Crafting a Heteronormative Haven: Representations of Sexuality on the Canadian Margin

Abstract

There is a shortage of scholarship that addresses how sexuality functions in representations of Atlantic Canada. Using contemporary literary, historical, and cultural scholarship alongside theories of metronormativity and rural space, this article offers an exploration of the intertwined histories of heterosexuality and commodified Atlantic Canadian identity. Examining the development of the tourist industry in the region, alongside the growing popularity of cultural products that uphold narratives of regional simplicity, this article thinks through how this homogenized narrative negates the reality of queer and non-conforming desire, experiences, and activism throughout the region’s history and present. Reference to Ashley MacIsaac and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s Anne with an E are used to make this point. Through a focus on the “myths of Maritimeness” at work in a cultural infrastructure that positions Atlantic Canada as a space of rural simplicity, questions are raised not only about how a normative positioning of the margin impacts conceptualizations of life within the region but also about how this representation upholds a particular understanding of life in the Canadian centre.