G Gentrification, Mobility, and the Representation of Toronto in Atwood’s The Testaments Tom Ue Department of English, Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS, Canada Synonyms Borders; Dystopia; Etobicoke; Gentrification; Gilead; Immigration; Migration; Parkdale; Queen West; Renovation; Toronto By the end of The Handmaid’ s Tale (1985), two Eyes, secret policemen for Gilead, lead the narra- tor and central protagonist Offred into a black van. Offred’ s lover and the family’ s driver Nick had revealed to her that they belong to Mayday and encouraged her to follow them. Nick’ s suggestion is corroborated, perhaps, by the men’ s allegation that she had violated state secrets though she has given no cause for such suspicion. The novel’ s epilogue takes the form of selected proceedings from the Twelfth Symposium on Gileadean Stud- ies. In it, we learn that the foregoing account is a reconstruction of material recorded in 30 cassette tapes discovered in a metal footlocker. Offred’ s fate remains unknown. James Darcy Pieixoto, the keynote speaker and the manuscript’ s co-editor, wonders: “Was she smuggled over the border of Gilead, into what was then Canada, and did she make her way thence to England? This would have been wise, as the Canada of that time did not wish to antagonize its powerful neighbour, and there were roundups and extraditions of such refugees. If so, why did she not take her taped narrative with her?” (Atwood 2014, 356–357). Pieixoto proposes a number of possi- bilities, including Offred’ s need to make an urgent journey; her fear of interception; her being recaptured; her forebodings for her husband Luke or their daughter if she makes her story public; her inability to adjust to the world beyond Gilead; and her becoming a recluse. Canada, Pieixoto suggests, is geographically and ideolog- ically removed from Gilead, and it offers Offred and others a temporary refuge. Offred’ s own expe- riences would support his comments: Earlier in the novel, Offred and her household, in their channel surfing, came across a blocked Montreal satellite station, and they learn, from the news, of a ring “smuggling precious national resources over the border into Canada” (2014, 92–94). Atwood’ s reference to an “Underground Femaleroad” that leads to Canada speaks to a longer history of American oppression and freedom in Canada being interconnected. The principal events of Atwood’ s The Testaments (2019) take place some 15 years following Offred’ s arrest, and this sequel rotates between three narrators. In “The Ardua Hall Holograph,” Aunt Lydia traces how she became one of the leading Founders, the system they created, and her larger plan to bring it down. © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 J. Tambling (ed.), The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Urban Literary Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62592-8_135-1