David Ferry, U of Victoria
Reaney days in the Summer Kitchen: The confluence of ideas, identities and the place of Winnipeg that influenced James Reaney’s theories on education and theatre.

After his early success as a poet and upon graduation from University of Toronto, James Reaney found himself in a completely foreign environment when he accepted a teaching position at the University of Winnipeg. Much of his time there was spent exploring a physical, intellectual and spiritual landscape that helped forge his evolving philosophy on theatre and education. His Winnipeg friends (like John Hirsch) were instrumental in the development of his vision. Reaney's educational drive was part of his visionary approach, a way of actively realising a universal dimension through local situations. Reaney also was concerned with the question of the way local art can become universal. In an editorial he once exclaimed, “What a maddening situation for the artist! Always this feeling of circumference for the native artist, centre for everybody else!” He asks, “What do we need a native drama for? Why all this absurd nationalism?” “Because,” he answers, “I don’t believe you can really be world or whatever until you've sunk your claws into a very locally coloured tree trunk and scratched your way through to universality”. Starting with the specific connections Reaney made with regional history and the landscape in Winnipeg circa 1949-1960 (Marshall McLuhan told him that “Manitoba had no foreground so that made it much easier to see your mental landscape.”) I will link Reaney’s development as a teacher to his theories on theatre making. In particular on his approach to creating a uniquely Canadian theatre, complete with directing, acting, and training style.