No place else : attachment to land and region in Canadian realistic fiction for young adults

Landscape is a fact of Canadian life. Regardless of where one lives in Canada, the presence and images of countless trees, mountains, farms, snow drifts, or wildlife is never far from thought. In human geography, which studies the relationship between people and their surroundings, landscape is considered a cultural construct. How landscape is used and how it is perceived is culturally representative of the culture in which it exists. In much Canadian literature, the vast Canadian landscape defines Canada as a nation. Canadian realistic fiction for young adults often uses the Canadian landscape as a backdrop to plot. The young adult protagonists living in remote regions of the country who interact with the wilderness often develop specific attachments to it as a result of their isolation from the city and their experience with the landscape. When these protagonists escape into, or out of, nature, their attachments may change with their shifting perceptions of space and place. How these attachments form, how they change, and how they are regionally and nationally connected are the concerns of this thesis.Arts, Faculty ofLibrary, Archival and Information Studies (SLAIS), School ofGraduat