Crossing Borders: Sharon Pollock's Revisitation of Canadian Frontiers

Abstract

Sharon Pollock's "history plays" are essentially iconoclastic, deconstructing comfo rtable assumptions about the growth of the Canadian nation and the peaceful integration of "others" from across the borders. In two of her early plays — Walsh, which premiered at Theatre Calgary in 1973, and The Komagala Maru Incident, which was first produced at the Vancouver Playhouse in 1976 — she demonstrated how the politics of exclusion determined the characteristics of a "white man's country." In Fair Liberty's Call, which opened at the Patterson Theatre in Stratford, Ontario in July, 1993, she deconstructs the "Loyalist myth" which assumes that Canada's democratic freedoms owe a great deal to the courageous, independent exiles from America, who crossed the border to begin a more egalitarian society. The title of Pollock's play is shown, in fact, to be ironic: there is little difference between the policy or actions of rebel and loyalist, Patriot and Tory. The contentious issues which fuelled the War of Independence are replicated in Canada. In all three plays, borders are imposed — between countries, between individuals — in the interests of securing or protecting property. Political or ethical principles are modified to serve basically acquisitive impulses, and government policy expresses the entrenched bigotry and greed of an established population, all immigrants or the descendants of immigrants.

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