Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1993. [Vol. 1.] Eger Journal of American Studies. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 21)

STUDIES - Anna Jakabfi: Regionalism and the Surgeon Figure in Hugh MacLennan's Fiction

absorbing carpet of spruce needles that have accumulated over the centuries. The rivers run through it teeming with trout and salmon, and moose, bear, deer, and all the northern animals large and small are at home in the tangle of threes. So are blackflies and mosquitoes in the spring, and in winter so is the snow. In winter this whole land is like Siberia."

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3 Hugh MacLennan's father died in 1939, almost two years before Barometer Rising appeared. He created the three doctor figures with roughly a decade's difference between them. Hugh MacLennan as a grownup had formed a close and warm friendship with his father in the latter's few years. He could not get quite distanced from his father in his first novel. Angus Murray is a minor character in the book, well drawn, but not quite a round character. As the years pass Hugh MacLennan got distanced enough from the immediate presence of his father, and as the doctor's figure lived on in him, he created and recreated not only his father's figure but he came closest to revive his parents' marriage in the Ainslie couple. Ainslie just like his own father was determined to live in Broughton, the colliery town. Hugh MacLennan is quite ironical to people, like himself who had left the Maritimes: "It was a place, I used to assume, where more people were born than died. Ambitious men tended to leave it; having done so, they also tended to yearn for it and to save up to come home on vacations. Wherever they went, they had the habit of telling strangers it was one of the loveliest spots on earth."

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4 As the doctor figures grow in characters in the novels, so do they see not only more of Canada but also more of the world. Angus Murray lived in Halifax, fought in the first world war in Europe and then went bact to his home-town which he decided to leave and start a new life somewhere west of it. Daniel Ainslie having lived in England, spends his life in Broughton. 2

3 Cf. op. cit pp. 3,173. 2

4 Hugh MacLennan, The Scottish Touch: Cape Breton in The Other Side of Hugh MacLennan, ed. Elspeth Cameron (Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, 1978), p. 214. 59