What About Us?

All this talk about Eliot has made me think: Where are the Canadians? Who is our hero? Don't we have some great modern writers that should be canonized in the mainstream? For example, the modern movements that people like the Montreal Automatists took part in. Seems like I'd have to take a very specific course to even hear about those guys: An upper level course, or Canadian literature course, perhaps.

I know it's difficult to judge this situation because Canada's "literary development" has taken some more time than, say, America's has. For example, the Toronto we have today- with the international credit it has in arts and literature- was not that way some fifty years ago. It took a lot of hard work to get noticed. Arguably, our modernist writers (except for Margaret Atwood) simply were "not as influential".

But what decides which writers are to be "influential"? If Eliot was a Canadian, would his writing be "the turning point of literature" or "THE critique of Western civilization" as it is known to be today? I'm doubtful. How has the academic "media" shaped this outcome? Is "literature" based on decisions made by particular people who claim objectivity in a box that is actually quite relative?

Any thoughts on this...?