While ordering my image-archives, related to Nabokov, I found D.Zimmer's representation of Antiterra. Ardis is situated close to Quebec in Canada. Being devoid of any kind of geographical talent, I'm unable to proceed with my associations related to the importance of Canada (or its symbolization) in the writings of V.N, or to its equivalence with Russia and St. Petersburg.

All I know (but not with certainty) is that V.N's life and wanderings took place exclusively in the Northern hemisphere. and that representationally it seems to have been bent over itself to recreate the roundness (or "geoidness") of our planet It seems that this would be a valid representation of the world and the habitat of certain butterfly families or species, not for humans.

*References to Canada in Pale Fire:

1. Sybil Shade "unfortunately she left New Wye even before I did, and is dwelling now with relatives in Quebec [ ] Shadeans "headed for Canada in droves to pounce on the poor lady"

2. lines 81-82 " Here, tucked away by the Canadian maid,/ I listened to the buzz downstairs and prayed."

3. "He never tired of illustrating by means of these examples the extraordinary blend of Canadian Zone and Austral Zone that "obtained," as he put it, in that particular spot of Appalachia where at our altitude of about 1,500 feet northern species of birds, insects and plants commingled with southern representatives."

4. John Shade’s wife, née Irondell [ ] was a few months his senior. I understand she came of Canadian stock, as did Shade’s maternal grandmother (a first cousin of Sybil’s grandfather, if I am not greatly mistaken).

5.CK on line 678: "Two of these translations appeared in the August number of the Nouvelle Revue Canadienne [ ] I have no space here to list a number of other blurrings and blunders in this Canadian version of the Dean of St. Paul’s denouncement of Death, that slave — not only to "fate" and "chance" — but also to us ("kings and desperate men")".

6. "Niagarin who had lived in Canada spoke English and French; Andronnikov had some German. The little Zemblan they knew was pronounced with that comical Russian accent that gives vowels a kind of didactic plenitude of sound."