It's a truth universally held by veterans of the Grade 9 English exam that a work of fiction requires a "strong sense of place" to come alive in the reader's mind. Those of us who answered the bonus question may also remember that the attitudes, goals and manners of characters in a work of fiction are very much determined by their place of origin and residence, and that characters in a Canadian novel have a special relationship to a vague, brooding entity known as The North.
