These three works, displaying marked differences in purpose, tone, and effect, are all classics of Canadian literary and cultural criticism.

John George Bourinot was a man of letters, an Imperialist, and a biculturalist, who was confident of his knowledge of the Canadian identity and felt it to be his public mission to align reality with his own personal vision. Writing in 1893 to the Elite represented by the members of the Royal Society, he described his work as 'a monograph on the intellectual development of the Dominion, ' describing 'the progress of culture in a country still...