The New Romans: Candid Canadian Opinions of the U.S.

by Al Purdy

How do Canadians really feel about the United States and Americans? In admittedly biased, forthright terms, The New Romans proposes many diverse answers to this provocative and controversial question.

"The United States is the glory, jest, and terror of Mankind."

". . there is no nation-state in the world today more committed to myths than the United States."

"The United States has mobilized the most Barbarous military machine the world has seen since Nazi Germany."

" you're sitting on your own rumbling volcano"

"God bless America . . . for saving us from the fate of Australia."

"In most countries, academics are the intellectual critics of society, those who are primarily concerned with great moral issues. In the United States, the vast majority of academics have seen their primary role as defenders of the existing system."

"No other nation under heaven has ever fallen so completely victim to its own folklore as has the United States."

"Today the United States is by far the most belligerent member of the disunited family of nations. Her economy is more permanently a war economy than that of any other nation in the modern world."

"A country which elected, but survived, McKinley, Harding, Coolidge, Hoover, and Nixon as vice-president can't be all bad."

These are only a few of the opinions, ranging from the relatively detached to the highly emotional, expressed by some of Canada's foremost poets, novelists, journalists, politicians, and intellectuals about their huge southern neighbour. The New Romans represents .an attempt by Canadians to critically appraise one of the most powerful nations in the modern world, a nation with whom Canada is intimately and likely inextricably involved. This collection of contemporary Canadian opinion will undoubtedly become one of the most debated books to appear in Canada for many years.

178 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1968

About the author

Alfred Wellington Purdy was one of the most popular and important Canadian poets of the 20th century. Purdy's writing career spanned more than fifty years. His works include over thirty books of poetry; a novel; two volumes of memoirs and four books of correspondence. He has been called the nation's "unofficial poet laureate".

Born in Wooler, Ontario Purdy went to Albert College in Belleville, Ontario, and Trenton Collegiate Institute in Trenton, Ontario. He dropped out of school at 17 and rode the rails west to Vancouver. He served in the Royal Canadian Air Force during World War II. Following the war, he worked in various jobs until the 1960s, when he was finally able to support himself as a writer, editor and poet.

Honours and awards Purdy received include the Order of Canada (O.C.) in 1982, the Order of Ontario in 1987, and the Governor General's Award, in 1965 for his collection The Cariboo Horses, and again in 1986 for The Collected Poems of Al Purdy. The League of Canadian Poets gave Purdy the Voice of the Land Award, a special award created by the League to honour his unique contribution to Canada.

Al Purdy died in North Saanich, B.C., on April 21, 2000. His final collection of poetry, Beyond Remembering: The Collected Poems of Al Purdy, was released posthumously in the fall of 2000.

On May 20, 2008, a large bronze statue of Purdy was unveiled in Queen's Park in downtown Toronto.