Northern (genre)

Other common characters include fur trappers and traders, lumberjacks, prospectors, First Nations people, outlaws, settlers, and townsfolk.

International interest in the region and the genre was fuelled by the Klondike Gold Rush (1896–99) and subsequent works surrounding it, fiction and non-fiction.

[3] The primary antagonist in a Northern can be the wilderness, the weather and other natural elements, which the protagonists must endure, overcome and survive.

In Northerns and wider crime fiction, the general Canadian preference is for law enforcement to be performed by the state rather than vigilantes or private investigators.

American-authored Mounties are often little different from US Marshalls and project the values of Westerns in that they place their individual sense of justice and conscience above their duty to the law.

[5] According to Pierre Berton "the French-Canadian was to the northerns what the Mexican was to the Westerns — an exotic primitive, adaptable as a chameleon to play a hero or a heavy.

[9] A common anachronism in Northerns was the tyranny and absolute power of the Hudson's Bay Company and its officers, even into the modern period.

In films such as Pony Soldier and Saskatchewan the North-West Mounted Police display reason, compassion and a sense of fair play in their dealings with Aboriginal people (First Nations) as opposed to hotheaded American visitors (often criminals), lawmen or the American Army who seem to prefer extermination with violence.

David Skene-Melvin classes the "second period" of Canadian crime literature (1880–1920), as "the heyday of the 'Northern' and the literary exploration of Canada's remote and romantic frontiers.

"[6] He refers to Joseph Edmund Collins as an important figure in this period because, despite his work being of low quality, he was the first Canadian author to address some aspects of the 'Matter of Canada' in his novels, such as The Story of Louis Riel: The Rebel Chief (1885) and Annette, the Métis Spy (1886).

[2] Adventure novels from veterans of the gold rush—such as Jack London's The Call of the Wild (1903), Rex Beach's The Spoilers (1906) and Robert W. Service's The Trail of Ninety-Eight (1909)—became best sellers.

Nevertheless, Skene-Melvin writes "Just as the Western is widely regarded as emblematic of American culture, it can be argued that the Northern is the only truly indigenous Canadian art form, even if most of its exponents have been foreigners.

[3] Its author, Samuel Franklin Cody initially wrote it as a Western but changed the location to capitalize on the contemporary gold rush.