Introduction

Transnational Identities 327
through liminal space is thus a period of adjustment, which allows them to change
in such a way that they can connect to their new environment, which will, however,
also be modified through these spaces. 38
This is illustrated well in the character of Patrick. He, too, occupies transformative
spaces repeatedly, of which I will only focus on two here, the Island of the
Blind and Union Station. While the island may at first not seem like a particularly
liminal space, it is nevertheless in an in-between location because on the one hand
it is land, but on the other hand it is disconnected from the mainland and surrounded
by water. Patrick’s being on it illustrates his continuing lack of belonging.
It echoes John Donne’s “No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece
of the continent, a part of the main” (1305). Patrick, however, is depicted as such
an island in his disconnection from all community. Unlike Temelcoff, Patrick
unsurprisingly has to pass through several transformative spaces until he finally
changes and becomes able to connect to his surroundings. The scene of the Island
of the Blind is very evocative in this respect, because it highlights the theme of
blindness usually associated with Patrick. On the island he is able to see, but lacks
other senses that are needed there and relies on a blind woman he meets on the
island to guide him through it (SL 168-71). He is thereby still separate from the
community surrounding him in this space. As a result, this transformative space
cannot change Patrick either: the woman symbolically blinds him before he leaves
by covering his eyes with her hands (SL 170) so that Patrick is not transformed
but returns to the mainland still unable to see.
His transformation finally takes place almost at the end of the storyline when
he returns from prison and passes through Union Station, in a passage which is
charged with allusions to all the things that kept him from connecting throughout:
A group of redcaps were standing with three large cages full of dogs, all of
whom were barking like aristocrats claiming to be wrongly imprisoned.
[Patrick] went up to the cages. They were anxious with noise. He had come
from a place where a tin cup against a cell wall was the sole form of protest.
He got closer to the cages, looked into the eyes which saw nothing, the way
his own face in prison had looked in a metal mirror.
He was still crouched when the redcaps wheeled the cages down the ramp.
On his knees in Union Station. He felt like the weight on the end of a
plumb-bob hanging from the very centre of the grand rotunda, the absolute
community and its transnational space. It is likely also the moment of Temelcoff’s transformation
because “he sees the landscape as something altered” after that night (SL 48).
38 Regarding this, Sergio Perosa offers an interesting analysis of how the immigrants’ work at
“linking devices” (185) such as the bridge leads to changes in the structure of the city and turns
it into a space that is “suited for new nomads, internal as well as external nomads, rather than
settlers” and makes Toronto a place of “interchange and integration” (186). It symbolizes how
the influence of liminal, transformative spaces can affect its surroundings.