through the rejuvenating quality of water. Mair proceeds by describing the forest with words such as “pure” (86), “sweet” (86), “soft forest shower” (87), and “spring” (88). The forest is portrayed as a source of life and hope and almost as a force working for Secord. Once she experiences and conquers the darkness of the forest, she becomes stronger and closer to the divine, “Laura, who felt she had friends / In heaven as well as on earth, knew to thank / The giver of all things, and gratefully drank” (Mair 97-99). We get a sense that Secord is now an accomplice with not only the natural world but also with God.
In McGee’s poem, we find a similar opposition of pleasure and pain. Once Cartier arrives back to his hometown in France, he describes the Canadian environment as being barren, hostile, and empty and emphasizes the unusual climate, “He told them of a region, hard, iron-bound, and cold . . . He told them of the frozen scene until they thrilled with fear” (McGee 19-23). McGee creates the imagery of a large wasteland that is powerful in its foreign characteristics. This particular description of the natural environment highlights the bravery and strength of Cartier, as he was able to persist and survive through the harsh Canadian winter. The absence of warmth and of life indicates that Cartier had to fight to later be rewarded with hope and beauty.
As Cartier tells the tale of his adventure, he completes his description of the natural world by explaining that the weather changes, and that along with those changes come hope, “How the Winter causeway, broken, is drifter out to sea, / And the rills and rivers sing with pride the anthem of the free” (McGee 27-28). His persistence pays off; Cartier proves that Canada is the land of opportunity and that there is beauty to be found after months of despair. This description of the arrival of spring, the fertility of the land along with all the beauties found in nature seem to acknowledge a truth about the country that may be misconceived by stereotypes that paint a picture of Canada as unusually cold and lifeless. McGee describes the Canadian natural environment as being both unappealing and appealing, and in turn, this contrast emphasizes the reward of holding on to hope.
In Canadian literature, and precisely in Mair and McGee’s previously mentioned poems, there is often a form of “reverence for the natural world dread and (or) pride in expanses of wilderness and hash weather” (Turner and Freedman 2). This is found in the way nature is being described in A Ballad for Brave Women and Jacques Cartier because the characters find themselves challenged by the wilderness or the weather and yet after this challenge has been overcome, they are able to witness the beauty of nature and respect its power. In Mair’s poem, Laura Secord perseveres through the dark, haunted Canadian forest and is rewarded by the stream and the rejuvenation of the water. Similarly, in McGee’s poem, Jacques Cartier pushes through the hardships of the Canadian winter and is also rewarded by the hope of the spring. This theme of having to know pain to know pleasure relates to a larger theme that good and evil cannot exist without one another.
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