By David Winch
Special to The Record
At a busy Portland Street intersection near the exit from autoroute 410, drivers can briefly glimpse a high-post street sign, while turning left or right on their way to SAQ wine depot or other shopping-mall outlets: rue Northrop-Frye.
This undistinguished, four-block street is an important local reminder of one of the most eminent English Canadians to emerge from the Townships. As the street sign notes, Frye was an “Auteur et critique littéraire (1912-1991)”. And not just any literary critic, but arguably the most influential in the world.
Northrop Frye was born in Sherbrooke in 1912 and lived there only to age 7. But the Frye family’s roots there were deep and, as biographer John Ayre reports, even during his long years teaching English literature at the University of Toronto, Frye “always considered himself a Quebecer”.
