As Others See Us

Canada is not a place that turns up regularly in the poetry, novels, plays or non-fiction memoirs of other cultures. Maybe that is because when foreign writers come here they tend to have immigration on their minds rather than tourism. Once they settle within our vast borders, we embrace them pretty quickly as Canadian authors, even if their palette is Mumbai rather than Montreal, Vienna rather than Vancouver.

But what about the writers who come just long enough to feel confident about slipping us into their pages? Or who never come but simply imagine Canada in their mind’s eye? What kind of portrait emerges when you look at our “few acres of snow” through outside lenses, as did Voltaire?

We asked some of our country’s own best writers (plus a couple of Literary Review of Canada insiders), based on their extensive and eclectic reading, to come up with examples of outsiders pronouncing on Canada or using aspects of it in their writing. One of...