Near the end of The Loons, Vanessa notes that the “long-drawn call” of the birds, described as “half mocking and half plaintive”, has fallen silent across the lake, paralleling Piquette’s tragic death. This loss of sound seems to suggest that the birds and the Métis are destined to share a fate of bitter destruction. However, throughout the passage, if one listens closely, the author’s tone echoes that same mix of mockery and lament. By ridiculing her own deeply ingrained arrogance and indifference toward the Métis and by mourning the oppression and injustice suffered by people like Piquette, the author deconstructs her own racist narrative rather than reinforcing it. What might seem like a racist text is transformed into a sorrowful confession.
To decide whether a text is racist, we can use a simple criterion: is the critique aimed at the marginalized groups themselves, or is it directed at the marginalizing behaviors of those in power? The former marks a racist text, while the latter marks an anti-racist one. Some critics might argue that emphasizing the tragic fate of the Métis, as a result of white people’s unfair treatment, ends up victimizing them and undermining their strength. However, when one looks at historical records of witch hunts or the atrocities committed by Hitler against the Jews, where the focus is on condemning the tyrants and not beautifying the lives of victims, it becomes increasingly clear that such portrayals are meant to indict the causes of suffering, not to reinforce a static image of victimhood.
The subtlety of Laurence’s writing lies in her highly self-conscious choice of the narrative focus, itself mirroring the very process of marginalization. By centering the story on the white girl Vanessa and telling it through her perspective, Piquette’s voice is muted, her emotions concealed, and her story fragmented. This narrative choice, designed to appeal to a white audience (and hopefully make them reflect upon their own biases), reveals just how ingrained the racist lens is in dominant culture. At the same time, the author’s narrative voice is self-conscious and almost self-mocking, as can be seen in Vanessa’s reaction when she learns of Piquette’s impending marriage to an Englishman. It isn’t until then does Vanessa “really see her, for the first and only time in all the years”, that is, not until after Piquette has been assimilated into white society through marriage, at the risk of losing her cultural identity that the white protagonist begins to truly acknowledge her existence as a human being, despite the obvious fact that they had “both lived in the same town” since childhood.
By depicting Vanessa’s nearly dehumanizing indifference and blinding arrogance, the text achieves an ironic, almost comically tragic quality. In mocking Vanessa’s willful, almost hyperbolic blindness, the author is also critiquing the limitations of her own narrative strategy. It is only after this moment of “seeing” and self-mockery that the focus gradually shifts to Piquette. Sadly, this shift is triggered only by Piquette’s untimely death — in paragraphs 64 through 69, the story almost exclusively centers on her life, providing the most detailed and intense description of the entire passage, which only intensifies the tragedy, for it is already near the end of the story and definitely too late.
This parallel between content and structure reinforces the idea that the tragic fate of the loons, along with the suffering of Piquette and other Métis people, originates not only from the unfair treatment they endure in the story’s world, but also from the text’s own biased portrayal and silencing. Even the reader’s tendency to admire Vanessa and disdain Piquette reflects this dynamic. In this way, by marginalizing and silencing Piquette’s voice, the story becomes a self-critique: the author is not only condemning the marginalizing actions of white characters but is also questioning her own stylistic choices. In writing about the “half mocking and half plaintive” calls of the loons, the author is also expressing the half mocking and half plaintive attitude toward her own narration. In this sense, Laurence’s The Loons is truly anti-racist, in its own subtle but poignant way.