Canadian modernism, realism, and romance made for comfortable, and at times, not so comfortable bedfellows during the first decades of the twentieth century. “A salutary move has been to circumscribe or define Canadian modernism in a non-canonical way – usually in order to accommodate it, at least partly but paradoxically, to its old enemies, realism and romanticism,” writes Glenn Willmott. Dean Irvine echoes this approach while also emphasizing that Canadian modernism has remained somewhat under-examined in the scholarly literature because of its hybrid attributes.

A review of early twentieth-century prose reveals a rich array of modernist forms, more specifically the exuberant play with self-portraiture and multiple selves found in the life-writing and fiction of numerous Canadian authors who lived during the modernist era. Their works may well constitute the most central and experimental articulation of Canadian modernism in prose, allowing authors to stage cross-cultural, controversial, and even conflicted identities – personal and public, sexual and political, regional and national. In New York, the influx of a group of European artists created an important ferment that stimulated radically modern expressions of art and literature during the First World War era; so too in Canada, the influx of European voices stimulated literary production and energized cross-Canadian literary and cultural dialogue. These authors play with hybrid genres, as well as exploring modernity at the interface of the textual and visual, thereby submitting distinctly Canadian contributions to the global movement of international literary modernism. A well-kept secret, this Canadian modernism deserves more critical attention.