“Our Dear North Country”: Regional Identity and National Meaning in Ontario’s Georgian Bay

Abstract

The maturation of regional perspectives, and the accompanying development of distinct regional identities based on landscape, is a story that lies at the heart of Canadian history. With time and experience, people gradually came to think of the east shore of Georgian Bay - an archipelago known as the “Thirty Thousand Islands” - as a separate place, distinct even from adjacent sections of the Great Lakes and Ontario’s “near north.” This essay looks at this process of adaptation from three angles. Artists and writers struggled to create a language appropriate to the place, most famously in works by the Group of Seven. Residents on the islands developed a community identity that emphasized the differences and practical concerns of life in a rugged maritime environment. As this Shield landscape became laden with nationalist meaning, however, place-specific images like the leaning pine were exported as generic symbols of the northland.