Concern for Canada
Sir: I read Christopher Hitchens's article on Canada (3 August) with concern and sympathy. Canadians may be consoled by the reflection that theirs is not the first country to be saddled with an unmerited reputation for dullness. Before Disraeli and Kipling, India (yes, India!) was a byword for unendurable boredom. Pub- lishers knew that books on India were an infallible way of losing money. (The suc- cess of Macaulay's Clive and Warren Hast- ings was hailed as astonishing evidence of his ability to make the most unpromising subjects entertaining.) Today, of course, it is almost impossible for such books not to make money.
Again, America, at least until the Civil War, was thought to be so boring that its own novelists would normally set their stories in England, Italy, the South Seas, the colonial past — anywhere but in contemporary America. There seems no reason why the world's perception of mod- ern Canada should not change as suddenly, and the 21st century remember it as a land of romance, mystery and adventure.
David Watkins
Firmount, High Street, Laleston, Bridgend
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