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Meanwhile, it must be observed that in literary culture and the production of literature in the English language in Canada from 1760 to Confederation, taking these merely as convenient dates, Nova Scotia (including New Brunswick) during the Puritan and Loyalist period and up to the triumph of Responsible Government, and even still later, not only produced the most significant and authentic literature, but also Nova Scotia is to be regarded as the first home of an originally ‘Nativistic’ Literature produced in Canada.

Up to Confederation there could not be, as there was not, any innate and natural sentiment of Canadian nationality in the hearts of the people. The motive of Confederation was not based on sentiment but on practical political vision and expediency. The ideal of Confederation, before it was achieved, was wholly an intellectual concept. If, therefore, the Canadian Confederacy were to endure, it was imperative that the intellectual ideal, for the factual realization of it, should become powerful over the hearts and imagination of the Canadian people after the fact of Confederation in 1867—that there should develop, or be developed, in the souls of the Canadian people a definitive sentiment of nationality.