‘My Land(scape) is Winter’ - Literature and Painting in Quebec: From Imagery to Identity - page 291

telegraph poles (signs of communication) to the right. In the centre of
the scene, a sleigh bearing logs or lumber, probably for the Baie-Saint-
Paul Lumber Company, one of the few industries in the village at the
time (see Tremblay, 68), passes in front of the row of multicoloured
houses set squarely along the horizontal line. Colours are subdued in
hue but high in luminosity, as Walter Klinkhoff notes of Robinson's
work in general: 'His vision of colour is most distinguished and subtle.
Maurice Cullen remarked upon the difficulty of painting in low tone
but high in key. We see in these canvases how well Mr. Robinson has
solved this problem. Here the colours are muted, but how joyously they
sing' (5). Robinson's use of brown and black lines to reinforce his forms
lends his style a 'cloisonné' (set off) effect, reminiscent of the Pont-Aven
painter s 15 a nd which, like the analogous, interlocking curves of the hills
in black, alternating with bands of white snow, are a strong component
of the structural solidity of the painting and culture itself, which like
the village, resists the threatening winter.
Carrier: Le chandail
Alternately titled Une abominable feuille d'érable sur la glace (An Abominable
Maple Leaf on Ice), Le chandail de hockey (The Hockey Sweater), or sim-
ply Le chandail , this famous short story was written by Roch Carrier in
1970 in response to a request by Radio Canada (in the same year, ironi-
cally, that Vigneault's Mon pays was banned from its airwaves). Carrier
recounts the circumstances in an interview with Tamara Tarasoff: 'J'ai
écrit Le chandail de hockey en 1970. Et, rappelez-vous, '70, c'était le mo-
ment où, au Québec, il y avait une montée nationaliste. Le Canada ne
comprenait pas ce qui se passait. Et la grande question était: “Qu'est-ce
que le Québec veut?” Et Radio Canada m'avait demandé de répondre à
la question.' (I wrote The Hockey Sweater in 1970. And, remember 1970
was a time when there was rising nationalism in Quebec. Canada didn't
understand what was happening. And the big question was: 'What
does Quebec want?' And Radio Canada had asked me to respond to the
question.) Unhappy with an initial essay on the question, Carrier then
composed the story, which has known enduring success. Published in
volume form in 1979 and, the following year, made into a National Film
Board of Canada animated short, illustrated by Sheldon Cohen and
narrated by Carrier himself, the tale has become such a classic that an
excerpt from it now figures in French and in English on the back of the
Canadian five-dollar bill.