The Canadian Commonwealth

Canada, Agnes C. Laut writes, was free from the beginning—but still had to fight for its very existence. To find the source of its national spirit, she follows its current back toward the mountain springs.

Writing in the early twentieth century, Laut traces that current from French settlers on the St. Lawrence, who came to plant the Cross, to Loyalists rebuilding their lives in the Great Lakes backwoods and fur traders venturing west into the wilderness. French and English peoples, divided by faith, speech and allegiance, found themselves joined under one government after New France fell. Their ideals—and the hard-won habits of courage, fairness and endurance—would be tested by war, political struggle and the upheaval of 1837. Could these rival inheritances become the foundation of a nation?

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