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Aaron Straup Cope:

Between plane-living and the Internets we may be midway through the process of distilling every place on Earth down to one of a half-dozen archetypal city-states but until that happens trying to affect a person’s relationship to the history and geography of whatever piece of dirt they call home will continue to be a source of tension.

Eighteen city-states within a global Imperial political model = late 21st Century.

I first began hearing the city-state meme in the mid-1990s. An awarness of it, or a tendency to quote it as Aaron Cope has done, is almost a marker of a generation. John Ralston Saul and his wife are part of the last generation of Canadian nationalists, always ready to write books on Canada and to talk about what it means to be Canadian. Meanwhile, people my own age, in my own city, started Spacing magazine, which is very much of the city-state mentality.

With the exception of the Tragically Hip, I have excluded Canadian musicians simply because they would exaggerate the list and because Canadian music for the most part is no more culturally specific than any other (accounting for its international success). The inclusion of the Hip here reflects their use of Canadian specific content throughout their songs. Leonard Cohen is included for his work as writer more than for his work as a musician.

This list merely tried to illustrate the groupings of artists by generation, to show the progression of cultural achievers over the last century. This illustrates that at the beginning of the 21st Century we have a legacy of artists to understand a heritage around, which wasn’t so much the case even fifty years ago. Also, any name not here is more of an oversight than a judgment (suggestions welcome).

Catharine Parr Traill 1802 - 1899
Susanna Moodie 1803 - 1885

Ozias Leduc 1864-1955

J.E.H. MacDonald 1873 - 1932 (G7)
Tom Thomson 1877-1917 (G7)

Fred Varley 1881-1969 (G7)
A.Y. Jackson 1882-1974 (G7)
Lawren Harris 1885-1970 (G7)
Arthus Lismer 1885-1969 (G7)
Frank Johnston 1888 - 1949 (G7)

Franklin Carmichael 1890 - 1945 (G7)
Harold Innis 1894-1952

Paul-Emile Borduas 1905-1960
Hugh MacLennan 1907-1990

Marshall McLuhan 1911 - 1980
Northrop Frye 1912-1991
Robertson Davies 1913-1995
George Grant 1918-1988
Pierre Trudeau 1919 - 2000

Jean-Paul Riopelle 1923-2002
Oscar Peterson 1925-2007
Margaret Laurence 1926-1987

Timothy Findley 1930 - 2002
Mordecai Richler 1931-2001
Alice Munro 1931 -
Glenn Gould 1932 - 1982
Robert Fulford 1932-
Leonard Cohen 1934 -
Garry Neil Kennedy 1935 -
Margaret Atwood 1939 -
Adrienne Clarkson 1939 -

Jorge Zontal 1944 - 1994 (General Idea)
Felix Partz 1945-1994
Jeff Wall 1946 -
AA Bronson 1946- (General Idea; Solo)
John Ralston Saul 1947 -
Rodney Graham 1949 -
David Gilmour 1949 -

George Elliott Clarke 1960 -
Douglas Coupland 1961 -
Gordon Downie 1964 - (Tragically Hip)
Paul Langlois (1964 - (Tragically Hip)
Rob Baker 1962 (Tragically Hip)
Gord Sinclair (Tragically Hip)
Johnny Fay 1966 - (Tragically Hip)
Mark Kingwell 1965-
Darren O’Donnell 1965 -

(From)

JA: Do you want to add something about the art scene?

RR: I have this vague sense that the art world has become so isolated from everything else in the universe that you’re either in it or in the rest of the world — nobody has time to be in both.

-Josefina Ayerza interviewed Richard Rorty in the Nov/Dec 1993 issue of Flash Art

Moving parts in rubbing contact require lubrication to avoid excessive wear. Honorifics and formal politeness provide lubrication where people rub together. Often the very young, the untraveled, the naive, the unsophisticated deplore these formalities as “empty,” “meaningless,” or “dishonest,” and scorn to use them. No matter how “pure” their motives, they thereby throw sans into machinery that does not work too well at best.

-Robert Heinlein, The Notebooks of Lazarus Long, from Time Enough for Love (1973)

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Warren Wagar, A Short History of the Future, page 244:

…sharp witted, yet outgoing and cooperative, the young members of Homo Sapiens altior fashioned a new model of human behavior ideally suited for life in autonomous communities. They were less inclined than the old human type to take advantage of others and too intelligent to be taken advantage of themselves. Their extraordinary powers of mind and heart were another form of wealth, shielding them, as ample personal incomes and education helped to shield everyone, from the age-old tendency of most of Homo sapiens to fall victim to predators.

As integration deepens, the generation whose identity was created by separation can feel left behind, betrayed, and lash out … at other members of the minority.

– Andrew Sullivan, parsing Wright, Sharpton, and Obama