1. what is peculiar of Canada’s culture.

2. how literature changed over the centuries.

3. the main themes of Canada’s literary works.

4. the most famous Canadian authors.

5. how visual arts changed in the 20^th century.

6. a city famous for film production.

7. a famous film festival.

 

The culture of English-speaking Canada is a blend of British and American influences while the French-speaking part mixes French with American. Though the American influence dominates, immigrant groups have retained much of their ethnic traditions and Canadian government warmly encourage this.

Early Canadian literature produced excellent works both in French and English but they were heavily influenced by the traditions of the mother countries. However, in the early twentieth centuries writers began to discover their distinctly Canadian voices, though still speaking French and English.

The Canadian landscape has given rise to oral and written literature for centuries. The main themes of early literature were the place of man in the rugged Canadian environment and the fight for survival. Later some novels revolved around the theme of the conflict between urban culture and rural culture, usually portraying the rural characters as morally superior and the simplicity of rural living as lost in the city.

Later writers turned their attention towards issues such as the search of identity and the complexity of Canadian mosaic. Canada's literature has been strongly influenced by international immigration, particularly in recent decades. It reflects the country's ethnic and cultural diversity, with many of its most prominent writers focusing on ethnic life. Since World War II, multiculturalism has been an important theme.

Satire and irony are also important elements of Canadian literature.

By the 1990s, Canadian literature was viewed as some of the world's best. Canadian authors such as Alice Munro, Douglas Coupland, Michael Ondaatje, Mordecai Richler, Margaret Atwood are the best-known Canadian writers internationally.

Painting and the visual arts showed the European influence throughout the formative years but great canvases depicting landscapes of the frontier and images of frontier life by Irish-born artist Paul Kane and city scenes by the German Cornelius Krieghoff showed a particularly Canadian pride already in the nineteenth century. In the 1930s artists abandoned the great natural scenes of country and town and started to experiment with theoretical art, especially under the influence of the French school of Quebec, and that taste still predominates.

Native art has enjoyed a renaissance of its own in recent years. The stone carvings of the Inuit and the totem-pole art of the Indians are much appreciated while central and provincial governments do much to record and preserve the oral traditions of song and story-telling.

Canada has also a film industry and Toronto is referred to as ‘Hollywood North’ as it ranks third in North America for both TV and film production. Toronto is also home to one of the most important film festivals in the world, the 'Toronto International Film Festival', which attracts high-profile actors and film-makers form around the globe.