Localizing Learning: Regionalism and Community in Canadian Environmental Literature

Essential to the study of Canadian environmental literature is the students’ personal connection to their own community. Community is not only the people in the region, but all living and non-living inhabitants; plants, animals, and landscape. Canadian nature literature is often filled with themes of loneliness, emptiness, and concern for the future. To contend with the sometimes dispiriting material, an effective pedagogical environment goes beyond the classroom and into the community. Regional engagement helps students to share their learning experiences and grapple with the often harrowing subject matter. It also helps them orient their own ecocritical approach. To fully appreciate Canadian environmental literature, a closed classroom setting is ineffectual; the subject matter begs to be taught with an emphasis on regionalism. In Survival (1972) Margaret Atwood proposes that: “Nature poetry is seldom just about nature; it is usually about the poet’s attitude towards the external natural universe.” (Atwood 59). This applies not only to nature poetry but to all nature literature. This presentation explores the ways in which the study of environmental literature can be fostered with community involvement. For a reader to understand and engage critically with a writers’ attitude towards nature, they too need to develop connections to their community and environment