Combat journal for Place d'Armes : a personal narrative

S. Symons, P. Buitenhuis

This highly experimental novel documents a symbolic personal journey from Toronto to Montreal. In this celebration of Canada's centennial year, Symons located the heart of Canada in the place of arms, Place d'Armes, in the core of Old Montreal, where he embraced, literally and figuratively, his male Québécois lovers. It is to French Canada and the symbolic buildings surrounding Place d'Armes that Symons turned (and away from the cerebral, superficial, increasingly Americanized culture of English Canada) to find that fourth dimension that is Canada's soul- and in doing so, provided the first depiction of a gay literary sensibility in the Canadian context.