Acknowledgements

This book is dedicated to the memory of Herb Wyile, who committed his generous expertise and kind advice to this book when I was still dreaming it up. If he had not been the first to encourage it, I would not have written it. Early support from Brian Trehearne and D. M. R. Bentley also gave me confidence in the project. My heartfelt thanks!

Part of chapter 2, “Tom King’s John Wayne,” was first published in 2016 in a slightly different form in the journal Canadian Literature (no. 225), whose editors and peer reviewers offered insightful comments that contributed to its improvement.

Most of the later chapters were earlier presented in different form at the following conferences:

• “Distant Reading and the Range in the Genre of the Canadian Western.” Canadian Society for Digital Humanities Conference, University of British Columbia, 3 June 2019.
• “Ghostmodernism and the Post-Western: Ondaatje, Eastwood, and Jiles.” Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association Conference, Washington, DC, 19 April 2019.
• “Genre, Parody, and Postmodernism in Luke Price’s Smokey Carmain Westerns.” Association of Canadian College and University Teachers of English Conference, University of Regina, 29 May 2018.
• “The Genre of the Quebec Western and Postmodern Regionalism in George Bowering’s Caprice.” Association for Canadian and Quebec Literatures Conference, University of Regina, 26 May 2018.
• “Ironies of the Western and the Public Domain in Jordan Abel’s Un/inhabited and Injun.” Association of Canadian College and University Teachers of English Conference/Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences, Ryerson University, 28 May 2017.
• “Transnational Nostalgia and ‘Cowboys & Riels’ in Frank Davey’s The Louis Riel Organ & Piano Company.” TransCanadas Conference, University of Toronto, 27 May 2017.
• “Mining the Western: Coal, Gold, and Masculinity in Gil Adamson’s Outlander, Patrick deWitt’s The Sisters Brothers, and Dayle Furlong’s Saltwater Cowboys.” Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association Conference, San Diego, 17 April 2017.
• “The Western Genre and Adventures for Boys in H. A. Cody’s Rod of the Lone Patrol.” Association of Canadian College and University Teachers of English Conference, University of Calgary, 29 May 2016.
• “Transnational Outlaw-Lawman: Ralph Connor and His Border Crossings.” Trans 2016 Conference of the University of Toronto Comparative Literature program, 5 March 2016.
• “The West Turns North: The Western in Canadian Literature and Culture.” Northeast Modern Languages Association Conference, Ryerson University, 30 April–3 May 2015.
• “Tom King’s John Wayne: The American Western in Canadian Literature.” Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association Annual Conference, New Orleans, 1–4 April 2015.

The project in general was supported by an Insight Development Grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada from 2017 to 2019, extended for revisions and spinoff projects into 2022. Kelley Bromley-Brits’s suggestions in helping me to shape the grant application were razor-sharp and highly productive.

In Saskatoon, Delvin Kanewiyakiho sparked my interest in contemporary Indigenous (specifically Cree) culture by explaining to me, shortly after the beginning of the millennium, that the West was still (and still is) in a state of “acute colonialism,” a realization that I had not yet admitted and acknowledged. Some of my oldest friends, Ted View, Clayton Boyer, and Dustin Kasun, expanded this horizon of knowledge in conversations about our families and their experiences.

In Montreal, Allan Hepburn at McGill suggested that I teach a course on the Western, partly because I was from the West. In one of the classes I taught there, Lana McCrea, Nicholas Cameron, and Zev Steinlauf were especially engaged and helped me to see the relevance of the Western to contemporary students and other interpreters of pop culture. Seeing the Coen brothers’ remake of True Grit (2010) with Benjamin S. W. Barootes led to many enlightening conversations about Westerns and medieval genres such as the epic and the romance (and on one occasion Disney’s DuckTales). And Ned Schantz’s insightful probes about genre, and his ideas about national monuments and landscapes in the West, were compelling as we visited the Westerns exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts.

In St. John’s, my research assistants have been invaluable. Amy Donovan conducted early bibliographical research on specific authors and advised me on geography-related topics. Collin Campbell came on board and became the digital designer of the multi-book index of generic conventions—the dataset parallel to this book—and his editorial comments throughout the process have led me to many warranted revisions of the manuscript. Elizabeth Hicks and Mandy Rowsell were enthusiastic and questioning readers of Westerns, post-Westerns, and even non-Westerns. Sam Lehman dug deeper to improve my existing bibliographies on saloons and horses. Yining Zhou and Chris Newell assisted me swiftly and cheerfully with distant reading and editorial work in the penultimate stages of the project. Melanie Hurley and Morgen Mills pursued final questions and refinements with diligence and acuity. And Ericka Making from my graduate seminar told me the likely origin of the title of Dayle Furlong’s 2015 novel Saltwater Cowboys, while Andreae Callanan crystallized our class’s discussions into a brilliant essay on Jordan Abel and the simulation of language loss.

My film class at Memorial helped me to develop my ideas about Pale Rider in many amazingly inductive discussions; I wish to give special thanks to Hailey Ryan, Cassandra Miller, and Connor Fitzpatrick. My Westerns class included Adrian Bell, who introduced me, fortuitously, to the German Western Sons of Great Bear when I was thinking about the transnationality of the Western.

My esteemed colleagues John Geck, Lisa Moore, Chris Lockett, and Andrew Loman read or heard me talk about parts of the book and gave me fresh leads on obscure materials, new and old—and friendly, expert writing advice. Plus all the needed reassurances. Other helpful suggestions came from Danine Farquharson, Helene Staveley, Brad Clissold, Rob Ormsby, Arn Keeling, Mark C. J. Stoddart, Kurt Korneski, and Matt Rise.

Through my father, Lloyd Deshaye, and the playwright Mansel Robinson, I contacted Robert Gagné from the National Arts Centre, who generously arranged for me to see the script of Gabriel Dumont’s Wild West Show when I could not travel farther west to see the show itself. Through my mother, Mary Deshaye (née Albers) and her brothers and sister-in-law in Alberta, I became better acquainted with ranching culture and points of view in the West.

In the United States, Helen Lewis has been unstintingly welcoming as organizer of the Westerns meetings at the various Popular Culture Association and American Culture Association joint conferences held around the country. Christopher Conway invited me to contribute to a book on globalization and the Western in comics, which led me to the work of the Métis painter and scholar David Garneau, and then to a book on the global literary Western (in my case, a chapter on Canadian Westerns by Alix Hawley and Natalee Caple), all of which resonated with me as I finalized this book.

Helen Hajnoczky from University of Calgary Press expressed interest in this project, and that was also a powerful motivator for me to finish it.

My mentor Robert Lecker provided keen feedback when I needed it most.

And Jordanna and Lucy—thank you for everything.