Cases of death by exposure to cold and the associated fear of freezing remain potent plot and thematic devices in contemporary Canadian fiction. In Wayne Johnston’s The Colony of Unrequited Dreams, Michael Winter’s The Big Why and Robert Kroetsch’s The Man From the Creeks, encounters with frozen bodies take on increased significance. The self-consciousness of these Canadian historical novels as anecdotal re-writings of the master narratives of History is conveyed by similar acts of resistance to the closing of History within the novels themselves. When a character is frozen, his or her voice is silenced, allowing the grand récit of History to master that character’s legacy. Anecdotalization allows authors of historiographic metafiction to interrogate, challenge, and supplement the freezing impulse of “factual” historiography.
