Charles G.D. Roberts and William Wilfred Campbell as Canadian Tour Guides

Abstract

During the pre-Confederation period, Canada’s popularity as a destination for tourists seeking picturesque and sublime scenery grew as a result of various literary and transportation factors. The most ambitious, important and controversial guide to Canada in this period was Picturesque Canada: the Country as It Was and Is, a lavishly illustrated collection of essays on different parts of the country that was published in 36 installments and as a two-volume set in 1882-1884. Charles G.D. Roberts and other Confederation poets, especially William Wilfred Campbell, shared an awareness of the potential advantages of using their poetry in tourist guides aimed partly or primarily at readers outside Canada. Their vision of Canada was of an uncontaminated realm whose romantic history and affective scenery were both a therapeutic cure for the diseases of American modernity and a natural repository for the Canadian identity. Such works as the Lands of Evangeline and the Gateways Thither (Roberts) and The Canadian Lake Region (Campbell) reflect modes of thinking and writing about this country that evidently had validity and force for their readers and, in variant forms and various quarters, have remained powerful and persuasive to some Canadians in the present century.