In Canada, Nobody Is Ever Overthrown Because

Listen Your Lordship, I'm A Respecter Of Institutions. Even In Paris, I Remained A Canadian. I Puffed Hashish, But I Didn't Inhale.

I'm Criticized By The Feminists, By The Jewish Establishment, By Canadian Nationalists. And Why Not? I've Had My Pot Shots At Them. I'm Fair Game.

I Had, Like Any Other Young Novelist, Started Out By Believing The Difficult Thing Was To Get Published And That, Once You Managed That, Well, Your Financial Problems Were Over. I Discovered, Like Any Other Serious Novelist, That Actually They Had Only Just Begun.

In, 1950, At The Age, 19 I Dropped Out Of St. George William College In Montreal, As It Then Was, And Sailed For England On The Franconia. Foolishly, No Arrogantly, Believing I Could Put Canada And Its Picayune Problems Behind Me, Never Dreaming It Would Become The Raw Material Of Most Of My Fiction And Non-fiction. Or That I Would Care So Deeply About Its Surviving Intact.

There Are Three Sides To Every Argument. Yours. The Other Guy's. And The Right Side.