Walt Whitman’s Canada brings together for the first time for the general reader a wealth of social, literary, and cultural materials to document the personal and poetic influences exerted by the great American poet of "democratic vistas" on Canadian social activists, artists, writers, and thinkers. Here are occasional papers — essays, articles, addresses, notes, diaries, notices, studies, reports, poems, memoirs — written by many interesting and high-minded men and women, especially Walt Whitman (1819-1892) as well as his first biographer Dr. Richard Maurice Bucke (1837-1902) who was one of the founders of the School of Medicine at the University of Western Ontario. Featured treatment is given the sojourn enjoyed by Whitman who accepted Dr. Bucke’s invitation to travel throughout Ontario and Quebec during the summer of 1880. Whitman was mightily impressed by the scenes, sites, and people of Canada, the only foreign country that he ever visited. Attention is also given to Flora MacDonald Denison and Merrill Denison, in particular the dedication by the "Canadian Whitmanites" of "Old Walt," the centrepiece of Ontario’s Bon Echo Provincial Park with its unique connection with Whitman and his "democratic ideals."
Cyril Greenland is Professor Emeritus, School of Social Work, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ont. John Robert Colombo is an author and anthologist. Their previous collaboration was The New Consciousness: Selected Papers of Richard Maurice Bucke which studies Bucke’s contributions to biography, medicine, Whitman studies, literature, and the theory of cosmic consciousness.
Other covers by Charles Pachter:
Other Books Written or Introduced by John Robert Colombo
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