The most significant writer, at least by versatility of genius and variety of achievement, in the history of the Nativistic Literature of Canada, was Joseph Howe, born at Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 1804. Solely as a man of letters, Howe must be regarded as having been, from the point of view of Nova Scotia and of Canada, a man of superior creative genius. He, along with Haliburton, inaugurated the Epoch of the Independent Prose Literature of Canada. He laid the foundations of Canadian Creative Journalism and Canadian Political Literature. He was the ‘father’ of Canadian Literary and Forensic Oratory. He gave fresh life and novel humorous quality to the Familiar Sketch or Light Essay, after the manner but not in imitation of Addison and Goldsmith. He was the first writer in British North America to attempt the Short Story of Mystery, and with engaging success. He was a Poet of greater authentic genius than many other Canadian poets who have a wider reputation. For he wrote poetry of Nature and the Commonplace with the beauty and distinction of Goldsmith and Burns. He infused into the Patriotic Song a new music and what may be regarded as the first expression of the National spirit in verse of that species. He gave to the Convivial Song a fresh Western ‘tang’ of breeziness and genial humanity. He revitalized, with novel originality and piquancy, the Poetry of Humor, so originally indeed as to make his humorous poetry almost a species by itself. Finally, he discovered the genius of Thomas Chandler Haliburton, trained him, sponsored him, and introduced him to the world as the first systematic humorist of the Anglo-Saxon peoples. In 1704, or just one hundred years before the birth of Joseph Howe, the Boston _News-Letter_, the first New England newspaper, was established. On March 17th, 1776, or seventy-two years after the founding of the _News-Letter_, the press of that journal departed from Boston for Halifax, _via_ Newport, R.I., in the care of John Howe, father of Joseph Howe; and was set up in the office of the Halifax _Gazette_, founded in 1752, the first newspaper published in any of the Provinces which later became the Dominion of Canada. The _News-Letter_ was amalgamated with _The Gazette_. The latter, however, was not a genuine newspaper; it was a governmental organ which published chiefly military and official intelligence. The _News-Letter_ was, in our sense of the word, a genuine newspaper. On the face of the fact, the amalgamation of the New England and the Nova Scotia newspapers appears as a simple, unmeaningful _business_ matter. Really, however, it was an important factor in the evolution of Canadian literature.