The Curve of Time

Review By Misao Dean

August 20, 2026

I have an untested belief, that I swear by nonetheless, that some of the best writing in modernist Canadian literature is nonfiction. When I began studying in the seventies, this was a truism: that Hugh MacLennan’s essays were better than his fiction, that Morley Callaghan only wrote well when he wrote like the reporter manqué that he was, that Norman Levine’s essays were some of the best Canadian writing published. In retrospect, the view that Canadian non-fiction was better than Canadian fiction was probably more the result of the general condemnation of Canadian fiction at the time, rather than the brilliance of MacLennan’s essays. Nonetheless, I think Canadian nonfiction by writers like George Whalley, Emily Carr, Bruce Hutchinson, and M. Wylie Blanchet, the subject of this review, represent the attention to style and the worldview that characterizes the best of Canadian modernist writing.

This is one reason why I find this new expanded edition of The Curve of Time somewhat disappointing. The book itself is wonderful: a spare and elegantly written memoir depicting a single mother and her children voyaging to the tiny coves and islands of the B.C. coast in a small motor launch. Originally published in 1961, and describing events that took place in the 1930s, the book is recognized (on the west coast at least) as a classic, and is frequently recommended to people who move here, as Edith Iglauer writes in the afterword, as a “spiritual introduction” to the place. The book is structured according to a quotation from Maeterlinck that suggests that time is a curve, and that standing at the top of the curve you can see both back into the past, and forward into the future; the Curve of Time dips into the past and presents vignettes of a life lived close to nature that evoke British childhood favourites like Swallows and Amazons as well as explorer narratives like George Vancouver’s Voyage of Discovery or the natural descriptions of Blanchet’s friend Hubert Evans. It’s a delightful and accomplished literary work that emphasizes materiality and detail, and focuses on perspective and individuality in a way characteristic of the modernist mindset.

It’s because I respect this book and its author that I find this particular edition a bit trivializing. The book features an introduction by two of Blanchet’s grandchildren, Michael Blanchet and Judy Reid, along with family photographs and hand drawn maps, and as an afterword, a “character study” of the author written by journalist Edith Iglauer. This setting characterizes the book as a nostalgic “true life story” mainly of interest as documentation of the life of its quirky and accomplished author and as evidence of the beauty and isolation of the undeveloped BC coast in the first half of the 20^th century. The added material presents the book as a “local favourite,” a nostalgic true-life story, rather than a world-class work of literature.

Fair enough, I suppose. The pictures are fun, and Iglauer’s essay is, like all her writing, well researched and intelligent. A preface by publisher Howard White of Harbour Publishing reminds us of the gratitude we owe him for keeping books like this in print, and of the importance to him of marketing works like this so they will sell to the “general reader.” The celebratory atmosphere would be ruined by reminding readers of the Anglican-snooty attitudes of the author, and her obliviousness of the local indigenous folks. I think of these as historical attitudes to be studied and critiqued, rather than embarrassing moments to “skip over,” which I suspect is the attitude of the general reader. But I’m a literature professor, and I’m in the minority. Buy this book for your mother, your sister, and your friends who are coming out to visit BC. They won’t be disappointed.