While the world tells each person what they should believe and how they should behave and what code of morals they should adopt, the free people are the ones who can be shaped by the whirlwind of pressures but tolerate it with independent thought. By their mindful discerning of which values to embrace and how to live their lives, cultures evolve and challenge society’s standard norms of life. Canadiana candidly portrays demonstrations of integrity toward individual roots by assertions of independence from family values, and how escape or isolation from kin is how they can remain faithful to their own identities in peace.
In several excerpts of Mordecai Richler’s The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, the audience learns of Duddy Kravitz’s Uncle Benjy, the son of Kravitz’s grandfather Simcha. Simcha arrived in Montreal first, and after working for a few years, brought over his wife and two sons. And his first son, Benjy Kravitz, life pioneered the culture of independence as he grew up in a Jewish concentrated milieu.
While the whole community saw how much Simcha adored his son and saw how “[o]n Saturday mornings father and son could be seen standing side by side in the synagogue”, upon beginning “to read Mencken and Dreiser,” Benjy “no longer came to pray” in the synagogue. Benjy must have been aware of the reproachful chatter of the devout Jewish community around him because “the other old men became sad and gentle with him [giving him] sympathetic looks” (47), but he lived “without fear of the new country” (46), putting the only people he could call his own behind his faith. Benjy’s credo consisted of more than his family’s influence, filled with ideologies and values that he developed while maturing to become a man of his own making.
Furthermore, his unyielding values led to a broken marriage and the sacrifice of relationships with beloved kin. His wife Ida wanted children, but he did not, and when the two found out that she was barren, Benjy told his father that he was impotent and telling his wife that he did so “‘because he loved and wanted to protect [her]’” (237). Benjy’s tender treatment and care of her led to Ida feeling worthless, and when she took to travelling for long periods, having affairs with different lovers, and they no longer lived together, Benjy withdrew from his father and took to drinking and living alone. As much as he loved Ida and his father, it was only by self-isolation that he could avoid the bitter conflict of the incompatibilities of their characters and desires altogether. In devotion to his values he kept his peace.
Likewise, two young women in Thomas King’s Medicine River boldly live out their lives as independent women who do not conform their identities to any is narrated by the thoughts and interactions of half-Blackfoot Will Horse Capture, a photographer who lived in Toronto until his mother’s death brought him home to Medicine River.
He met his first lover Susan when he was taking candids at a gallery exhibit for his friend. Despite Susan’s cold response to his greeting upon their first encounter, by the second time they met, they began to go out and frequently made love at Will’s apartment with him unaware of Susan’s caring husband and two young daughters. Upon calling her line when he could not reach her work number one day, he discovered that Susan had a family. After Susan explained to Will that she loved him and finally mustered the courage to leave her family, she came over to his apartment for an evening, but when Will returned home after work the next day, “Susan wasn’t there. She had come by sometime in the afternoon, collected her things, and left” (179). Will felt that she had “left everyone. She had left Ralph. She had left her children” (215) and was especially hurt and bitter that she had left no trace for him to contact her.
Six months after she left his apartment for the last time, she called him, told him about how she now had a new job and a new house, and how she had remained friends with her husband throughout the process of divorce. When she finally invited him to dinner at her place, he agreed to come with the notion that it would just be the two of them and was ready to tell her how he truly felt and no longer “be needed the way Susan needed [him]” (213), but upon arriving he found the house full of people that Susan had invited for to celebrate her self-redemption in life.
As Susan greeted him and took him around the house for a tour, she told Will that she was sorry about the way she left, confessing that
“I needed to get away. It wasn’t just Ralph. It was me. I kept giving my life away to people. To Ralph. To you. There was nothing left for me.
“You know what I’ve discovered? I don’t really have to have someone. I can do everything myself. Men are used to that, but I never knew I could do it all by myself. Life, I mean…
“Things have changed Will. I have a job, a house, my two girls, and a new life. It’s kind of exciting. You know what I mean?” (King 220-221)
And Susan went on to introduce Will to Ralph that evening and carried on hosting the night.
However, by the people who attended her dinner, it seems that it was Susan’s own decision to give her life away. Perhaps as she pursued life on her own, abandoning her reputation, her family, and her lover, she came to acknowledge that it had not been the people who had treated her poorly. Rather, as she reveals to Will, she realised that it had been in her own nature to give herself away, and by secluding herself from those she cared about, she was able to truly pursue living for herself.
After Will closed his relationship with Susan, he left Toronto and headed to Medicine River. Although he insisted that he liked being single, when he listened to his friend’s advice to take out Louise Heavyman, an accountant on the reserve who was pitied lately because her Cree boyfriend had impregnated and left her, Louise asked, “‘[h]ow about I pay for my own meal?’” and, “‘say I pick you up around six-thirty?’” before agreeing to go out (32). They began having dinner together weekly, and as Louise shared with Will that her boyfriend had thought she would marry him if he impregnated her, but when she declined his proposal after he had done so, he had left. She also revealed that she had wanted a child but no husband, hinting to Will that even if she liked him, they likely would not marry.
When Louise began to labour, Will took her to the hospital and unintentionally named the baby South Wing after the hospital wing where she was conceived and Will himself was mistaken by the nurses as Mr. Heavyman. After Louise recovered from giving birth, they fell for each other and enjoyed spending time together, but outwardly, neither wanted to marry or commit to moving in together. When Louise asked Will for help in finding a house, a realtor that toured them inexplicitly disapproved of their relationship because they were neither married nor officially together but had Louise’s daughter South Wing with them. Will saw that Louise was unashamed of her choices and was someone who “‘speaks her mind’” and “‘knows what she wants’” (208), and implicitly credited the surety of her decisions to her values. She defied the conventional norms of familial conventions, refusing the label of a dependant single mother and making choices on her own, never known to have asked “‘anyone for advice… about having South Wing or becoming an accountant’” (210). By steering her life clear of commitment while enjoying what she wanted, she proved her loyalty toward her moral code of female power. Both Louise and Susan found a way to live independently from traditional familial pressures, influence, and demand, regardless of how absurd their rationalizations are for why they did so.
Moreover, defiant independence toward family values is not limited to young people. In “To Set Our House in Order,” Grandmother McLeod lives with her son’s family during the Depression, where food is scarce and there is little to no economic flow of money. She recalls her younger days when her husband was still alive and she “‘never had less than twelve guests for dinner parties’” (588), and her yearning for the days of lavish hosting insinuate that she believes that it is ultimately possible, even though she may wring her son’s family of their money, to make her sumptuous past her present once again. She lectures to her granddaughter, the narrator of the story, about how her father used to say to her as a girl that “‘God loves order’” and that because “‘he wants each of one of us to set our house in order’” (588), she justifies her unending orders of “three linen tea-cloths and two dozen serviettes” (589) by claiming it to be consistent with the order of the house. In doing so she is seemingly unaware of the financial difficulty of her family, blindly steadfast to the past that she believes defines her in the present.
Another consistency that Grandmother McLeod keeps to remain in the past is her opinion on the linguistic evolution of her son’s generation. She cannot afford to hire a girl to help with the housework, but she “‘can’t bear slang’” (588) either, so when her daughter-in-law’s sister, who “‘speaks in such a slangy way’” (589) comes in to set the house in order, Grandmother McLeod self-isolates in her room for the entirety of the cleaning and then comes down only when she has an order for “two-dozen lace bordered handkerchiefs of pure Irish linen” (590). She distances herself from Edna to keep her ears clean of the filthy language that she cannot tolerate, and so keeps a clear conscience before her God who loves order, the order in this context being good English grammar.
Grandmother McLeod loathes change in the order of her lifestyle more than simply despising slang or keeping ignorant of the reality of the Depression. Regardless of the incomeless state of her household, she remains faithful to the version of “‘God loves order’” (588), and she carries on ordering from the “‘catalogue from Robinson & Cleaver’” (589) with complete confidence that she is only doing what God loves.
Pioneering identities means leaving everyone else behind in one’s journey, and wherever there is a pursuit for independence, the commitment of level of treatment for the people in one’s life narrows to focus on the commitment of integrity toward individual values. While others often view this as selfish and overlooking of familial responsibilities, to those who consider maintaining integrity toward their core values as the most important part of their lives, they will pursue such lifestyles without hindrance. Their principles hold them fast as they sacrifice family, relationships, and seclusion to make their statements. Canadiana reflects the condition of many Canadians as they endure hardship to stay true to their principles in the many different faces of opposition.