John Howe was a printer, and a cultured Loyalist. He brought to Nova Scotia two ideals. These were, first, the ideal of the free and democratic expression of the spirit in word and deed; and, secondly, the ideal of the expression of thought in strictly literary form. When, therefore, the Boston _News-Letter_ was amalgamated with the Halifax _Gazette_, Loyalist culture and journalistic ideals and practice infected and enhanced Nova Scotian (that is, Canadian) journalism. The amalgamation changed the scope and quality of Canadian journalism. For in 1828 Joseph Howe became sole owner and editor of _The Novascotian_, and proceeded systematically, and with better effect, to put into practice the social, journalistic, and literary ideals of his father. When Joseph Howe assumed absolute control of _The Novascotian_, in the same year (1828) he also brought together the band of Nova Scotia writers known as ‘The Club.’ In the twenty years from 1828, when Howe became active in creative journalism, to 1847, when the struggle for Responsible Government in Nova Scotia ended and Howe retired from _The Novascotian_, Howe raised journalism to the dignity of literature. He achieved this in two ways: first, by publishing in _The Novascotian_ his own and Haliburton’s original ‘Club’ prose sketches, Haliburton’s first series of _The Clockmaker_, and the prose and verse of other contemporary Nova Scotia writers; and, secondly, by establishing, in his own narrative and descriptive sketches, essays, legislative reviews, reported legislative speeches, pamphlets, and public letters, a _new standard of literary prose_. Those twenty years—1828 to 1848—may be called the Epoch of the Independent Prose Literature of Canada. The epithet, ‘independent,’ as applied to the literature of that period in Nova Scotia means that Howe, along with Haliburton, set up standards of prose which in substance and style broke away from English traditions and models. Howe’s and Haliburton’s writings were not only an indigenous product of Nova Scotia, a _native_ literature, but also a _new_ literature, absolutely independent of other literatures—in matter, form, and style. Moreover, _The Novascotian_, in which were published the skits, sketches, essays, and letters of ‘The Club,’ the sketches and essays of Howe, the first of the _Sam Slick_ humorous sketches, and, later, the texts of Howe’s literary and forensic orations and public letters, circulated not only in the Maritime Provinces and the Canadas but also in the United States and Great Britain. _The Novascotian_ thus introduced Howe and Haliburton, as creative prose writers, to the literary world. We may, therefore, mark the twenty years from 1828 to 1848 as the Epoch of the First Nativistic Literature of Canada.