Montreal's Anglo literary scene is more vibrant than it's been in decades

There was once a time when Montreal’s Anglo writers were central to the city’s culture—here’s how new generations of writers are bringing it full circle.

Alexander Hackett

September 4, 2024- Read time: 12 min

Photograph: Braedan Houtman

Insofar as we can speak of a golden age of English-language Montreal literature, the period from the 1950s through to the early 1970s stands out as a natural choice.

Mordecai Richler, Mavis Gallant, Hugh McLennan, and Leonard Cohen all enjoyed success nationally and internationally. Richler enjoyed stirring the pot with blistering anti-nationalist op-eds in the New York Times, his jowly yet doe-eyed mug frequently appearing on the evening news. MacLennan won five Governor General's awards and summed up Canada's colonial reality in one pithy sentence: the Two Solitudes. Gallant wrote about the Montreal of her youth for the New Yorker and had enough of an impact on the collective cultural psyche to inspire the Lucinda Krementz character in Wes Anderson's "The French Dispatch", played by Frances McDormand.

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