Editor’s Preface

My close connections with William Kirby's Le Chien d'or began many decades ago, in a way even before I was born.In 1911 my mother emigrated with her family from London, England, to St. Thomas, Ontario.She attended high school in that county town in the 1920s, a time when Canadians were especially proud of their country because of its role in World War One, in which her father and her two older brothers served.At the St. Thomas Collegiate Institute and Vocational School she not only learned a good deal about her adopted homeland, but she also read the fiction and poetry of many Canadian authors, including Kirby's majestic historical novel.I do not know which version of Le Chien d'or formed part of my mother's syllabus-in the 1920s there were at least four versions available, including two that were published by the Musson Book Company, Limited, of Toronto.I do know that she loved this novel very much, that at one time or another there were several copies around our house, that she re-read it in all or in part at least once a year until she died, and that she passed her enthusiasm for it on to her daughter.It is not really surprising, therefore, that when, aged nine or ten, I visited the old city of Quebec on a school excursion from Montreal, the site that impressed me most was not the Plains of Abraham, but the tablet of the Golden Dog with which Kirby's novel was so closely associated.Many years passed, however, before I became professionally involved with this tablet over the principal entrance to the main post office in Quebec, the traditions attached to its legend, and the work of prose fiction that Kirby composed about it.By then I had received an MA in Canadian literature from Queen's University (Kingston, Ontario).I had earned my doctorate at the University of Toronto with a thesis on nineteenth-century English-and French-Canadian fiction.I had taught Canadian Literature at the University of British Columbia and at Carleton University.And I had recognized three problems that pertained in particular to early Canadian literature in both English and French.Many important works were not in print.Many of those that were available represented a version that was xiii

Récupéré en direct depuis OpenAlex et désinversé. Les résumés ne sont pas conservés dans cette base de données : les index inversés représentent 8,6 Go des 9,3 Go de texte de la base, et le serveur dispose de 13 Go libres.