Loving your blog.

I’m sure that the “remittance” men who came to Canada included a fair share of criminals, but I’ve seen nothing that said we were a destination for prisoner ships. I suspect you are right that a ship or two was dispatched from Canada, although I have not seen that in my very limited historical reading of the period.

As for the literature thrust of the post, thanks for bringing it back to light in the comments section. I’ve read a few more Australians (most notably Seven Types of Ambiguity) since and have more on my list for this year (That Deadman Dance and Five Bells when they are released here next week). After I’ve reviewed the individual books, I should put together another post that includes Canadian comparisons. I continue to believe that the two Dominion literatures have a lot in common.

Oh, and I believe that Canada Bay in Sydney, NSW was named for the penal colony settlers who were sent there FROM Canada (Nova Scotia prison ships, maybe?) North America was definitely a penal transportation destination long before Australia.

And coming back to this post reminds me that I should do a follow-up sometime soon. As Lisa has noted here and elsewhere, Australian and Canadian fiction do have much more in common than I was able to address here. Since the original proved so popular, a second essay definitely seems in order.

My dad’s a bit of a WWI buff – and has visited all the battlefields in France and Belgium. I could give you a very long list of non-fiction books on the Australian experience of war (believe me, I know, having bought countless titles for birthday and xmas presents) but the fiction list is very short. Roger MacDonald’s 1915 springs to mind. I read it as a teenager and absolutely loved it, but I wonder if it wasn’t a little bit overly sentimental. I’d have to read it again to see if my love of it still remains. And, of course, there is George Johnston’s stuff, but that is mainly second world war if I remember correctly…