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In these facts, therefore, we have a kind of empirical proof or pragmatic test that in the United Kingdom there has existed for a considerable time a genuinely respectful recognition of the fact of a Canadian literature in the English language.

For the purposes of a Synoptic History of Canadian Literature in the English language a significant year is that of 1760. For that year marks both the Fall of Montreal (following the Fall of Quebec in 1759) and the Puritan Migration from New England to Maugerville, on the St. John River, and to the valleys of western Nova Scotia, in ‘Nova Scotia,’ which at the time embraced the mainland of what is now Nova Scotia, as well as New Brunswick, and part of Maine.

The significance of this date for a History of Canadian Literature in English will be realized by reflecting that from 1760 onwards until Confederation in 1867,—that is, a period of one hundred years—the two pioneer Provinces of the later Dominion, Quebec and the original Nova Scotia, and, in due time, Ontario, came under the influence of a specific British and a specific New England and Loyalist civilization and culture which essentially determined the political, social, and spiritual ideas and ideals of the English-speaking people in Canada. These specifically pioneer and pre-Confederation ideas and ideals form the social and spiritual bases of Canadian Literature in English, from 1760 to 1867.