Garrison mentality

Painting by Edward Walsh from 1803–1807, depicting the upper Canadian wilderness closing off a small village from the rest of society.

The garrison mentality posits that unaccommodating external environments in Canada, whether that be physical or political, has influenced the psyche of its inhabitants, making them introspective and defensive. For example, the unknown wilderness and cold emptiness of Canada’s landscape during settlement is suggested to have caused such qualities, as isolating oneself from a dangerous environment is safer than attempting to tame it.[2]

The theory suggests that the garrison mentality entails various characteristics:[3][4][5]

• Feeling exiled from one’s own identity and the land they live on

• Feeling inferior and oppressed by other nations, especially America
• Feeling a sense of physical, mental, social, linguistic, and cultural isolation
• Feeling overwhelmed concerning hostile political and physical landscapes
• A tendency to revere law and order, as they act as protective institutions from nature and hostile societies
• A tendency to invent more difficulties for oneself than necessary
• A tendency to antagonise empty or wild landscapes.

This garrison mentality typically manifests in characters of literature and media, who exhibit any of the above characteristics. Such characters may also be influenced by their environments to a great degree. Authors and artists themselves can also use these characteristics as thematic concerns for their work.

The garrison mentality was first coined by literary critic Northrop Frye in his 'Conclusion' to the Literary History of Canada. Frye suggested that this aspect of Canadian identity was formed through the population’s history and experience with vast wilderness, early settlement and growth in multiculturalism.[3][6] Frye also claimed that this national identity of cowardly protectionism has stunted the growth of Canadian literature.[7] The theory was later expanded upon by poet D. G. Jones in the book Butterfly on Rock (1970), arguing that the garrison mentality’s defensive stance against nature has, in modern times, shifted into a more amicable relationship.[1] Author Margaret Atwood in Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature (1972) also added to the development of the theory by suggesting that the Canadian insecurity surrounding survival was also a product of cultural domination from the US, not just the physical landscape.[1][6] Atwood agreed with Frye’s evaluation that Canadian literature lacked growth and grounding, finding that this level of preoccupation with survival was unique to Canadian texts.[7]

• In The Skin of a Lion (1987) by Michael Ondaatje features protagonist Patrick Lewis confronted by Canada’s wilderness. Ondaatje depicts “axes banging into the cold wood as if into metal,”[8] emphasising the country’s untameable coldness that impedes Patrick’s work as a lumberjack.[3] In addition to being physically overwhelmed, Ondaatje shows Patrick feeling displaced culturally and linguistically as the character moves into the urbanising city of Toronto: “Now, in the city, he was new even to himself, the past locked away.”[8]

• Surfacing (1972) by Margaret Atwood is set in a Quebec forest, where characters often disappear after entering “the bush”.[9] The narrator also sees herself as a victim of an Americanized modern civilization, as she has been exploited by people she perceives as US citizens. She is politically dispossessed and feels disconnected from society itself, comparing people to animals that cannot be related to.[6]

• The computer animated sci-fi TV series ReBoot (1994) features protagonist Bob defending Mainframe city from evil computer viruses. Citizens of Mainframe are in constant threat from external forces, and are always acting on the defensive, not the offensive. This ever-looming danger changes every episode, thus always being present but never fully defined, like the ambiguous threats of wilderness that the garrison mentality theory suggests.[5]
• Ginger Snaps Back: The Beginning (2004) is a horror film that explicitly explores the garrison mentality by using the experiences of Canadian settlers as a foundation for horror. The main group of characters are isolated and threatened by unknown threats looming in forests.[7]
• Pontypool (2008) is a zombie film where the Canadian environment contributes to the horror. Whilst most movies in the zombie horror genre incite feelings of claustrophobia as the undead barricade people into isolated buildings, the protagonists of Pontypool are trapped by the cold Canadian winter. Characters tell each other that: “These late winters I feel like I’m in the basement of the world. It’s so cold and so dark”.[10] Such remarks echo the garrison mentality, and the sense of unease regarding physical environment and cultural identity.[7]
• Sitcom TV series Schitt's Creek (2015) features the once wealthy Rose family being displaced in rural Canada, finding difficulty in this new confronting environment.[11]Having to continue living in rural Ontario influences the main cast of characters over the course of the show’s six seasons, changing their personality traits and behaviours. Canadian Geographic journalist Stephen Marche stated that: “These are not shows about the love of place, but about what places do to you: how they make you talk, how they make you dress, how they make you act, how they make you love.”[11]

One major critique of Frye and Atwood’s presentation of the garrison mentality is that the theory’s scope is Eurocentric. Professor William Beard from the University of Alberta has stated that “the Frye-Atwood model [of the garrison mentality is viewed] with contempt if not outright hostility”.[12] This criticism contends that the theory is confined “to an Anglo-colonial way of thinking that puts white British conquerors in charge of everything, so blind to the regionalism and multiculturalism of the refigured national conversation”.[12]

Another criticism levelled against the theory for its assumptions that the environment influences authors and artists. Literary academic Eli Mandel has argued that Frye’s claim of natural land determining qualities in literature is false. Mandel conversely presented the idea that authors ‘invent’ the land themselves, using writing to represent the Canadian landscape.[1] This critique thus attempts to undermine the theory as a whole, as the assumption that one’s environment can influence their qualities is a central tenet of the garrison mentality.

Michael Greenstein contributed an article entitled Beyond the Ghetto and the Garrison: Jewish-Canadian Boundaries - Beyond Nationalism: The Canadian Literary Scene in Global Perspective in a 1981 publication of the Canadian periodical Mosaic.[13]

Julie Spergel called for an examination of the terminology in "Constructing a Multicultural Identity at the Canadian Frontier: Mordecai Richler and Jewish-Canadian Writing La construction d’une identité multiculturelle sur la Frontière canadienne: Mordecai Richler et l’écriture juive au Canada" published in 2005. Spergel asserted: "Much can be said about the interactions between the garrisoned or ghettoised and the larger community that creates their feelings of isolation or division."[13]

Sherrie Malisch summarized: "As a shorthand for deficiencies in the Canadian national spirit, the term garrison mentality appears in everything from a political rant against “Laurentian elites” (Bricker) to an institutional critique of the CBC (Miljan and Cooper). In the words of David Staines, the garrison mentality has, for Canadians, become “part of our critical vocabulary, indeed of our very language” (qtd. in Gorjup 23)".[14]

• Siege mentality
• Victim mentality
• Paranoia
• Paranoid fiction
• Learned helplessness
• Self-handicapping  
• Self-perception theory
• Persecutory delusion

• Atwood, Margaret. Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1972.
• Blattberg, Charles. Shall We Dance? A Patriotic Politics for Canada. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2003, ch. 3.
• Frye, Northrop. "Conclusion to a Literary History of Canada." The Bush Garden: Essays on the Canadian Imagination. Toronto: Anansi, 1975.