“Waste Zones and Muskoka Chairs: Global & Non-Global Approaches to Green Canada”

This essay investigates the role that literature can play in ‘preserving green’ by contributing to situate the idea of green against a broader context, the one of politics, economics and law. Literature can help us to preserve not just a fact, but the many ways old and new historical facts inhabit our cultural memories and combine with aspects of our cultural heritage, which, in turn, pervade our private and collective identities inside an evolving global/globalised society. These ideas are discussed through an investigation of Janice Kulyk Keefer’s long narrative poem 'The Waste Zone', published in the literary quarterly Exile in the spring of 2002 with a photo reportage by Goran Petkovski covering the protests in Quebec City during the 2001 Summit of the Americas. Strategically re-writing T.S. Eliot’s 20th century classic 'The Waste Land', Kulyk Keefer’s work turns a moment in our recent history into a shared narrative which not only helps us to ‘remember’ the facts of Québec City 2001, but also elevates that event into the still-shot or iconic event which cannot but project a different idea of civic engagement also in the green and peaceful land of Canada.