At a moment when the idea of Canada itself feels less assumed and more worth defending, what does it mean to be Canadian, and what does Canadian identity look like?
For a country that defines itself by what it isn’t—not American, not British—that question eludes easy answers. My project, Drawn to Canada, which began as a Masters project at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, as my attempt to visualize this paradox: a semiotic study of national identity through the creative act of drawing and writing every day for one hundred days (as of this writing, it's at day 143). Each drawing, whether of an object, a phrase, or a personality, functions as a sign within a broader visual system of Canadian representation.
The question of identity has long preoccupied Canada’s artists, writers, and critics. After the Second World War, the Canadian government sought to define and promote a coherent national culture through the arts. Within this climate, Margaret Atwood’s Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature (1972) became both a product and a catalyst for national self-definition.
Atwood argued that Canadian writing expressed a collective identity shaped by the struggle for survival against the forces of landscape, history, and cultural invisibility. While American literature celebrated the frontier hero and British literature examined hierarchy and class, Canadian writing was marked by a sense of being small beside vastness, natural or political. “Survival,” for Atwood, was not only a literary theme but a condition of national consciousness.
Half a century later, her framework still resonates, though threats to Canadian identity now arise from challenges to sovereignty, economic security, and waning trust in the institutions that once defined stability.
In The Bush Garden: Essays on the Canadian Imagination (1971), Northrop Frye described a similar tension as the “garrison mentality,” a mindset that motivated Canadians to protect themselves by banding together and depending on community. It produced a national character valuing cooperation and civility, but also a willingness to fight when cornered. We still protect the fort—and there are guards at the gate.
By the late 1980s, critic Linda Hutcheon reframed this discourse. In The Canadian Postmodern (1988), she argued that Canadian identity is not fixed but continually rewritten, shaped by self-awareness, parody, and reinterpretation. A draft, always in revision.
Drawn to Canada extends such ideas into visual form, translating literary theory into brand language. What has emerged, through research and participation, is a portrait of a nation whose identity is defined by plurality, regional culture, and shared experience. The work reimagines Frye’s “garrison” as community, Atwood’s “survival” as agency, and Hutcheon’s “reinvention” as the ongoing creative act of becoming. Drawn to Canada confirms that Canadian identity isn’t something we define once; it’s something we keep drawing together. And it's something worth defending.
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