I will examine Henry David Thoreau's apparent chauvinism in his Excursion to Canada. The praise that Thoreau lavishes on United States citizens, as he compares them favorably with Canadians, differentiates this essay from Thoreau's other works. He criticizes mercilessly the French Canadian peasants and their British overlords. While he does include Yankees--and himself--among his many satirical targets in the piece, Thoreau spares his fellow citizens the attacks prominent in other compositions from the same period--especially Walden and the anti-slavery essays. His curmudgeonly tone in the essay might be due in part to the peculiar circumstances of Thoreau's trip to Canada. (Unlike his other "excursions," this was a package tour arranged as a railroad promotion--Thoreau was limited by the itinerary and schedule dictated to him.) But even more important for his perceptions and state of mind were the social forces everywhere in evidence--forces that distracted him from his usually inspiring explorations of nature. Although he pays (fairly cursory) attention to the St. Lawrence River and three of its waterfalls, Thoreau keeps focusing on institutions that render Canada backwards, undemocratic, and hostile to individual freedom.
My presentation will place Thoreau's travel essay in the contexts of both criticism of the United States by European travelers and of Thoreau's own denunciation of U.S. institutions in works contemporary with his Canada piece. I will relate Thoreau's boosterism to his central concern in the essay for the dangers that institutions pose to the free individual. The main focus of the discussion will be the military and the church in Canada. The repressive British military is most evident at the walled fortress that is Quebec, which Thoreau denounces as "a folly,'--England's folly,--and, in more senses than one, a castle in the air." "Such works do not consist with the development of the intellect," he insists; "huge stone structures of all kinds, both in their erection and by their influence when erected, rather oppress than liberate the mind. They are tombs for the souls of men, as frequently for their bodies also." The Catholic Church, too, becomes a regular target of Thoreau's sharp commentary as he satirizes useless, effeminate priests, tearful nuns, and gullible, oxlike worshipers. Thoreau may be indulging in the anti-Catholicism common to his day, but his remarks relate to crucial concerns in "An Excursion." He did not see very much on his trip because oppressive social institutions did not allow him to. If walls and military guards physically restrict what people can see in Canada, the church erects more subtle but equally dangerous barriers to perception. "In short," Thoreau writes, "the inhabitants of Canada appeared to be suffering between two fires,--the soldiery and the priesthood." Both are remnants of a feudal system that keeps Canada hopelessly backward. And that feudal system has analogues in the United States, which Thoreau covertly attacks while he overtly criticizes Canada.
To illustrate the presentation, I will use slides of Thoreau and of Canada in the mid-19th century.
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