"The stillness is the time before the change" – celebrating the Canadian North and Northern environment in Elizabeth Hay's Late Nights on Air

A great deal of Elizabeth Hay's novel entitled Late Nights on Air takes place in Yellowknife, a town in the Northwest Territories of Canada, situated on the edge of the Arctic Circle. In 1974 Judge Thomas Berger came there to hold an inquiry concerning the environmental implications of the prop...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Lublin Studies in Modern Languages and Literature
Main Author: Wójcik, Marta
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: www.wydawnictwo.umcs.lublin.pl 2015
Subjects:
Online Access:https://journals.umcs.pl/lsmll/article/view/274
https://doi.org/10.17951/lsmll.2014.38.1.101
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Summary:A great deal of Elizabeth Hay's novel entitled Late Nights on Air takes place in Yellowknife, a town in the Northwest Territories of Canada, situated on the edge of the Arctic Circle. In 1974 Judge Thomas Berger came there to hold an inquiry concerning the environmental implications of the proposed gas pipeline. Although Berger is not a protagonist of the story, his inquiry becomes one of its focal points. This article addresses the book's portrayal of the Canadian North and Northern environment. It focuses on the North as one of the protagonists, which becomes increasingly endangered by economic development.