ABSTRACT
Early in 1880, the Canadian poet, novelist, and short-story writer Charles G. D. Roberts published Orion, and Other Poems, a collection that immediately met with high praise in Canada and arguably initiated the Fin De Siècle stage of the country' literary and cultural history. Although extinct in the political arena by the end of 1905, imperialism retained its appeal for many Canadians as a bulwark against annexation and a source of national identity. While the therapeutic and mystical strains of Fin De Siècle thought and expression in Canada were to a great extent offshoots of developments south of the border, they also drew nourishment from deep roots in the soil of British Romanticism and Victorianism. Well before the beginning of the nineteenth century, prevailing geographical and climatological theories had resulted in the perception of Canada's Indians and Inuit as degenerate, inferior, and doomed to extinction.
