No description available.

This thesis addresses the teleological relationship between national identity and national consciousness in the specific definition of Canada as a northern nation by giving a descriptive account of representative texts in which the north figures as a central theme, including: ethnography, travel writing, autobiography, adventure stories, poetry, and novels. It argues that the collective Canadian identity idealized in the representation of the north is not organic but constructed in terms of such characteristics as self-sufficiency, independence, and endurance; that these characteristics are inflected by ideas of gender and race; and that they are evoked to give the 'deeper justification' of nationhood to the Canadian state. In this description of the mutually dependent definitions of gender, racial, and national identities, the thesis disputes the idea that northern consciousness is the source of a distinct collective identity for Canadians.