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Further: Loyalist newspapers and Loyalist magazines, founded at Halifax, and later at St. John, that is, Loyalist Journalism, laid the foundations of literary expression and literary creation in Canada. It is beside the point to animadvert upon the aesthetic values of the substance and form of the original prose and verse which appeared in the Loyalist newspapers and magazines. For, up till the time of Joseph Howe’s becoming sole owner and editor of The Novascotian, in 1828, all the literary work that had preceded was but a preparatory school of journalism and literature. When The Novascotian was founded by Joseph Howe, and when Thomas Chandler Haliburton, with Howe himself and others, began to contribute to it, journalism itself became literature, and the first Nativistic Literature of Canada was created.

The Loyalists, we must remember, though they came from a country in which the social and political ideals were democratic, were themselves aristocratic. When, therefore, they bethought themselves of founding a college, their ideal was that of a college which would preserve the curriculum of Colleges open only to those who were well to do. The University of King’s College was begun as an Academy at Windsor, Nova Scotia in 1787, was granted a Collegiate Charter in 1789, and was formally opened as a College in 1790. It was indeed open to all the Province—to all those who could afford to attend. But in 1802 this policy of seeming democratic inclusiveness was abrogated by an Imperial Government Act which limited the privilege of matriculation to members of the Church of England. Since seventy-five per cent. of the population of Nova Scotia were members of other communions, the great majority of possible students were shut out from King’s College. When, therefore, the Scots émigrés who settled at Pictou in 1773, found their children debarred from education at King’s College, they established in 1819 a new College. Education at Pictou Academy, as it has always been called, was open to students of all creeds, races, and color, as it is to this day. From that Academy went forth men and women who held up to the people of their own country and the rest of Canada the two ideals of the supreme worth of the individual human spirit and of sound elementary education as the basis of constructive good citizenship. From Pictou Academy went forth men and women who became leaders in thought and practical endeavor in Canada—superior teachers and presidents of Colleges, eloquent preachers, distinguished scientists, men of practical vision and achievement in the professions, in government and statesmanship, and in industry and commerce. Their influence, however, was intellectual and practical. Save in the field of journalism, they had no influence on literature and literary creation in Canada.