8 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
It was this new stage in the intellectual advance of our country 
which brought forward in the recent meeting of the Ontario Educational 
Association the following resolution :—‘“ Resolved that—Whereas the 
literature of Canada is sufficient both in quality and quantity for study 
in our schools, and whereas the study of the literature of one’s country 
is a most valuable feature in developing national life; therefore this 
Association place itself on record as favouring :— 
a. A course of Canadian literature in our training schools. 
b. Some recognition of Canadian literature in our courses of 
study leading to teachers’ certificates and matriculation. 
c. A request to the Ontario Library Association for co-operation 
in placing Canadian literature in our public and school libra- 
ries.” 
It is to this educational question that I invite your attention in 
this brief paper hoping, not to make any original contribution to our 
literature, but rather to secure your co-operation in a very important 
movement for its recognition. à 
The question before us is this: Does the present status of our 
literature justify us in placing it as a distinct subject on the curriculum 
for the education of our youth? This question is by no means as 
simple as might at first sight appear. In the choice of materials for 
his work the true educator has ever been cosmopolitan, and, therefore, 
for two thousand years Greece has ruled the thought and set the stan- 
dards of intellectual life for our western world. We can only justify 
the proposed advance if we can find something in ‘our Canadian 
literature of true educational value, something not less valuable than 
that which we have hitherto borrowed from the outside world. With 
the expansion of modern science our educational programme is not 
merely filled up, it is crowded to excess, and a new subject can scarcely 
be inserted except by a process of displacement; and this can only- 
be justified on the ground that we have something as good or better 
to offer. 
Again, the question before us is not one of critical review of 
Canadian literature in our universities as a chapter in the study of 
English or French literature and subordinate to the general treatment 
of those subjects. Nor is it a question of the use of Canadian text- 
books in history. Nor is it the question of the insertion of a few 
patriotic or other Canadian poems, essays or prose extracts in the 
reading books of our primary schools. All this has already been done. 
The proposal now before us is the use of Canadian literature as we now 
use Shakespeare, Scott, Wordsworth or Tennyson, or Addison or 
Macaulay as special subjects of study for matriculants and teachers. 
