Although the theoretical argument delineated in chapter 2 holds true for the Canadian case, the specific historical circumstances in Canada generated a very different development pattern for Canadian national literature than that which occurred in the American case. In Canada, several distinctive features of the political situation suppressed the search for and the development of a national literature until the mid-twentieth century.

Early Canadian society faced three powerful threats to the possibility of the national project. First, there was a strong division between English and French Canada, rooted both in historical animosity between the founding societies and in profound differences between anglophone and francophone in religion, language, occupation, orientation to modernity, and economic power. Canada's subnational division between the French and English founding traditions generated an inherent tension in the attempt to construct a unifying, fully national literature. Nationalist sentiment in Canadian history has historically taken a wide variety of forms and referenced many different visions of Canada – visions that are often incompatible (Berger 1970; Cook 1986; Gougeon 1994).