Imperialist

“The Imperialist,” a novel by Sara Jeannette Duncan, published in 1904, is a portrait of life in small-town Ontario at the beginning of the 20th century. At that time, English Canada was torn between affectionate loyalty for the “mother country” (Britain), and, on the other side, hard-headed respect for the demands of life in the shadow of the dynamic American economy. (In a by-election, one party pushes for establishing a preferred trading relationship between Canada and Britain: this is the “i