An old tale, begun after Confederation and lingering on until the 1950s -- a once-powerful, establishment fairy-tale -- compels our literary attention, especially now that its ideology has largely been disparaged and repudiated: the "old tale" of Canadian Empire and Imperialism. We can clearly see the effects of this ideology on Canadian literature stemming from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, including that by Leacock, Haliburton, Howe, O'Dell, Stansbury, McLachlan, Goldsmith, the Confederation Poets (including Isabella Valancy Crawford and Pauline Johnson, but excluding Bliss Carman), Pratt, MacLennan, and Richler.
