Opening with the Queen Victoria's arrival in Charlottetown harbor, visitors from the Old World emerge with erroneous expectations: they are constantly surprised that the New World is a place of energy, creativity, and imagination, reflected in exuberant architecture, dress, and culture. Elegance
flourishes and society blossoms in gala events where long after midnight "the crinolines swayed, multicoloured and seemingly endowed with independent life of their own." In this lively mix of fact and fiction, Creighton is fascinated by the stuff of culture, here depicted as a distinctive weave of
style, sophistication, and individuality with a unique Canadian character. Her fascination is also with cultural difference. In Canada there is undoubtedly unqualified elegance, but it is an edgier, harder-earned elegance than that of the pompous, baggage-bound Old World.
Published in
1967, exactly one hundred years after Confederation, Creighton's book shows a Canada in the best of all possible worlds. Gone is pioneer poverty and environmental hardship, replaced now by thriving sophistication. At the same time, this is a world that still retains some respect for social
hierarchy, decent manners, and old-fashioned inherited wisdom - the unspoken corollary here is that the Canada of 1967 has grown sloppy, noisy, and vulgar. Lovingly researched and assembled with sixty images, this depiction of Canada in the 1860s reveals much about our own history and myth-making.
Introduction to the Wynford Edition
Foreword
1. Rendezvous at Charlottetown
2. The Canadians Entertain
3. The Travellers and the Towns
4. Christmas in a Village, Canada West, 1866
5. Winter Time and "The Cone"
6. Spacious Days
7. The Chatelaine
8. The
Fashionable Years
9. The Sixties and the Simple Faith
10. Canadians in Paris, 1867
11. Concerning the Duty of Women
12. Literary Life
13. The Sound of Music
14. The Glamour of the Garrison
15. Summer Time
16. Mr. Lawson Comes Home
17. Old Grey City
18. On the
First of July, 1867
Notes
There are no Instructor/Student Resources available at this time.
Luella Creighton (1901-1996) was born in Stouffville, Ontario. She studied at the University of Toronto under E.J. Pratt and the Sorbonne, and later married esteemed Canadian historian and writer Donald Creighton, with whom she had two children. A writer of fiction, non-fiction, and children's
stories, she is best-known for her novel High Bright Buggy Wheels (1951, reissued in 2013), which depicts Mennonite life in rural Ontario. The Wynford edition of Elegant Canadians is introduced by Donald Wright, assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of New
Brunswick.
High Bright Buggy Wheels - The late Luella Creighton
Introduction by Cynthia Flood
The Road to Confederation - The late Donald Creighton and Donald Wright
Canada's First Century (Reissue) - The late Donald Creighton and Donald Wright
The Revenge of the Methodist Bicycle Company - Christopher Armstrong and H. V. Nelles
A History of Canadian Culture - Jonathan F. Vance
