ACCORDING TO W. I Keith in The Canadian Encyclopedia (1985 edition), Charles G. D. Roberts and Ernest Thompson Seton between them created "the one native Canadian art form," the animal story. However, there are signs that a second "native Canadian art form" has emerged in the writings of Wayland Drew, a 56-year-old high school teacher and increasingly prolific writer in Bracebridge, Ontario. This new art form is, I submit, the "environmental novel," a form of fiction in which the state of the characters' environment is the principal raison d'etre of the story. Drew published his first environmental novel with Anansi in 1973. Titled The Wabeno Feast, it contains the seeds of his later novels in its depiction of a society in decline from a state of harmony with nature into over-civilization, and whose salvation lies in a return to an unpolluted state.

By 1986, Drew had published the third volume of his science-fiction series, the Erthring Cycle (individual titles: The Memoirs of Alcheringia, 1984; The Gaian Erpedient, 1985; The Master of Norriya, 1986). At the time, I was reviewing paperbacks for CBC radio. The Erthring Cycle was, I declared (in broad daylight and in more or less full possession of all remaining faculties), the Great Canadian Novel at last. All three books were outstanding for their important and gripping stories, their fluent prose, and the fact that only a Canadian could have written them (and besides, they were published in mass market paperback by Ballantine Books of New York, which made them an irresistible choice right there).