Discrepant Parallels: David W. McFadden, Wayde Compton, Thomas King, and the Canada-US Border

Gillian Roberts
Leeds Metropolitan University

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     Last modified: April 17, 2007

Abstract
Although Eli Mandel states that “the border between America and Canada is of enormous importance in the imaginative life of any Canadian” (105), it does not signify in the same way for all Canadians. This paper examines the function of the border in writings by David W. McFadden, Wayde Compton, and Thomas King. Whereas McFadden’s travel narrative Great Lakes Suite primarily focuses on the threat of neocolonialism from the United States, presenting its concerns through an attempted critical Canadian nationalism, Compton’s and King’s texts challenge some of the central tenets of Canadian nationalism, resisting dominant narratives of the Canadian nation. McFadden plays with, while still trying to uphold, distinctions between Canada and the US, with his narrator asking at a border crossing, “Can’t you feel a difference in the air?” (178). Compton’s 49th Parallel Psalm exposes the faultiness of this image in his representation of nineteenth-century African-American migration to a less-than-welcoming Canada: the belief that “the air was sweeter/ on the Brit side of the border, freer” gives way to the emptiness of having “renounced America./ what I got to show/ for it? handful of magic/ beens” (73).
King’s representation of the border, in contrast, throws into question the very existence of the Canadian and American nation-states. Like McFadden’s joke about “almost pick[ing] out the dots and dashes of the international boundary” (192) in the waves of Lake Huron, Truth & Bright Water’s image of the border running “right through the middle of the lake,” prompting an expectation of “a floating fence or inner tubes with barbed wire and lights” (78), underscores the extent to which the Canada-US border is “[r]idiculous” (131). Whereas for McFadden the border represents a kind of buffer against US necolonialism, for King and Compton, the “strait razorous” (Compton 105) border produces divisions where it ought not to and polices racialized bodies in the name of the nation-state.

Works Cited
Compton, Wayde. 49th Parallel Psalm. Vancouver: Advance Editions, 1999.
King, Thomas. Truth & Bright Water. Toronto: HarperFlamingo, 1999.
McFadden, David W. Great Lakes Suite. Vancouver: Talonbooks, 1997.
Mandel, Eli. “The Border League: American ‘West’ and Canadian ‘Region.’” Crossing
Frontiers. Ed. Dick Harrison. Edmonton: U of Alberta P, 1979. 105-121.