Every Canadian Novel Ever -The Toast

Previously in this series: Every Irish Novel Ever. This post was brought to you by @askmullan.

1. Will the Cod Return, Or Must We Move to Toronto?

2. Only the Jews Know Montreal

3. The Next Three Chapters Are Set in the 1830s Bush For No Reason But Then We’ll Be Back to This 1970s University Women’s Studies Department

4. She Briefly Considers Moving to the States For Her Career But Then Realizes She Must Stay With Her People

5. O Cabbagetown!

6. I Remember When There Was LOADS of Cod and We Played Scottish Reels to Entertain Ourselves

7. In Which Blondes From Westmount Fail to Sleep With You

8. This Children’s Toy That Holds Great Meaning For You Will Be Broken Like Your Spirit

9. You Thought It Was Me Talking To You, But It’s Been My Sister All Along, I Am Dead Because of a Man

10. Magical Realism But It’s Just Gothic Southern Ontario Having, Like, Two Magical Elements

11. Things Are Kind of English Here But Not For Everyone

12. The Hero Has a Thousand Faces But They All Look a LOT Like Robertson Davies

13. Sex Farm Woman: All of These Albertan Crops Are Metaphors For My Empty, Yearning Vagina

14. We Forgot to Include an Incestuous Backstory But That’s What the Second 1200 Pages Are For

15. Will the Grasshoppers Move On, Or Must We Move to Toronto?

16. You Have Stolen My Heart and Will Now Steal the Deed to Our Land While I Sleep, Handsome American

17. You Think You Could Have Toughed It Out In the Bush? You Can’t Even Make Butter Tarts From Scratch

18. This Novel Has Been Specifically Written to Prove That Canadian Literature Is Worthy of Your Attention Now Give It To Me

19. Arctic Foxes and Prairie Dogs I Have Met Or At Least Read About

20. I’m Going to Reform These Sex Workers and It’s Not Going to Make Me Question My Own Convictions In the Slightest

21. Things Get Worse and Then You Have an Illegitimate Child With a Man From Outremont Who Doesn’t Really Love You

22. It Doesn’t Really Matter, You Can Tell By the Emily Carr Painting on the Cover That This Novel Is Important

23. A Woman Has Sex With a Bear or a Unicorn And No One Thinks This Is Particularly Odd

24. The Cry of the Loon Echoes the Cry of My Heart Which Is as Stony as the Land I Attempt to Till

Nicole is an Editor of The Toast.

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+16 Vote up Vote down

literaltrousersnake · 557 weeks ago

Oh no. No, not Bear. Please not again noooooooo
in related news, I am laughing harder at this, silently, weeping, than I have laughed at anything since the naked guinea pig post.

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1 reply · active 557 weeks ago

+7 Vote up Vote down

PRockette 114p · 557 weeks ago

YES! And I think I've read most of these.

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+89 Vote up Vote down

aravisthequeen 134p · 557 weeks ago

"Winter Is Cold; Now Give Me My Award"

"French People Are Earthy And Inferior Yet Somehow Know The Secrets of Life"

"Upper-Middle Class White People Have Silent Struggles And Wear A Brave Face In Toronto"

"Newfoundland: An Enigma"

Also, let's all play "which novel is which?" Number 4 is "Emily Climbs" by L.M. Montgomery. Your turn!

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43 replies · active 556 weeks ago

+28 Vote up Vote down

anachronistique 115p · 557 weeks ago

That post about "Bear" has been cropping up on my tumblr dash again and every time I just start giggling. A BEAR. AN ACTUAL BEAR.

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3 replies · active 557 weeks ago

+94 Vote up Vote down

winterbymorning 133p · 557 weeks ago

Mainland Canada Is Garbage And Even The Other Maritime Provinces Are Deeply Suspect: No Place In The World Could Ever Be As Great As PEI

She Married A Hot Farmer Instead Of An Ugly Rich Guy And Lived To Regret It

Emigrating To New France As A Teenaged Girl And Marrying A Total Stranger Worked Out A Lot Better Than Expected

Sure, I Will Raise 12 Children By Myself While You Spend 6 Months A Year In A Logging Camp

So You Lost Your Legs In A Logging Accident

I Thought The Iroquois Were My Friends, But Then They Up And Scalped My Wife

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7 replies · active 410 weeks ago

+41 Vote up Vote down

Amy_Lou 136p · 557 weeks ago

Six Months of Winter Then A Harvest Where Someone Proposes (It's Rejected)

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+12 Vote up Vote down

Kai_Ko 122p · 557 weeks ago

Number 18 = every story taught in Canadian undergraduate university English programs.

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+35 Vote up Vote down

Amy_Lou 136p · 557 weeks ago

We Moved To Toronto And Everyone Else Including That Bastard Did Too

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+30 Vote up Vote down

Amy_Lou 136p · 557 weeks ago

My Relative Died Then We Encountered That Moose In The Clearing And Now It All Makes Sense

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+70 Vote up Vote down

Amy_Lou 136p · 557 weeks ago

I've Been To Coquitlam But I've Never Been To Me

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2 replies · active 557 weeks ago

+30 Vote up Vote down

Allpha7 102p · 557 weeks ago

My personal rickroll is getting people to read Bear. I keep recommending it, hoping people won't look into the plot before they start. I just say it's a 'Woman Alone in the Wilderness' novel.

I am not as successful as I would like to be.

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+6 Vote up Vote down

thinwireoflightning 106p · 557 weeks ago

Aww, Robertson Davies. I have a soft spot for "World of Wonders", but everything else...

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+5 Vote up Vote down

Christin · 557 weeks ago

Hey! I loved #9.

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+20 Vote up Vote down

teresamackadoo 97p · 557 weeks ago

"9. You Thought It Was Me Talking To You, But It’s Been My Sister All Along, I Am Dead Because of a Man"

I just read this one last week! Oh Margaret.

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+10 Vote up Vote down

figwiggin 114p · 557 weeks ago

I obviously need to read more Canadian literature.

(One of the most heavily Canadian books I've ever read was written by a Scottish women who'd never been to Canada, apparently.)

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+15 Vote up Vote down

nickpavich 127p · 557 weeks ago

Can't. Stop. Laughing.

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+25 Vote up Vote down

winterbymorning 133p · 557 weeks ago

Sidebar - who else really hated Roughing It In The Bush? I found Susanna Moodie to be an insufferably smug narrator. There was such an overwhelming sense of her own superiority over the Native peoples and the other immigrants in her corner of Ontario - basically everyone who's not middle-class British like her is depicted as lazy, shiftless, dishonest and mooching off the charity of the neighbours. And her poor children, they look so British, their cheeks are as bright and pink as an English tea-rose, but oh, they will never be able to gaze upon the rolling green fields of the motherland, what a tragedy. Ugh.

I just want to go back in time and take her face in my hands and say gently, "Sue, nobody held a gun to your head and made you emigrate, and also your survival depends on the support of your neighbours, so maybe try not being so damn stuck-up all the time."

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5 replies · active 557 weeks ago

+6 Vote up Vote down

Steph 99p · 557 weeks ago

THIS IS AMAZING. *standing ovation*

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6 replies · active 557 weeks ago

+29 Vote up Vote down

JMo · 557 weeks ago

"14. We Forgot to Include an Incestuous Backstory But That’s What the Second 1200 Pages Are For"
OMG WHYYYYYYYYYY

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+35 Vote up Vote down

gretchenmcc 113p · 557 weeks ago

Bonus: many of these also apply as descriptions of Canadian folksongs. At least there are definitely a few particular Great Big Sea songs that are premised on "the cod is gone."

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4 replies · active 554 weeks ago

+55 Vote up Vote down

Lucy · 557 weeks ago

My girlhood friend was much more sexually aware than I was. Now we both lead prosaic lives.

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2 replies · active 557 weeks ago

+22 Vote up Vote down

GlowCloud 101p · 557 weeks ago

Needs more about the immigrant experience, or did I just have to read too much prairie literature?

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1 reply · active 557 weeks ago

+18 Vote up Vote down

Chrisbookarama 89p · 557 weeks ago

Number 22 is so real. Every Can Lit novel I ever had to read in school had a Group of Seven painting on the cover. I still have some on my shelf here.

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+33 Vote up Vote down

Chrisbookarama 89p · 557 weeks ago

I Grew Up Here But Then I Left and Now I'm Back and Nothing Is the Same

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+13 Vote up Vote down

mkpatter 114p · 557 weeks ago

I own Bear. (It was for schooll! But obviously I kept that craziness that WON A FREAKING GOVERNOR GENERAL'S AWARD. Oh, the '70s.)

I need to know which one involves having sex with a unicorn though.

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3 replies · active 508 weeks ago

+26 Vote up Vote down

jacobcparry 0p · 557 weeks ago

Boy with the Maple Leaf Tattoo

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+21 Vote up Vote down

katieionata 116p · 557 weeks ago

In which the reader must seek out someone with a PhD to locate the climax of this short story

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+37 Vote up Vote down

Rosemary · 557 weeks ago

The cold, desolate winter is a metaphor for our marriage.

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+1 Vote up Vote down

Ron Nurwisah · 557 weeks ago

Just going to leave this here: http://sarabynoe.com/2014/06/11/saywhapodcast30/

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+7 Vote up Vote down

PRockette 114p · 557 weeks ago

Thank you! Also, love the Robertson Davies picture. Epic Canadian beard.

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+20 Vote up Vote down

extermikate 92p · 557 weeks ago

When I was an English major and had to do Canadian lit all the time, I really enjoyed how you could tell the story's setting by which manner of tragic workplace-related death the characters suffered. (Lookin' at you, Alistair MacLeod.)

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3 replies · active 557 weeks ago

+8 Vote up Vote down

john hutchins · 557 weeks ago

Every Canadian comic sketch: Will the beer hold out or will we have to go to Toronto, eh?

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+5 Vote up Vote down

KatyDidn't · 557 weeks ago

I definitely want to read at least half of these now. Does anyone have any suggestions for a repentant English Lit major who didn't realize that Canada's publishing industry expanded beyond Anne of Green Gables?

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13 replies · active 453 weeks ago

+31 Vote up Vote down

kathleenvguds 109p · 557 weeks ago

"Men Have Taken Over the Country and Now I Must Struggle to Regain My Reproductive Agency, As Well As the Right to Wear Colours Other than Red"

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+9 Vote up Vote down

msxandra 74p · 557 weeks ago

Well, now I'm inspired to once more start reading Roughing it in the Bush only to abandon it 10 pages in, because, good god.

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1 reply · active 557 weeks ago

+1 Vote up Vote down

Dany · 557 weeks ago

The accuracy of numbers 14 and 18 is hurting me.

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+16 Vote up Vote down

MissAndrie 83p · 557 weeks ago

Let's not forget:

25. It's cold out and we just lost another giant-headed baby.

26. Bingo, Canada's sport of choice!

27. My parents made me marry this guy with land but then I cheated on him with an Anglophone doctor. Race treason!

28. The only people who truly appreciate New France for its beauty are the English. Also, lots of sled rides.

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1 reply · active 557 weeks ago

+3 Vote up Vote down

rangelifer 0p · 557 weeks ago

#19: Too soon.

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+39 Vote up Vote down

rubelang 112p · 557 weeks ago

How about, I Left a Warm Colorful Country Full of Strife to Be Among These Cold, Inscrutable People and Everything I Do Is Wrong

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1 reply · active 557 weeks ago

+16 Vote up Vote down

Juliet · 557 weeks ago

"It is 1950-something and I am a small-town girl who is heading for a Big Life in Toronto. Big Life involves having an affair with my husband's friend. Or did I just think about it? Either way, it is now 40 years later and I am alone, but has anything really changed?"

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+3 Vote up Vote down

Margot · 557 weeks ago

"You Thought It Was Me Talking To You, But It’s Been My Sister All Along, I Am Dead Because of a Man"

Margaret Atwood's The Blind Assassin?

Can someone steer me towards the book(s) where a woman has sex with a bear or a unicorn and its not particularly odd?

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3 replies · active 557 weeks ago

+9 Vote up Vote down

petegaines 142p · 557 weeks ago

Go Away
I'm Afraid He Can't Come to the Line As He's Dead
Catherine, I Dislike You
You're Aware That I'm Slightly Hearing Impaired?
We're All Vexed With The Bloomsbury Set
My Uncle Was Quite Fond Of The Queen Mother
You Have Stolen My Flatware

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+16 Vote up Vote down

terricoles 1p · 557 weeks ago

We Built A Sod House

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+2 Vote up Vote down

Nerp · 557 weeks ago

Which one is #5?

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1 reply · active 557 weeks ago

+15 Vote up Vote down

Amberlyza 122p · 557 weeks ago

It Is The War, And I Am Very Cold And Covered In Mud
It Is Another War, And I Am Still Cold And Covered In Mud

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1 reply · active 557 weeks ago

+18 Vote up Vote down

tcp909 0p · 557 weeks ago

The Prairie Is Cold And Unforgiving And That Is Why I Am Sleeping Inside My Horse

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+16 Vote up Vote down

raqueue 115p · 557 weeks ago

"Let me explain to you how the 1927 Church Union destroyed my small town"

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+6 Vote up Vote down

raqueue 115p · 557 weeks ago

Also, I'm just going to say that I love how many people on this thread are discussing "Bear" I love the Toast.

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+7 Vote up Vote down

Wee · 557 weeks ago

I Thought Twin Solitudes Had to Do With My Being Married to a Man But In Love With a Woman Who Is a Separatist And I Actually Have a Twin Who Does Not Talk

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