Literature

During the 1920s, a small group of aspiring poets clustered around the McGill Daily Literary Supplement and the McGill Fortnightly Review. Although shortlived, these publications would have lasting effects on the nation’s literature:  The poets behind what would is now known as the Montreal Movement — Leon Edel, Leo Kennedy, A.M. Klein, F.R. Scott, A.J.M. Smith — shifted Canadian poetry from the Victorian tradition of the Confederation Poets to modernist practice tradition. The Canadian novel would soon undergo a similar sea change. At a time when Canada was only publishing two per cent of the fiction Canadians were reading, Dorothy Duncan told her struggling would-be novelist husband, “Nobody's going to understand Canada until she evolves a literature of her own, and you're the fellow to start bringing Canadian novels up to date.” The result, Barometer Rising (1941), drew on Hugh MacLennan’s own experience as a survivor of the Halifax Explosion, and arguably marked a rebirth of the Canadian novel. MacLennan went on to win five Governor General’s Awards, and taught English literature at McGill from 1954 to 1979. One particular student would go on to publish two acclaimed novels and several volumes of verse, before reinventing himself as a singer-songwriter: Leonard Cohen (BA1955).