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Nothing is ever changed at a single stroke, I know that full well, although a person sometimes wishes it could be otherwise.— Margaret Laurence

Believing that real life happens elsewhere is one of those particularly Canadian traits — both in our people and in our fiction. The talented among us really only “make it” when they get to the city. (Or, if they’re from the city already, to America.) Canadian books are full of escape artists, yet literature can also turn the plainest corners of the earth into shrines. In doing so, it can draw universal response from radical regionalism. Margaret Laurence knew this and believed that creative writers were obliged to nail down their particular piece of this strange country.

In a...