Empire, Colonialism, and Place-Attachment in Young Minds: Quebec Students' Imaginative Travels in the Age of the New Imperialism

Abstract

The imagination is also an invaluable aid in the study of geography. . . . Children are fascinated by travel narratives-witness the success of the works of Jules Verne. The instructor may therefore have the children read some details about the customs of different peoples; or he might even read them a few judiciously selected passages. But there is a danger that must be avoided. Sometimes children with lively imaginations, represent things to themselves in a rather fantastic light; therefore, if objects are not available, one must frequently use images and charts, for they must always have a precise idea of what they learn. 1 This is how, in 1913, the Quebec pedagogical periodical L'Enseignement primaire summarized the role of the imagination in the teaching of geography.A few years earlier, recounting an afternoon's pleasure-boating on the Rivière-aux-Chiens north of Montreal, some young men from the Collège Sainte-Thérèse invoked the fantastic universe of the popular French author: "On a spit of land two people reach out to us; they are waving something written at the end of a long pole, and they cry out to us in anguish: 'Have pity on two poor castaways.' Is it Robinson with Friday on his desert island? Hector Servadac with Ben-Zoof, transported through space on a piece of Algeria?" 2 The account confirms the slippage described by the pedagogues of L'Enseignement primaire in 1913. From the mid-nineteenth century until World War I, it is in this interstice between a "precise" geographic imagination-incorporating the imperial and colonial realities of the time-and a "fantastic" imagination-one evoking their dreams and aspirations-in which young people performed the geographic knowledge instilled in them at school.