Robert Barr has been almost completely overlooked by critics and anthologists of Canadian literature, in part because, although he was educated in Canada, he spent most of his life in the United States and England. However, since most of his serious novels are either set in Canada or have some Canadian connection, Barr deserves attention. The Measure of the Rule, originally published in 1907, is the nearest he came to writing an autobiographical novel. It concerns the Toronto Normal School and the experiences there in the 1870s of a young man who undoubtedly is Barr himself. In...
Robert Barr has been almost completely overlooked by critics and anthologists of Canadian literature, in part because, although he was educated in ...
The letters collected in this volume preserve the vivid and thoughtful impressions of a young man who came to western Canada in the early twentieth century. J. Burgon Bickersteth joined the Anglican mission in Edmonton a year after its establishment in 1910. As a lay missionary he travelled in the country northwest of Edmonton for two years, during the first year among homesteaders, and in the second among railroad builders. In his letters to friends and relatives in England he described the land he found so captivating and 'life in the raw' as he witnessed it day by day. He wrote 'of some...
The letters collected in this volume preserve the vivid and thoughtful impressions of a young man who came to western Canada in the early twentieth...