This anthology examines the social, political and cultural pressures that have contributed to the shaping of Canadian psyche and imagination on the one hand, and offers a revaluation of the characteristic cadences discernible in quite a number of major Canadian writers on the other. Of the two sections in this volume, the former carries, among others, essays on the making of Canada, the dialectics of centric and eccentric debate on it, and the ethnic variety and cultural pluralism of the land nurtured by its independent as also interdependent society. Against this ambience of 'disunity as unity', the studies of individual authors in the latter section reveal varied 'angles of vision' and 'many lives of sight, in their works. Through persistent scrutiny and stimulating enquiry they probe the extent to which Canadian literature both coheres and imbibes sharable human values.