Imaging settlement and displacement: at home in Ka-na-ta

The main focus of this study is the concept of home and how it has been defined and produced in Canadian visual culture from the time Europeans set foot on the land the Iroquois called Ka-na-ta, now known as Canada. In each chapter, the author examines how "home" has come to be imaged and imagined in specific ways in specific periods. A thread of icons weaves through the discussions of Canadian nationalism: the rustic cabin, the frozen North, the lone pine, the 49th parallel border, the forest, the empty landscape, the Native figure. Together, the chapters present a powerful and cohesive view of a nation in which the colonial struggle to establish who can be at home in Ka-na-ta turns on notions of settlement and displacement.