Desmond Pacey's career as a critic of Canadian literature and criticism, beginning with his prefiguring of a pattern later developed by others such as A.J.M. Smith and John Sutherland, ultimately ends with his confirming the lines of regional decentralization that follow from Northrop Frye's re-creation of that very same early work. An outline of Pacey's career in effect traces the trajectory of the work of Smith, Sutherland, and Frye, and, as do all reflections, it actually serves to reverse what it ostensibly replicates. A re-examination of Pacey's history of Canadian literature reveals its movements of retreat, re-inscription, and relocation; its most characteristic leanings are toward ambivalence and paradox. Despite Pacey's striving for a sort of synthesis in the history of Canadian literature, his history ends in a representation of manifold division. Similarly, his history of Canadian literary criticism ends in binary opposition, maturity deferred.
